Second lives, dingy flats and the little baby Jesus

Just before Xmas, I made a nativity film for Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham. I've been making little Xmas projects for them for a few years now, it's like a self imposed commissioning project, and sometimes I fear that I'll turn into some kind of weird Xmas guy who celebrates Xmas every day for no reward apart from some kind of 'and finally' segment on the local news.

I really wanted to make a straightforward nativity, like an infant school one, but with cute Playmobil style characters. I really wanted to make it as un-dark as possible - I think it's easy to get on the case of Xmas, and be cynical about how it's all just commercial, and start going on about how we all forget the true meaning of Xmas (I'm not even sure there is a true meaning), but I do feel it's a magical time, regardless of whether I celebrate it in a secular way or not. I think the nativity and the Christian message is just a part of it. While I was making it, I got in contact with Gaia and Luna, two kids from Italy who make music with their dad. We'd used a track of theirs for our student showreel at work, and I wanted to put it on the net, so I wrote to them to ask if we could, and having watched the showreel, they asked if we'd be interested in working on something for their upcoming Xmas single. I suggesed the nativity and sent them some screenshots, and they agreed, which was brilliant, as it gave me something to cut to, and the film a life beyond the single venue it was made for. I think it also helped me to fix the tone of the film, in that it was a hope filled child's pop song which perfectly suited the feel of the film. You can have a look if you like;



A few years ago I got a Playmobil nativity set, and used it in a stop motion workshop at Uni, and since then, the idea of creating the piece has picked away at the back of my mind. I've also been learning Maya, and thought this film would be a good way to try to bring some of those things together. The title 'Vertep' is a Russian/Ukranian word which means a puppet theatre which depicts the nativity.

At the time, I had started making another film with Andy at work, but had to shelve it while I made this one. We've started again on it, and I'm kind of glad it got put back because I learned a hell of a lot on the Vertep project, and I think this new film will be all the better for it. We've spent a lot of time discussing the look of the sets and interiors in the film, and becoming fixated on nasty bus-stops, mini busses and the hallways of dingy multi-occupancy flats, bringing back grim memories of student flats and the piss-stinking bus shelters and soul sucking urban design of 80s/90's Coventry and Preston. Happy days!

Here's some pics of work in progress;







Last term, I taught on a Virtual Performance module with MA English and Drama, and as well as focussing on softwares like Maya, Motion Capture and Motion Builder, I spent quite a lot of time with them in Second Life. I hadn't been into SL for some time, but was keen to work with them in there, as I think it speaks inherently to performance in terms of liveness and presence, and I was keen to look at ideas around actors/performers as avatar, the first/third person performer, and to play around with the idea of site specific online performance, and the idea (to mis-quote Sue Thomas) that 'fiction is rendered impotent in a space which is essentially made up anyway'. It was a successful term I think, leading to a potential new collaboration between School of Art and Design, English and Drama and Engineering which will enable us to buy an island and develop longer projects in there.

In looking around, I've been excited to see the growth in education-based projects in-world, and I'm excited by the increasing links between SL and Web 2.0 technologies. I'm keen that once we buy the island, the students who use the space will document their adventures in world, and perhaps begin to develop new creative projects which link together the web, Second Life and 'real life'...