Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator

Last updated

Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey, originally titled My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva, [1] is a 2007 American documentary film created by Douglas Gayeton. Molotov Alva tells the story of a man's passage from his real (analog) life in Petaluma, California into a new (digital) existence inside Linden Lab's virtual world Second Life . The production was filmed entirely in Second Life using machinima, the use of real-time 3-D graphics engines to create animated films.

Contents

Molotov Alva was commissioned and co-produced in 2006 by Submarine Channel, a Dutch internet production company, and co-produced by VPRO, a Dutch television broadcaster. The first dispatch, titled "Out of His Skin", was placed on YouTube in February 2007. A rough cut of the documentary premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs Film Festival in 2007. It subsequently appeared in festivals around the world, including the Tokyo International Film Festival, the Rome Film Festival and SXSW. The North American broadcast rights were purchased by HBO Documentary Films in August, 2007, marking the first time a US television network purchased a series which premiered on YouTube.

The first six episodes of Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator premiered on Cinemax [2] [3] on May 15, 2008. The final four episodes were distributed via Video On Demand, iTunes, and YouTube, making it the first simultaneous multi-platform distribution of an American television series.

Plot

A man leaves his Petaluma, California home and enters a virtual world called Second Life as an avatar named Molotov Alva. He arrives with no possessions, not even clothing. He begins by building his own home and furnishing it with objects he discovers during his travels. Alva decides that his new home is merely a trap, one that keeps him tied to memories of the life he'd just left. Molotov eventually gets rid of his home and continues on his journey, where he meets a hobo named Orhalla Zander, who introduces the "Five Ways of the Seeker".

Molotov and Orhalla search for the Creator of Second Life. Their journey brings them into contact with Gorean sex slaves, Cyberpunks and Furries. Despite these encounters, Molotov and Orhalla fail in their search.

Molotov decides to search for a mate and settle down. Various misadventures ensue until Molotov finally meets Abigail. They set up house together but are continually troubled by their inability to have physical intimacy. Orhalla ultimately appears with news that he's found the Creator. Orhalla ultimately brings Molotov to the Oracle, who explains that there is no one single creator of Second Life, but that it is, instead, a world made by its users, each of whom is the Creator.

Having solved the riddle of the Creator, Molotov sets out to become one himself. The high demand for his products attracts the attention of a large company, which crushes him with their mass-produced goods. Molotov tries to escape to a desert island, only to find that the corporations have made it even there.

Molotov's anger with this virtual world's shortcomings leads him to become a “griefer”. He joins a gang of them and takes part in a number of attacks on other members of the virtual world until deciding that such aggression is ultimately pointless.

Molotov reconnects with Abigail and they rekindle their relationship. The two even consider starting a family, but after Molotov realizes that he is immortal he abandons the thought of having children. For the first time, he misses his real world life. Abigail announces that she has found a way out of this virtual world and leaves. Molotov realizes that Abigail is the only real thing he's found in this virtual world and follows after her.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Machinima</span> Film production in graphics engines

Machinima, originally machinema, is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema. According to Guinness World Records, machinima is the art of making animated narrative films from computer graphics, most commonly using the engines found in video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burnie Burns</span> American actor (born 1973)

Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian, host, and director previously based in Austin, Texas. He is a co-founder, former chief executive officer, and former chief creative officer of Rooster Teeth. He is noted for his contributions in machinima, a form of film-making that uses video game technology in its production, and also works with animation and live action. Burns is also known for his work in the hosting and podcasting field.

<i>The French Democracy</i> 2005 French short film

The French Democracy is a 2005 English-language French short political film made by Alex Chan using computer animation from Lionhead Studios' 2005 business simulation game The Movies. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.

<i>This Spartan Life</i>

This Spartan Life is a talk show created by Bong + Dern Productions and produced and directed by Chris Burke, who hosts the show under the pseudonym Damian Lacedaemion. Premiering in 2005 and distributed over the Internet, the show is created using the machinima technique of recording the video and audio from a multiplayer Xbox Live session of Bungie' first-person shooter video game Halo 2. The half-hour episodes are released in six smaller parts, called modules. Guests, such as Bungie's audio director Martin O'Donnell are interviewed via Xbox Live within the online multiplayer worlds of Halo 2, and most recently Halo 3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strange Company</span> Group of machinima creators and distributors

Strange Company was a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on the internet since 2000.

The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in the year 2006. These include several new machinima productions, season finales, and the 2006 Machinima Festival.

<i>Dance, Voldo, Dance</i> 2002 music video

Dance, Voldo, Dance is a machinima-based music video produced in 2002 by Chris Brandt. The video, created using the fighting game Soulcalibur, features two players both controlling the character Voldo, using existing in-game animation to have the characters perform a synchronized dance to the song "Hot in Herre" by musician Nelly. The result of over a week's full-time preparation and training, the video was conceived after Brandt noticed the character's animations and attacks could be triggered in sync with the beat of a song, and the reactions of onlookers to such a display. While several groups demonstrated interest in showcasing the video, complications arose from the copyright holders whose works were involved in creation.

In the virtual world of Second Life, there are a number of in-world business and user-groups founded specifically for the game, some of which have become legal entities in their own right, as well as preexisting companies and organizations that have involved themselves in the world.

Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.

The following is a list of notable machinima-related events in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Brandt</span> American cartoonist and filmmaker (born 1970)

Chris Brandt is an American filmmaker and cartoonist, director of the documentary Independents.

Second Skin is a 2008 American documentary film that follows the lives of seven people as they delve into the world of MMORPGs. The film was directed by Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza and produced by Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza and Peter Brauer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Gayeton</span>

Douglas Gayeton is an American multimedia artist, filmmaker, writer, and photographer with ties to farming in Sonoma County, California and photography in Pistoia, a medieval Tuscan town in North Central Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Guttentag</span> American film director

Bill Guttentag is an American dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Tribeca film festivals, and he has won two Academy Awards.

<i>Male Restroom Etiquette</i>

Male Restroom Etiquette is a 2006 American short subject created by Phil R. Rice and produced by his company Zarathustra Studios. The film is a mockumentary about unwritten rules of behavior in male restrooms and is intended to be a parody of educational and social guidance films. Narrated by Rice, Male Restroom Etiquette states restroom customs to be followed and depicts a scenario of social chaos if they are violated. The film was made using the machinima technique of recording video footage from computer games, namely The Sims 2 and SimCity 4. Male Restroom Etiquette won multiple awards and was listed by Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition in 2009 as the most popular Sims video uploaded to YouTube.

Arts in Second Life is an artistic area of a 3D social network that has served, since 2003, as a platform for various artistic pursuits and exhibitions.

Deviation is a 2006 short film that was the first short film in the machinima genre to be premiered in competition at a major film festival, the Tribeca Film Festival.

Weijun Chen is a Chinese documentary director, cinematographer, screenwriter and producer, now working for the Wuhan TV Station. He started his career in the film industry in 1994, known for his first documentary film To Live is Better Than to Die (2003), which won the Peabody Awards in 2003 and nominated for the World Documentary at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, Please Vote for Me (2007) was selected into Oscar documentary feature shortlist, it was purchased by over 100 TV Stations, including BBC and PBS. His recent work This is Life (2017) receives domestic attention. His films mainly focus on documentary realism, which reflects introspection of social reality.

References

  1. ↑ McCoy, Adrian (2007-11-14). "Cybertainment: New lives, new worlds, new jokes". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . PG Publishing Co., Inc. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  2. ↑ Making Molotov
  3. ↑ Cinemax Documentary Asks Why Second Life Archived 2008-05-17 at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.