Star Trek boldly goes into PlayStation Home

Following our successful campaign for Watchmen, we are back in Home today promoting JJ Abrams' re-working of Star Trek. A franchise close to many hearts in here in the studio, we are thrilled to be exploring new worlds ways to market movies in virtual worlds.

At 4pm (BST / GMT+1) on April 20th, director J.J. Abrams and stars Chris 'Kirk' Pine and Zachary 'Spock' Quinto will visit Home for an exclusive Q&A with selected press and bloggers from around the world. Following the Q&A, the invited guests will be able to take part in a virtual roundtable within Home, to discuss the movie and answer questions put forward by fans and fellow bloggers through Twitter, uStream and CoverItLive. Both events will be streamed live across the web through an embeddable video player available at http://www.startrekfankit.com/playstationhome/.

The Q&A is part of a number of unique opportunities in Home (SCEE only) ahead of the global release of STAR TREK on May 8th.  From today, Home residents will be able to view an exclusive video greeting from Abrams alongside the latest STAR TREK trailer in the Home Theatre. A selection of virtual STAR TREK merchandise e.g. Starfleet Uniforms and T-Shirts, will be available for free in the Threads Store from April 23rd, alongside details of a unique ‘Star Trek in Home Avatar competition’ and the ‘Star Trek Party (in Home)’ where attendees will have the chance to grab some exclusive merchandise and prizes. 

We will have more info on both these events next week here on Silverscreen.

WATCHMEN machinima round-up

In the aftermath of last week's WATCHMEN Q&A, and the subsequent launch of the Rorschach and Nite Owl costumes in the PlayStation store, we've produced these two machinima promos to provide an easy overview of what we've been up to.

The first was put together in-house, and is a longer piece featuring some of the highlights of the half-hour film-maker Q&A we ran with Zack Snyder and Dave Gibbons on Monday February 23rd. This was the first film-maker Q&A to take place in Home, and involved bloggers, journalists and fans from all over the world:



The second piece is a punchier look at the characters costumes we released last Thursday, which are already proving to be a huge hit with Home residents. This was produced for PPC by Annie Ok, turning her hand to some of the first creative machinima to come out of Home after collaborating with us extensively on this campaign:

Iron Man machinima & fan art aplenty!

So, Annie Ok's machinima promo for our Second Life Iron Man avatar is finally complete, and here for your viewing pleasure. I've watched a fair bit of Second Life machinima, but I've never seen the likes of that last shot.



I've also posted a selection of some of the more interesting contributions to our Flickr fan art group:













Some of these have already been submitted into the contest to win the L$100,000 first prize, others I've just chosen because I liked them - which, give that I am not one of the competition judges, shouldn't be taken as being indicative of anything really.

My old nemesis...

Nice to see that MMO blog Massively has covered our Iron Man fan art contest. They've even created their own effort, reproduced below without their kind permission:



Hopefully this is the first of many - it's inspired us to create a Flickr group, so that anybody who wants to share a bit of ferrous metal love can do so.

Now we're just playing with you

Check it out! The (almost) complete Iron Man avatar, in wireframe view:



I've seen the final av and, short of a couple of details, it's truly awesome. More to follow.

TRANSFORMERS Second Life highlights!

TRANSFORMERS Second life event highlights are available to download here!

TRANSFORMERS Q&A Written Transcript and Stills

Download the full written transcript of the Transformers Q&A here!

Download some choice pictures of the Transformers Q&A event here!

TRANSFORMERS Q&A Video Podcast!

HOT FROM SECTOR 7 - The Transformers Q&A Video - Watch it now right here!

The Transformers Q&A Video and Audio Podcasts - Download them now right here!

TRANSFORMERS Q&A Podcast

HOT OF THE PRESS - The Transformers Q&A Podcast - Listen to it now right here!



And don't forget to check out Sector 7 in Second Life, if only to collect your OFFICIAL Bumblebee avatar.

So much to report about everything that went down in Sector 7 today, but not right now. The bar is calling. I'll settle for posting some pics of the build hours before it opened, and will be back as soon as the video podcast is available.

MEGATRON'S HANGAR:


THE PROVING LAB:


THE LIBRARY:

TRANSFORMERS Q&A Live Webcast

One exciting aspect of the TRANSFORMERS launch event is that SLCN are going to be filming it and streaming it live, in conjunction with some major promotional partners in some of Paramount's key markets.

I've embedded the test stream here:



Check back at 5.00pm PDT on Friday to watch it go live.

Event transcript, plus loads of snapshots

We now have an official EVENT TRANSCRIPT, available to download as a Word document.

We have also posted some of our favourite EVENT SNAPSHOTS to Flickr - this is one of them:



If you see one you like and want it at best quality you can request it via silverscreen@theppc.com.

Die Hard Q&A podcasts - *Updated to include VIDEO*

The Die Hard Q&A AUDIO PODCAST is now available right HERE as a 20MB MP3.

Also, check out a VIDEO PODCAST of the whole session, as a 100MB MOV. This was broadcast live by Second Life Cable Network (SLCN) both in-world and on the web, and was enjoyed by additional members of the press along with a number of Fox execs who wanted to know what the fuss was about.

We have lots of pictures of the event, and will be posting plenty of them, but here's a personal favourite - Karube Nikolaidis, representing...



(Gotta love the mic. Just in case you don't spot the placard :)

Die Hard in Second Life - the first pics!

These are some of the snaps taken shortly before the launch of the Die Hard virtual movie expo, now open in Silverscreen.


The stage was set for our launch event - a 30-minute Q&A with star of Die Hard and Hollywood legend Bruce Willis and an invited audience of digital press, bloggers and competition-winning fans.


This is one of the builds we've created allowing visitors to step inside a key moment from the movie. We called this 'Joint Strike', after the name of the F35 Joint Strike Fighter you can see bearing down on a Freightliner Classic XL Big Rig being driven by McClane.


And this is 'Airborne'. Here you can see Liam Kanno, head of Silverscreen's resident build team the V3 Group, leaping to safety clad in one of the free outfits we're giving away around the expo.


Finally, if you visit the expo be sure to drop into ace hacker Warlock's 'Command Centre'. Plenty more freebies to be had in here, and some beautiful texturing and lighting for visiting SL design connoisseurs.

300 in Second Life - THE MOVIE

This is a 3 and a half minute promo for our 300 event put together by the award-winning machinimist Pierce Portocarrero. There's probably no quicker, easier way to get your head around how - and why - this event worked than to watch this piece. Enjoy!

300 Q&A podcasts

We have an OFFICIAL EVENT PODCAST now available; the full uncut film-maker Q&A, including:

• Frank on SIN CITY 2
• Zack on WATCHMEN
• Lena on THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES
  
• Rodrigo on LOST
  
• Gerard on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
  

We also have a selection of excerpts neatly truncated for ease of inclusion on your own podcasts, including:

• Zack on 300, the internet and Second Life
  
• Zack and Frank on 'international reaction' to 300
• Frank on 300 'versus' SIN CITY
  
• Gerard on his favourite line from 300
• Lena on THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES
  
• Rodrigo on playing Xerxes
• Frank on the source of his inspiration