Machinima
Fieldnotes was built to share my experience as an ethnographer of VirtualWorlds engaged in machinima filmmaking.
Starting my
research in Second Life I began producing videos with the purpose of documenting
situations experienced and observed in fieldwork, almost like a kind of
fieldnotes in motion.
Over time I
realized that many residents of this virtual world filmed their experiences
there, often producing very sophisticated materials, which were shared with
their friends and with the world. Therefore,
machinima filmmaking proved to be an enjoyable and productive way of entering the field and
interacting with other Second Life residents.
The
machinimas presented here are very different in their nature.
Some may be
considered almost as a raw material. They can be understood as a research
technique to collect and interpreting ethnographic data.
Others are
visual experiments in order to better understand the graphical tools provided
by Second Life (windlights, dept of field, shadows, camera movements, etc.), by softwares for video capturing and editing, production of synthetic voices,
audio capturing and editing, 3D modeling, among others. These technical skills
are held by many residents of virtual worlds. Learning how to develop them is
part of cognitive transformations experienced in such synthetic
environments. The researcher engaged in the understanding of the metaverse faces
the challenge of trying to develop them.
There are
also machinimas that are experimental in a more epistemological than technical way:
acting as a sort of digital collage, they allow me to link my interpretations
of fieldwork situations with excerpts from anthropological literature and many
other sources of information - websites, films, music, etc. I conceive the
videos in this category as a visible construction of my own thoughts and
interpretations, a process that sometimes takes place online, in
real time, but might be also expanded to the many screens of software accompanying the research routines in digital anthropology.
In any of
these categories, the machinimas I have produced were widely shared with
Second Life residents, mainly through youtube and flickr but also inworld, beeing often subject of comments and criticism. They generate new social relations, exchanges of points of view and
especially new learning processes on social and cultural aspects of Second Life
and on the most diverse techniques of visual production in 3D virtual worlds. For this
reason I would say that the production of machinima is more than a technique of data recording and cataloging, being an effective instrument of research.
The
following video is introductory, presenting Second Life and discussing some
methodological aspects of research in virtual worlds. A first version of
it was presented at IX Reunião de Antropologia do Mercosul. A second version, increased by twelve minutes and incorporating other short machinimas, was
presented in a video exhibition that took place at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in december
2011.