Virtual World Watch

Steve Thompson submits his involvement with the police and Second Life, for the latest snapshot. Thanks Steve!

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Councillors Barry Hunt and Tommy Evans of Skinningrove had been talking to the Police about community policing issues and anti social behaviour. Last year these two had appeared in the Second Life Movie “Skinningrove Welcome to the Future” about the refurbishment of Skinningrove Jetty. I was asked by Cllr Hunt to meet with Sara Graham, the Crime & Justice Coordinator at Cleveland Police HQ and talk about ways of getting the community policing message across using community media. What everyone really wanted was another Second Life film and with the date for the annual community animated film event at Saltburn Community Theatre coming up this seemed to be the ideal date and venue to aim for. I said “we should have started six months ago” but nevertheless agreed to give it a go.

We applied to Northern Film and Media and the UK Film Councils, “Social Impact” fund to run the event and I’m pleased to say we were successful. Meanwhile we started to develop the script and scout locations in Second Life. We had decided to go with “The Force is With You” for our title and to adopt a Star Wars theme, but to avoid copyright issues the villain was cast as “Arthur Vador”. Several suitable locations were found and I sought out the owners of each and asked permission to film. This is not strictly speaking necessary but it’s a good policy and we got some additional assistance from some Sim owners including members of a school Sim performing as “extras” for us. The script was a slight concern to me and I said to our partners, this is a good and serious message but we have to also entertain, where are the gags? Luckily the script was approved by the police with only minor alterations and we were good to go. Police officers including Inspector Charlie Bell voiced their own characters and pupils at Whitecliffe Primary School provided the voice characterisations of the children in the film. Naturally Tommy and Barry played themselves again.

There was one set we had to build and this was Skinningrove Village Square. This was built on a sky platform high above Teesside University’s “Teeslife” with some excellent help from the Institute of Digital Innovation’s DLab. I’m sure Barry and I came close to arrest for suspicious behaviour several times as we measured out and took pictures of the real location in order to build the virtual one.

Community workshops were held to produce the scenes and all but one scene was in the can by Christmas 2009. There are several hilarious out-takes that may one day see the light of day. Then in January 2010 Barry and I attended a Grundvig workshop in Vienna. With a screening approaching in early February I was obliged to edit many scenes in my hotel room whilst at the 2 week workshop. We kidnapped some of the delegates of the workshop who “voiced” one of the scenes from the film.

This can be seen here: http://tvcm.co.uk/animation-event-goes-international/ Trouper 1 is played by Markus Petz from Finland, Trouper 2 by Thomas Chepaitis the Minister of foreign affairs of Uzhupis Republic (Lithuania) Arthur Vador is played by me, Steve Thompson and Barry Hunt is camera operator.

In the background is Laura Pakalne, Senior Officer in the Public Relations Department in the Ministry of Justice, Latvia who was most interested in working with the British police and the movie production team on more collaborative projects. Markus delayed his return to Finland to travel to Saltburn to assist with a hook-up with Latvia during the event on February 11th.

The community animation event (Animex Fringe) in Saltburn on Thursday 11th Feb was a tremendous success. The Mayor of Redcar and Cleveland Cllr Brian Briggs launched the evening event preceded by a Mayors Reception for cast and crew from the film. During the matinee and the evening performance last years Mayor, Cllr Mike gave a presentation explaining how he had launched the Skinningrove Jetty film last year and then gone on to appear in a Second Life Movie himself, “Supermayor”.

The matinee was a full house with children from Whitecliffe Primary and Saltburn Primary attending. The event included animations produced by the children of Whitecliffe Primary on the subject of Rain Forests and sustainability. With help from Markus Petz we hooked up with children and police in Latvia during the matinee. There were around 80 people for the evening event which we also “Blogcast” for the enjoyment of people around the world. As well as the hook-up with Latvia, the event was followed by people in Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Finland and elsewhere in the UK. We even made it onto Latvian National TV!

Naturally, the big event was the premier of “The Force is With You. On his return from Vienna Cllr Barry Hunt was elected Mayor of Loftus and in this role as well as that of an instigator and star of the film gave the final address and announced the first screening of the new film. It was extremely well received by the audience as well as the police for whom it was a first screening too. They had placed their reputations in our hands and were well pleased with the outcome with Inspector Charly Bell particularly pleased with the dashing matinee idol hero he had become on film: http://tvcm.co.uk/the-force-is-with-you-2

You can relive the event on the blog at www.saltburn.org.uk or if you really want to re-run the event in the order it happened you can follow the blogcast here (it builds slow but quickly gets media rich) – just read each page, scrolling down and then click “older entries” at the bottom.

Steve Thompson, Institute of Digital Innovation, Teesside University.
S.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk