Second Life on CBS
Matt Dominianni of the Electric Sheep Company (and The Ill Clan) wrote in to let me know about a major milestone for machinima on the horizon, certainly the biggest news since South Park used World of Warcraft in their Emmy award-winning episode about a year ago. This time it’s prime time, and it’s a major television network… and a major show.
An episode of CSI: New York, scheduled to air on Wednesday, October 24th on CBS television, will have its detectives chasing down a suspect… in Second Life. Check out this article on the NY Times, which includes a video clip from the upcoming show. And further down the page, check out what they’re planning to do to interactively extend the experience into Second Life.
All of the Second Life footage used in the show has been created by the folks at Electric Sheep Company - they estimate there will be about 15-20 minutes in the episode. That’s a huge amount considering than an hour long TV show less commercials is only about 44 minutes.
I can’t believe I hadn’t yet heard about this. A quick Google search reveals it’s been known and talked about quite a bit, I’d just never seen anything about it yet. It’s a really exciting (and momentous) event for Second Life, for machinima, and for Electric Sheep. Congratulations! I will definitely tune in.
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Wow! The CSI series is known for including up to date science and contemporary subjects, esp when it concerns the internet. This is really something huge. Congrats to Electric Sheep Co. for such a score. A top-rated show like this using machinima us a massive advertisement both for SL and for the art form.
I hadn’t heard about this either. Will certainly follow your links and keep an eye on the show.
thanks for the tip!
Comment by Ricky Grove — October 4, 2007 @ 11:12 am
PS. The clip at the NY Times article is pretty lame since it doesn’t show any of the machinima that was talked about so much in the article. Just dull dialogue and basic idea of SL with a shot of a LCD screen with flash of SL homepage (or something like it). Still worth reading the article, but the clip is a bust.
Comment by Ricky Grove — October 4, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Very cool. I’ll be interested to see what sort of quality they pull out of SL.
Comment by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — October 4, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
You’re right, Ricky, the clip doesn’t show any SL footage, but I did think the clip was kind of funny; seeing Gary Sinise and his costar exchange these “Oh boy” eye roll looks when the guy at the computer said the word “metaverse” made me crack up. Was probably the CBS execs’ reaction when they first heard about it too.
And enough cannot be said about the … ahem… upper abdominal shading work on the avatar they did show. (LOL)
Comment by overman — October 4, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Law & Order SVU Last Nite:
http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2007/10/law-and-order-s.html
See also: Second Life Insider
I turned it off a few minutes into the episode. When some dude did some ‘computer analysis’ to find out who the perp was connected to in the virtual world, I became irritated.
Comment by bllius — October 4, 2007 @ 7:10 pm