Michael's Machinima Proposal

Some background info on my proposal for machinima: www.droppingknowledge.org
is a non-profit initiative that encourages “social change in a global society. Using advanced web technology, the initiative links the voices of individuals, organizations and corporations. Through multimedia-based campaigns and events dropping knowledge functions as a social amplifier, offers uncensored knowledge and inspires responsible action within an international network.” (from http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=droppingknowledge)

They (droppingknowledge) have a series of video interviews on Youtube where people ask questions and that are “Copyleft,” meaning the opposite of copyright—they can be used by anyone and redistributed in any way that helps spread their message. So my idea is to create avatars in SL of three or four interviewees, use their real dialogue and gestures in the youtube vids, and give the interviews a platform in SL. I would have to edit some dialogue and other stuff to get down to around three minutes but that shouldn't be too hard. I just realized I don’t know how to take their voices from Youtube, so that might be hard. Or not. But the overall idea would be to keep it simple and use my video as a way to spread the message in SL. That message would include an interview with environmental activist, Derrick Jensen, in which he asks people what they love and what they are willing to do for it. An interview with Professor Robert Thurman from Columbia in which he asks why men do not realize women are their equals, why we think violence will accomplish anything, why we allow Bush to be president, why we don’t realize the purpose of life is education, why don’t the 800 billionaires on the planet share the resources they control, and some questions on other topics. I’ll leave the other two interviewees open in case my proposal gets denied or if it gets accepted and my partners want to share their input on choice. There is one where this founder of a nonprofit in Bombay asks what we are doing to serve the planet. Another where this girls sewing class from Mumbai asks questions on why they can’t have clean sewage treatment, why there are so many slums, and what we can do to help them. And like 50 others.

I was thinking of a possible setup for the interviews even though there isn’t one in the real life vids. Maybe something like a movie theater, where everyone is there to watch a film like ‘300’ or ‘Grindhouse’, then my video comes on during the previews and everyone starts to look around questioning themselves. Then the get up and leave and go change the world. Or maybe a television address from George Bush, where he starts explaining why he ordered air strikes on Iran or something, then he gets cut off and my vid comes on, then people watch and turn their TVs off when Bush comes back on. Kind of like the scene in ‘V for Vendetta’ where V puts his video on the state channel. I’ll also need landscape and scenery shots during the interviews like in the RL vids. And I think that’s it for now.