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(UPDATE: Moo Money contacted me in the grid last night, to let me know that Susi maybe gives her a little too much credit in this interview; that it's actually BuhBuhCuh Fairchild who runs both Alt-Zoom Studios and the Take5 film festival, with Moo merely being the company's public evangelist. Thanks for the clarification, Moo! By the way, the latest edition of Take5 is tonight, September 27th; I'll be attending myself, and will hopefully have a report for you here a little later in the week.)

(This is part 2 of an interview I recently did with Susi Spicoli, owner and head curator of Susi's Mountain Gallery and machinima showcase. Please see part 1 for more on what machinima is, Susi's background, and her thoughts on the still-photography gallery she also runs.)

In The Grid: So, last time we were discussing the photography gallery you run here in the grid. But how did you first get involved with the machinima community?

Susi Spicoli: Well, initially I was simply thinking about how I could promote my photo gallery. So, I thought about doing a series of machinima, called "tales from the gallery," that used the photo gallery as a backdrop for stories. We invented the "purple dude" -- some plot around him coming to the gallery, people getting shot, he dying at the end. The way we did that actually was sort of "improvisational machinima making." I had two others helping me; each one was directing one scene and determining the next steps.

ITG: Like a "Mister Bill" from the '80s? A character who dies at the end of every film?

SS: Ah, I wouldn't remember. But yes; some ending that would lead to the next episode.

ITG: Was the idea to present a continuum to the story, or was it an absurdist plot? Did this character suffer torture in every episode, or was it a storyline that continued from week to week?

SS: It was Dadaist, Absurdist. and playing with the fact that in a SL machinima, because it's so easy and cheap, you don't need to write a script before you start, unlike RL videos. The second one was pretty much a documentary of the first opening party.

ITG: But it was this that first made you realize the potential in SL machinima?

SS: Yes, that's true. I found it's so easy to make stuff; not that I did it very professionally. That you can deploy different principles. Almost an advantage compared to people who come from professional video, making and applying their traditional methods.

ITG: So it sounds like you would support the opinion of many machinima creators; that the tools to create films here can sometimes clash against the way that traditional filmmakers make videos.

SS: Yes; I didn't know that others think that way too. I wouldn't call it "clash." You can just do away with some traditional things. On the other hand, there is a drawback, of course. Without those, you might lose quality, [or] it might just be downright silly. Difficult to harness the creativity. Perhaps a mixture of both would be best.

ITG: What are the things that traditional fillmmakers can do away with in machinima, and what are the things that are still important? In your opinion, anyway?

SS: I think, because the cost and time is so low, you don't need to write [a] script in minute detail. You still should have an overall storyline, but you can afford to improvise more; experiment more, shoot rapidly several takes. Perhaps leave some more freedom to the actors. Like rapid prototyping, or digital cameras; you still need to have a view for composition, but you can afford to do ten or twenty shots, knowing that one or two will be [okay]. In the past you had to plan each step. So the room for improvisation, and delegating creativity down to actors and others, is now there.

ITG: But how is this different, say, than DV filmmaking? Is it basically the same, but with a million dollars subtracted from the budget? Or are there things you can do here that RL filmmakers simply can't?

SS: Well, it's still an order of magnitude cheaper and faster than DV. For example, actors -- [here] you can quickly call up extras or actors. Recently I needed some people and IMed my "Friends" list; had some five great-looking guys over in two minutes for a shot. Then of course, there are things you can't do in RL. Like this video where we totally improvised things, not any script; where someone had a rocket, which we took. So the tools, the objects that exist, the props, are so powerful here. Then I know some people, like RacerX Gullwing and Clames Clanger, both with their own cinemas here in the gallery, that do amazing, mind-boggling things with automation of the filming process. And Moo Money and her Alt-Zoom tools. Those things just make filming easier. Again, mainly a budget question. With CGI you might be able to do something like that in RL -- but because it's so expensive, you only have one shot and have to plan carefully. That sounds trivial, but I think makes a hell of a difference.

ITG: Actually, you just brought up a question I was going to ask. What kinds of third-party support is being created in the grid that you know of, for machinima creation? Moo, for example, is an acquaintance of mine.

SS: Yes, there is Moo, and Bubuh-something Fairchild. Why can't people pick simple names in SL? I don't know if there is much else of institutional support, but there is a great community of machinima people. And an interesting case of potential competition, but mainly great collaboration. I also think that the SL community [on its own] lends itself towards collaboration. I hired some Alliance Navy soldiers for one scene, and they came up with great ideas. Part of the "support" lies in SL itself, the community.

ITG: Alliance Navy?

SS: They're a bunch of soliders here. I met them in a sandbox for my last movie, We Choose Death. I had some ideas about three scenes, one with fighting; I went to this sandbox. Got shot a few times, but then talked to them about what I was looking for, and ended up getting great support. Ten people or so, three admirals, helped with the scene for several hours; they suggested the location and provided all of the acting. I just gave them general direction. The only problem in the end was that in my credits I talked about "Star Alliance" and they pointed out that that's an airlines club that doesn't do any fighting. I need to fix that in the next version [laughter].

ITG: Ah, so cross-cultural support for your machinima. You convinced a bunch of full-time military people to be actors for your cutting-edge film project.

SS: Yes, absolutely. And it was wonderful to work with disciplined soldiers. You tell them you need people from the right, and the officers organize the details. I also think they enjoyed it. Not sure if they liked the end result, because the whole story was more critical of violence of course. I think I might have misled them a bit, unintentionally; but it showed the power of the environment.

ITG: So what made you decide to open a machinima gallery in the grid? Instead of, say, concentrating on your own machinima experiments?

SS: Well, I was lucky to get invited to the mid-June SL third-birthday celebrations. I had one photo space and one for my machinima. Tao Takashi, also represented at my gallery, was organizing the machinima part. He had developed a player that allowed [residents] to play multiple videos in one parcel of land, not really suppported by Linden Lab. Then after a couple of weeks or so, they pulled the whole thing down.

ITG: "Not really supported?"

SS: The support is that normally, for each parcel of land, you can put in one audio and one video URL for streaming. Tao had built a "player," which you see used [at my gallery] as well, that allows [residents] to click on "forward" and it somehow puts the next video URL into the parcel thing. [It] means that now I can show as many videos as I want, per parcel. Which is another great example of [how Linden works] -- while Linden Lab hasn't created all the detailed tools that one would need, they have created the flexibility and the tools for people to create the missing bits they want.

ITG: But is it two different things you're talkng about? Is it that Linden supports the invention of non-official-SL tools? Or do they go around shutting down things that they don't "approve" of?

SS: Oh no, I'm talking about that they have built a flexible environment, perhaps sometimes without realizing [it], that allows the flexibility to build things on top. The whole philosophy, as I understand it, of SL. I haven't seen them shutting anything down in my sphere yet.

ITG: I thought you just said that they tried to shut down Tao's multi-film script.

SS: Oh no, not at all. Misunderstanding. They shut down, as planned, the birthday exhibits. That's when I thought, "What a pity." Tao's idea, or whoever had that, of having multiple little cinemas to show off machinima.

ITG: Oh, I see what you're saying. LL sponsored a special build for the third-birthday celebrations, and you decided to see how you could extend the things that had been invented for that.

SS: Exactly. So actually that wasn't very creative of me. I simply [invited] some of the artists, perhaps five or six, to move their stuff here. That was the early stage. It was a question of getting the first few, then telling others I had those. The network effect. The more I had convinced, the easier it got to get others. And they started putting time and effort into building their presence here.

ITG: So if you don't mind me asking this, since I think a lot of ITG's readers would be interested; what exactly is the pleasure of being an arts administrator here? What's fun about hosting artists, for example, rather than being a creative professional yourself?

SS: Well, good question. I am both, of course; one of the twelve exhibits is my own. But since it's impossible in machinima, as easy as it is, to produce dozens of films quickly, if I wanted to have a broad variety of movies, I had to invite others. Why is it fun? Well, that's like everything else in SL. It's fun to create something you feel is nice to have and missing. I couldn't find [much] machinima in a way that I can share an experience with friends to watch it. So different from YouTube and much more powerful. On-demand, different but complementary to Moo's occasional festival. So I had to create that setting. I feel it's not an administrative task; more like having a gallery, and being a producer/"artist" at the same time. It's real fun to create a place like this; [to] see people come here, including a lot of the artists, to show their friends, because they don't have a place like this. Plus it embeds me into the machinima community, where I admire a lot of the talent. And of course the fresh air here [laughter].

ITG: So how do you decide who gets space here? Or is that even an issue? Do you have more machinima artists applying than you have room for?

SS: So far, that has not been an issue. Early on I had to persuade people; now I have more of a choice. I am constantly on the lookout for new people that have, A, interesting material, and B, are in here for longer. I don't want to do a space for just one movie, so I'm looking for people who will create several machinima. Otherwise I try to keep it diverse and interesting. So far, the number of machinima has still been fairly small. If we get more and more we might have to create shared things. But I just created another ten spaces, [and have] only used one so far. I hope that out of Moo's competitions, we'll get more good stuff. How I see that is that Moo does first-time scheduled screenings, then I become like the "archive."

ITG: So should we tackle what "Overman" in part 1 of this interview mentioned in the comments, about the debate over the definition of 'machinima?' What exactly constitutes machinima, anyway? Are you in particular limiting it to videos created specifically within SL?

SS: I didn't actually fully understand what his definitional concern was. I guess I also fall into the category of newcomers to this field, so I might not fully understand it, but my understanding so far was that machinima means video, animation, shot using the graphics engine of a game or virtual world. So videos done in Half Life, WoW, etc, fall into that category. Of course I just talk about SL machinima when I say machinima, but realize that's just a subset.

ITG: Is there an advantage you know of to shooting machinima in SL, versus other software platforms?

SS: Well, I don't have first-hand experience; however, if you think about the nature of other [virtual] worlds, they are mostly very structured and therefore very limited. In WoW you are limited to what characters they offer, and the world [the company has created]. So I think the big advantage of SL -- and I can't think of any other environment at the present time that offers this -- is unlimited flexibility in all dimensions. Avatars, acting, environment, props, scripting.

ITG: And what do you see your future in machinima being? Are you more interested in the adminsitrative end, or are you still interested in creating films yourself?

SS: Clearly the producing bit. [Administration] is nice, but my true desire is in producing things. Having a place like this, now that it's created, is relatively easy [to maintain]. It still would be nice to figure out how to make money from this; but I would like to use the community, like Moo and others are part of, to produce more and more creative things. Perhaps collaborate amongst a wider number of people; move away from individual machinima-making to collaboration. For this place, however, I also have a number of ideas. One is to create a large outdoor machinima cinema; a drive-in, fly-in, wheelchair-in. The planning is under way -- a landing strip for jets is being built. I would like to use that for scheduled reviews of a selection of machinima. Sort of what Moo does for first screenings, [but in my case] for archive material. Then I've [also] created a number of areas for discussions, debates, events. You see them up on the mountain in a few locations. I hope we can have more community events, discussions about the methods. Learning, perhaps, contributing to more collaboration. Things like that are on the horizon. However, I can now get help with that; [personally speaking], I would like to focus on my next movie. Now that [my gallery is] all set up, it's a question of a few minutes to install a new artist.

ITG: And that, actually, leads us to the next question I had. Given all the direct benefits here, can artists in SL do everything on their own? Or like RL, is it necessary here to find a dealer, an agent, a gallery that will represent them?

SS: Good question. Currently, I don't know if any of us are making enough money to even pay for the land fee here. I have an idea [regarding that]; with more and more businesses moving into SL, why not sponsor a few young artists? Like me? [Laughter] Hello, you banks and PR agencies out there with your corporate islands. You need art!

ITG: Well, ignoring for a moment even the question of making money here; given that there are now 750,000 residents of SL, can an artist even have a chance to make a name for themselves in the grid alone anymore? Or do they need to join a larger group?

SS: I think the main thing missing in SL is an effective search function. In a way, my machinima gallery helps, as long as there are few machinima. You need a Google for SL, because the 750,000 people [here] have no way of finding things. The events [listings] with the clutter of casinos doesn't quite cut it. If you could combine a search engine with the social and trust network that exists, you'd have an interesthing solution.

ITG: Is that coming? Have you seen any third-party companies that get you excited?

SS: No -- but if there's a venture capitalist out there that wants to talk to me about it, I'm all ears.

ITG: You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen; Susi's looking for a job with a start-up.

SS: Not a job. Just give me the money [laughter].

ITG: So where's the future of visual arts in SL? What's coming next?

SS: I think what you might find is various art forms getting combined in a way that is only possible in SL. Clames Clanger is already combining fractal sculptures with video, in a recursive way. He builds sculptures, themselves pieces of art, where each tiny bit shows a video. Then those kind of fractal creations become machinima themselves, eventually shown on a fractal sculpture. That's the kind of thing only possible in SL, that brings together various things. Or what RacerX does with scripting. It opens new venues. Then of course that technology will make things more realistic. Higher frame-rate, avatars capable of displaying emotions.

ITG: And what's your future with the arts in SL? Do you think you're going to keep this gallery running for awhile?

SS: Yes, I'm in here for the long run. I think I'll add and build onto this, see where things take me. Perhaps there is a way to turn this into a business. We'll see. If nothing else, it's great fun.

Susi's Mountain Gallery can be visited at [Ochreous 36/150/139]; the machinima showcase is at [201/121/248].