Also available medium rez 70MB WMV download

The story grew rather organically. I was playing with one of my new Space Navigator joysticks, which gives me unlimited camera control and is great for flying across mountains – I had just terraformed three sims with some ‘placeholder’ vertical interest. So I got Kylie Wollongong to join me on a private sim to do some walking, talking, romantic shots.

About half way through we went shopping to get a new skin. Next to the sims only store was a rather bizarre ‘camping’ area – around 50 avies all sitting around. Not a normal one, it looked positively like a wake, no one chatted, they just sat rather miserably. Gong. Mountain walking plus wake, a story was born.

“A couple in love. It starts with her funeral then flashes back to their recent life, ‘climbing together’. At the funeral again he sits with their friends. Flashback to the decision to be together and then reaching ‘the top’. She walks off by herself and tragedy. Just before she ‘ascends’ they recall a happy moment in Venice, tinged with sadness at the end when she has a premonition of her own short future…”

So I shot some sequences of just me and the crowds quickly and then went back and added some extra elements to the mountain journey – which obviously extended the narrative. I also wanted a few flashbacks of earlier romantic times, so Kylie and I visited Venice for three simple shots.

When I added the music during the edit the whole piece took on extra power and poignency – the emotional quality forcibly reminded me of past lost loves. It became a metaphor for the spirits of love. As it says on my YouTube decription “The story of a couple very much in love whose upward journey ends in tragedy. Flashbacks from the wake and their favourite time in Venice”

Some production stills on flickr here.

Avatanimation, Machinimatography, Editing, Story Written, Directed and Produced by Gary Hazlitt – Copyright 2007

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life ©2007