Virtually Real: The Documentary

Click on the link to visit LuLu.com, where I am selling the book portion of this project!

Well, pretty soon.

The latest draft of the manuscript is off to prospective agents, and I’m working on the script for the film, for which I plan on having a rough cut done by the end of this month. Aggressive? A wee bit, but we’re talking a rough cut. That really should be that hard. (more…)

I find myself with more time to finish what I started. What surprises me more is that I’m finally finishing something. Yeah, this is a big deal. So the third (and last (?)) major draft is done on the companion book. I’ll do the major copy edit this and next week, and pull the thread for the script from the manuscript at the same time. We’re talking about sending the manuscript to agents next week, and having a rough cut of the film done by the end of September!

50,600 words (192 pages) later I have completed the second draft of the companion book to “Virtually Real” the documentary film. Wow. To think that as I approached 20,000 words I wondered if I could ever find enough content to finish 30,000 words. At 50,000 words I’m wondering if I should put my head down and include all of the content that I have left out of the book so far — content that would easily push my past 100,000 words. (more…)

Interesting how often necessary elements fall into place when you pursue something with honest motivations, and true intentions. (more…)

Completed Tuesday. Time to start reflecting, reading and re-reading the manuscript to see what I’ve forgotten, or what is unneeded.

Something that hasn’t happened to me for the past three years finally happened again — the emergence of the dogged pursuit of a goal.

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Have I lost my momentum?! 

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The process of writing a book before writing the script for the film has been a great method of focusing. Room for exposition. Room for conserving language. Room for experimenting with the story without endless video cuts. Of course it’s easier because my first medium was the written word, but to have the two pieces together I think (and hope) will make the project more appealing commercially. Yeah…gotta worry about that too. Status: 14,800 words out of the projected 25,000 word first draft. Projected first draft date: April 7.

Just as I think I’m getting closer to concluding filming for this project another subject appears who I’m compelled to interview. (more…)

As I said to Steve Sheffield recently, I have 98 out of the 1000 pieces I need to make start writing and editing the film but I was just missing the glue. Well, this week I not only found the glue, but I found one with the perfect pigment. An article from an ‘05 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Eductation finally started to address the issues of Virtually Real that find most compelling: community and culture.

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I had so many lofty goals to pursue over the the past two weeks. When you have two kids, it’s amazing how life gets in the way during the Holidays. Well, it’s a New Year, and time to make a plan for turning all the material I have into something worthwhile. Henrik Bennetsen at the Stanford Humanities Lab has invited me to his Metaverse U conference coming up in February. As Jamais Cascio pointed out, Henrik’s conference is going to be very Virtual Worlds heavy, but for a project called Virtually Real, that’s probably not a bad thing.

What I fear now, however, is what it’s going to take to get the media rights to some of the video / images I’d ideally like to use in this documentary: think Tron.

I was reading clips on the Imagining the Internet website from Elon University and came across this quote, ““Someday we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary to all peoples the use of a common language or common understanding of languages, which will join all the people of the earth into one brotherhood. There will be heard throughout the earth a great voice coming out of the ether which will proclaim, ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men.’”

I read that and had that EUREKA! moment, after which I wrote this potential first line for Virtually Real (either the book, or the documentary), “Welcome to the future where everything is different and nothing’s changed.”

I had been ruminating over the reality that Web 3.0, or the Metaverse, or whatever the hell anyone wants to call it would create a clash of cultures out of the need to find a common language. Here an old-time futurist (mull on that for a while) foresaw the need for a common language because of the use of the telephone, and that that common language would create harmony, and peace. I wonder how he would have felt if the plausible common language outcome was Mandarin, and not English. But I digress.

But not really. In reading this passage I found my historical touchstone, the previous illustration of how we, humans, adjust to influential technological changes. Fear. Promise. Dispair. Hope. People envision the entire range of plausible outcomes, and yet, technology invariably ends up augmenting our world, not taking it over.

As Jamais Cascio reminded me over coffee, “technology does not change culture; they develop together.” There is no tail wagging the dog. There is a symbiosis, despite the Luddites’ fear of technology, and the technophones’ belief that we’ll all live richer, better lives solely because of technology.

So how does one create a narratively compelling story out of the tag line “nothing changes?” Well, I’ve done it before, winning a staged reading in a playwriting competition with a play called “Cold Coffee,” about a diner where at the end of the day, the characters are different, but nothing else about how each day progresses changes. I sense the development of a theme here.

I can’t say that there are never dull moments. There are many moments where I find myself drifting off and staring at walls, but that’s a whole different issue, which I think is more related to raising children. But I digress.

The last few weeks have seen exciting conversations with Jamais Cascio, Damon Hernandez, and Henrik Bennetsen (Stanford Humanties Lab). I feel like I’m really getting a lot closer to beginning writing this story. Don’t'chya love that? I’m getting closer to the beginning.

The project, however, has followed a classic curve of my thinking I knew what I was pursuing, and setting an aggressive goal of researching and interviewing for four months then going straight into post-production. Yeah, right.

We’ve seen a few of those statements over the past few months. Eight months in, however, I feel like I can almost taste the primary theme of this story. The frustration lies, however, in my not being able to pinpoint that taste yet; It’s still alluding me. ARGH!

A few more weeks of chewing all that I have, and I think I’ll be close.

One thing for sure, it revolves heavily around the Metavers Roadmap Project.

So what does the Asus announcement about cheap laptops have to do with Virtually Real? Nothing and everything.

The introduction of the $299 laptop with 256MB of RAM, and 2 GB of storage is just the next step in development. I know when I saw my first USB flash memory stick I instantly thought “when is this going to replace the hard drive?” Well, here we are.

Let’s apply that tangible change to other aspects of technology (tangible in both the physical size of these new laptops, and virtually tangible in how few dollars one needs to spend on one). Of course this exercise is nothing new — just think of Moore’s law.

A few of the folks I have interviewed for Virtually Real have gone so far to say that 3D immersive spaces are going to be a passing fad, just as was VRML 90s, and other 3D technological attempts. Speak with a futurist like Jamais Cascio and you start to get a different sense of where things may go.

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Hosted by the Stanford Humanities Lab (http://shl.stanford.edu/), the second Metavers Meetup, which occured both in Real Life (RL) and in Second Life (SL) last night, featured Jamais Cascio, a futurist of the first degree. Attending this meeting did a few things for me: 1) deepened my involvement in the Metaverse community concerned with the future direction of the Metaverse; 2) further refined my vision of where Virtually Real needs to go; 3) made me see that my role is that of a futurist — I’m just not getting paid for it yet, and have never taken the time to really do the hard work needed to make this a substantial part of my life (http://bentspoon.net/content/view/114/26/).

Day 1. 3PM. Here I sit in the Press Room after one interview on tape, four interviews scheduled for either tomorrow or later online, and getting blown off by the folks at Icarus Studios. The latter was disappointing, but I understood since they’re getting a lot of attention from people far more important than I am right now.

 The bigger issue is the steam that I’m losing regarding interviewing more industry insiders focused solely on technological developments. I’m realizing it’s not the story.

Yeah, no shit, you say. Documentaries, except for those crazy things on Discovery Channel, are not about things, or technology, they’re about people.

This is about culture. It’s about the human influence. It’s about how people are going to deal with this new thing…whatever it might be…and about how they are going to act when they are inside these new worlds. 99.9% of the people here are all rah-rah about the world(s). One guy was…well, let’s just say he was a little vocal about his misgivings regarding how novel everything we are seeing is, and regarding where true adopters of these new worlds would end up.

I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s time to start doing some real world research regarding how people have dealt with change in the past.

Culture.

Hmmm.

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.

OK. I emailed him first, pleading for his assistance with Virtuall Real, but regardless of my methods, he did respond, and he has agreed to be taped for the project. This is AWESOME! Everyone in the industry is all ga-ga about Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but I think Dibbell’s Play Money is spot on the best overall assessment of what’s happening in the industry right now.

Read it. It’s a great primer about the nuttiness that is the current Wild West of Virtual Worlds.

 Now I need to get to Chicago.

What else is a blog in this context? It’s not as if I have throngs of followers just WAITING to read what’s happening with my latest project, but how else do you start creating buzz, interest, reason for a distributor to purchase the upcoming blockbuster documentary, Virtually Real?

 Where is the project now? It’s at that cusp between pre-production and production. Still ironing out how to raise funds and awareness of the project, and starting to get interviews on tape. I think I need to wrap research on this and start writing a script soon. I don’t think I’m going to find anything earth-shattering at this stage — some juicy sound bites I hope — but I can start fleshing out the bulk of the story at this stage.

 Keep your fingers crossed, and keep checking back as often.