Virtually Real: The Documentary

It’s all about socialization, right?

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Press pass acquired. Interviews a-plenty about to commence. Projected wrap-date for shooting: November 2, 2007.

Isn’t this the typically crucial element to any book, film, web clip? After all, if there is no cohesive story, what’s the point? I recently went through an exercise of creating a “treatment” of this film project for National Geographic. Who knows if they’ll buy the idea, but the exercise was invaluable. A treatment consists of a concept, theme(s), characters, and summary of the film.  Now, the concept, and themes I have nailed.

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Linden Lab (http://SecondLife.com) coming on board? Looks promising!

Karl Mehta (http://TradeIts.com). Andrew T. Fiore (http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/). Danah Boyd (http://www.danah.org/). David Fleck (http://GoPets.com). Byron Reeves (http://mediax.stanford.edu/ (already shot)). Julian Dibbell (http://www.juliandibbell.com/ (and the reason I started this project)).

 I don’t know. I look at this list of already scheduled interviewees and I think, “I’ll actually have enough material after all of this to start something!”

My goal is to get interviews from six other folks, but the momentum is definitely going my way.

One of the best things that is happening right now is the silutaneous work on Building Patience (http://buildingpatience.info/wordpress), the documentary about the local working ranch near me — one of three within 25 miles of San Francisco. Whenever I finish work there I get inspired to return to Virtually Real, and keep pushing the project along.

So where does THIS project stand? I have one interview in the can with Byron Reeves (Stanford’s Media X lab — http://mediax.stanford.edu/). I’m going to return to Stanford to interview Byron one last time — both to get some better footage, and to further refine some of my questions. When I went in to initially interview him I honestly did not think I was going to be shooting anything. I’m glad I did, but I was lacking a couple of tools, which I now have. My new wireless mic set-up just arrived, as well as a lightbox / stand that will allow me to fill in natural lighting situations.

I have David Fleck (http://GoPets.com), and Karl Mehta (http://TradeIts.com) on the calendar. I’m looking to get Danah Boyd on the calendar (she’s agreed to an interview, but has admitted doing so may prove difficult due to her schedule.) I also am trying to get another former MIT Media Lad graduate (where Danah got her post-grad start) on tape.

Now I’m finding the real grind is working with the schedules of people who not only have something to say, but who others actually take seriously.

I’m loving this project; I just have to get a lot more patient regarding how long gathering this story is going to take.