February 3, 2010

FNB Innovators: Jason Spingarn-Koff

This week FilmNewsBriefs interviews Jason Spingarn-Koff the director of Life 2.0 which recently had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. We discuss creating the film using machinima, filming in a virtual worlds and the future of the internet.

FilmNewsBriefs: Will you briefly explain the virtual world, Second Life?
Jason Spingarn-Koff: The basics of it is that Second Life is an online virtual world where millions of people around the word create avatars and create the world that they live in. Their so-called residents. It’s not a game, there’s no narrative, there’s no levels or points or way to win. It may look like a game but what it really is more like a 3D chat room, or you could say a stepping stone on its way to something like the matrix.

FNB: Why did you start using second life?
JSK: When I went in, Second Life was getting a lot of attention. What interested me is that it felt like a historical milestone where people had created a synthetic world that many of the users say is just as satisfying as the real world. That was pretty far out and when I went in I just found it endlessly fascinating and I started focusing on the people. Why are people doing this? If you can create a new entity what do you create? It is very psychological and a lot of fun. It felt like something of a no-brainer for a filmmaker to want to tackle.

FNB: Did you enter the world with the intention of making the documentary or had you been interacting in the world when you decided it was a good subject for a film?
JSK: I entered the world because I was curious about it. I had been interested in virtual reality for more than 15 years. I did some early research in college at the Brown Computer Graphics Group and used one of the first virtual reality systems for NASA research. At that time it was so crude but it totally blew my mind and I knew that one day something would come along that would really take off and this seem like the moment. When Second Life started getting traction it seemed like a science fiction notion [made] real.

FNB: Can you talk about how you created your character and filmed it (filming the virtual world referred to as machinima)?
JSK: In terms of machinima, I went into Second Life at first and created a really ridiculous avatar, which was fun. He was short and fat with a pink mohawk. It looked nothing like me and no one wanted to talk to me. I finally figured out that there’s a sociological experiment going on in there. Looking at how other people interact with each other from all over the world and looking at why people make their avatars look like themselves in real life or different than themselves. As I spent more time in the world, I decided to make my avatar look like me. Pretty quickly, I decided to explore whether or not I could make a film. I made my avatar look like me, with the addition of a cowboy hat, and my avatar carries around a video camera over its shoulder. What I’m able to do is pass back and forth through this virtual curtain, as a filmmaker filming verité scenes in real life and in the virtual world. Talking back to a talking head. Sit down interviews with avatars, I poke fun at all the documentary conventions and I follow these characters in real life and in second life. I try to show how their identities and their relationships evolve over several years of shooting.

FNB: Was what you captured in Second Life done in real time?
JSK: Yes. Everything I captured in Second Life was real time, nothing was animated for the film. I didn’t design any sets, I didn’t create any avatars of characters.

FNB: How are you able to capture the virtual world?
JSK: As a filmmaker, it’s just as challenging to shoot in the virtual world as it is in the real world. You basically have a camera, you don’t need to physically wear a camera, or even have your avatar wear a camera, but what you’re controlling is basically your point of view. You have all of these camera controls within the world, you can pan, and tilt and zoom. What my avatar does to film another avatar is walk up to them, I’ll zoom up to them. I’ll walk behind them to do over the shoulder shots and I’ll fly up in the air to do high angle shots. I can do crane shots. I have special footage where I can do flying shots and I can detach the camera from my avatar.

FNB: Do you screen capture from the point of view of your camera?
JSK: Yes, there are two elements. The first element is controlling the camera and the second element is capturing the screen. There’s a lot of technology on both ends to get the machinima footage.

FNB: Did you find it hard at first to capture moments because you were struggling with the technology?
JSK: It was really difficult. I spent more then three years making the film and up until the end I kept using different technologies and different techniques. It drove the online people crazy. When I went into finish the film I had at least a dozen different video formats, frame rates and aspect ratios because it took me so long to figure out how to do this. I used different computers and it was extremely challenging. But once you get the hang of it, it’s really fun. You can do copter shots, crane shots and tracking shots for no cost. There’s really no cost to doing machinima once you’ve gained the skills to do so.

FNB: Have you thought of documenting these techniques or self-publishing?
JSK: I actually haven’t thought of that but that’s a good question. I want to emphasize that even though there’s no cost, machinima is just as time intensive as filming in the real word since you still have to frame every shot. There’s no automatic, for example in many games the camera is pre-programmed to get interesting shots. Second Life every shot you see is a shot I had to frame up as a filmmaker. I show my avatar in the film in order to be clear to the people that there’s actually a documentary filmmaker shooting every scene. It’s a little bit cheeky sometimes, we’re in a store with a bunch of avatars shopping and talking with each other and I pull back into an avatar filming them. Or I show an avatar being interviewed, like a talking head interview and then I’ll pull back and show my avatar filming that person. That reminds people that this is the same filmmaker that’s filming in real life and Second Life. The theme of the film or one of the main themes is what is reality? What is real? Is it only things that are physical? Or can something which is immaterial, which is purely digital, also be real?

FNB: Are there other challenges filming in the virtual world?
JSK: Basically, when I started thinking about doing this film, I wanted to approach it how I approached any of my other films for PBS or MSNBC. I knew that legally I needed permission to film these avatars but there were no best practices about what to do in there. Is an avatar a real person with real rights? If you’re filming in a virtual store do you need permission from the creator of that store? Or the creator of the tropical beach that you’re filming on? And no one knew the answers to this, so I approached the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). They take on really big issues like email privacy, digital music distribution, and have done a lot of precedent setting. They decided to take on Life 2.0 pro bono, to come up with best practices for filming in a virtual world. I worked with an attorney there and we came up with a game plan of what to do because most filmmakers going in there are just filming and not worrying about it. I thought what would be really cool as part of the film would also be to help other filmmakers down the road. Virtual films are here to stay and they are only getting more popular.

FNB: What were the precedents that you set up?
JSK: What we decided was that Linden Lab, the company [that created Second Life], has the position that everything in the world is owned by the people who create the virtual objects, and that the people who rent the virtual land have the rights over that virtual territory. I basically made it as clear as possible to everyone who I was, what I was doing and how the footage would be used. That included getting releases by avatars. I would also approach land owners, the owners of virtual land that are called sims. You could say the owner of virtual islands or virtual property. When I was filming I would always have my virtual video camera on and a sign over my head that said Second Life Documentary. People could click on me, find out who I was and what I was doing. If I was going to a virtual classroom with a bunch of virtual students I would tell everyone, “Hey I’m making a documentary” and I would approach the teacher and see if anyone objected to being filmed. Even if they write in silly language where their avatars are pretending to be children I would still get the best permission I could and treat it as much like the real world as possible.

FNB: Did you find people in the world not wanting to be filmed?
JSK: Most people were flirting with it but there were some sensitive areas. For example, one of the characters in the film is a man whose avatar is an 11 year-old girl. The people who control avatars are all adults. It’s illegal to enter Second Life if you’re under 18. There are a whole community of adults whose avatars are children and there are a lot of prejudice against these children avatars. There’s been a lot of sensational news stories and some people assume that there is some sort of deviant sexual behavior going on, so when I went there with my camera, the owners would get concerned. They’d need me to explain what my movie was before they would let me in. It was definitely a sensitive area. What I [encountered] a lot of was that people didn’t want to be in the documentary because they didn’t want to give away any details of who they were in real life. They wouldn’t necessarily object to me showing their avatars, but they wouldn’t reveal anything about who they really were. I spent more than six months finding the characters for the film. I spent hundreds of hours in Second Life before I met people who were willing to share their real life story.

FNB: Was it hard to find people who were both willing to share their real life while also having a compelling story?
JSK: I think that most people in Second Life have really interesting stories. The people who are in Second Life for more then a year generally are all pretty interesting. I guess I would say that I had no trouble at all finding people with interesting stories. The challenge was finding people who were willing to share their stories and that I could physically get to. I met incredible people in Europe who I wasn’t able to get to, to shoot. I focused on Americans and Canadians because I could pull it off. The hardest part of the film was the access and the technology.

FNB: Could you talk about some of the software programs you used to screen capture?
JSK: Second Life has a built in capture software but it’s not very good. The best capture software is FRAPS for PC and then on the Mac it’s called ishowu. Different people have different opinions of what they think are the best.

FNB: But these are the two that you felt were best for you or for the film?
JSK: Yes, those worked best for me. I also captured skype, not just Second Life but I captured skype web cam and skype audio. I also captured audio in Second Life.

FNB: Did you have to do anything to enhance the footage?
JSK: For the final film, we scaled everything up to the highest resolution. We did that at a company called Edgeworks and did everything on Macs. It’s actually interesting. I made my entire film on MacBook Pros. Some of the machinima was captured on PCs that were being used by my subjects but the machinima that I personally shot was all on a Mac. I edited the entire 100 minute HD film on Macbook Pros, which is kind of insane but it worked. We also finished the entire film on Macs using final cut studio. The entire thing was done on lap top and desk top computers. No expensive equipment was needed.

FNB: How did you find the Sundance Film Festival?
JSK: It was my first time at Sundance and it was my first time at a film festival for 12 years. For me it has been an incredible experience. One of the defining moments of my career and I’ve loved meeting the other filmmakers especially. The audience has been responding really well to the film and the premiere had 75 people on the wait list to get in. Going around Sundance every day I’d find people on the shuttle talking about my film. I keep meeting people on the street that will see my badge [for Life 2.0] and say they heard someone at dinner talking about it. People walking behind me on the street were talking about and even a CAA operative told me she heard people talking about it on the bus. For me, I feel really fortunate that it’s done what I’d hope it would do, which is get people thinking and get people talking.

FNB: Is the film still available?
JSK: Our film is still on the market and we’ve certainly had buyers coming to our screening and we’ll see what happens. Everyone is telling me that this is going to be a long road, that I have to be patient because this is a documentary. Even though there are 20 million avatars created in Second Life and millions of users, the independent filmmaking market is still challenging. We may have to come up with something innovative but I see this as an opportunity because of the potential target audience being so networked. Maybe coming up with an innovative way of reaching those people who would really love the film that are living all around the world since Second Life is such an international phenomenon. It’s going to be a fun challenge to come up with the best way of reaching the audience.

FNB: How are you capturing people during this time while you’re creating this buzz? Are you using social media?
JSK: We’re on Facebook with about 350 fans. We’re on Twitter. We’re doing it ourselves so it’s a grassroots operation. If you go to the Facebook page you’ll see that a lot of the fans have avatar photos. Our fans on Facebook are a mix of real life photos of people and avatars.

FNB: Are you doing any promotion within Second Life?
JSK: We definitely want to do special things within Second Life for the Second Life community, but we’re still planning.

FNB: How do you think this film reflects the future of virtual worlds?
JSK: It’s the beginning of something that will be very big and that’s going to have a major impact on the future, whether of not it’s called Second Life. This is very much where the internet is heading, into 3D portals and avatars. Children today have dozens of virtual worlds that they are using, by companies such as Disney and by MTV and this film is a glimpse of where everything is headed.

Life 2.0 Links:
Offical Website
Facebook
Twitter

Editors Note: Life 2.0 was produced by Jason Spingarn-Koff, Stephan Paternot of PalmStar Entertainment & Andrew Lauren of Andrew Lauren Productions

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