Silver and Goldie Goodman cut the overhead business costs for their video production company by buying an island and building a studio on it. They also don’t use actors—they cost too much—and they construct sets their mammoth with imagination rather than hard materials.
With this business plan, they’ve drawn big-name clients like
Cisco,
Pepsi and
Intel.
Silver and Goldie are not their real names. They are the pretend online personas, or
avatars, of Beverly and David Lang, of Perry, MI.
The Langs’ 20-year-old company,
LTS Productions, is located in the basement of their rural home about 20 minutes from Lansing.
The physical space where the duo work is crammed with high-definition flat screens and digital equipment. But their newest enterprise is
Machinima by Silver and Goldie, headquartered on their virtual island, Studio Shores, in
Second Life, an on-line community revolutionizing the way people do business.
Virtual World, Real MoneySecond Life was created by
Linden Lab, a company founded by Philip Rosedale, the former chief technical officer of
Realnetworks.
Launched five years ago, the simulation was used primarily for social purposes. Real people could hop “in world” and be anyone or anything doing whatever and wherever their imaginations took them.
Always wanted to be a he when you were born a she? Create an avatar sans Adam’s apple and swagger around Second Life. Want your own amusement park? Make one. Want to throw a huge party? Do it.
But as computer technology advanced and human ingenuity grew, business opportunities flourished in Second Life.
Since creators keep ownership of their work, avatars may sell their services, using Linden(TM) dollar, the currency within Second Life (Current exchange rate: 262 Linden dollars for one U.S. dollar) that's deposited in secure electronic PayPal-type accounts.
Wedding planners put together nuptials for avatars, for a fee; virtual newspapers and magazines sell ads for services offered through Second Life; clothing designers create specialized outfits for avatars. Then businesses with established virtual headquarters cross-promoted with their real world businesses. Opportunities mushroomed.
While it benefited from the development of game technology, Second Life is not a competition. Everything has that animated look, produced by powerful game engines that create and capture real-time, three-dimensional computer-generated imagery.
It's now a world of its own; it logged 21 million transactions in November 2008.
Making the JumpIf Second Life is cutting edge, the baby-boomer Langs are there, he clad in Silver’s virtual stud persona and she wrapped in Goldie’s bring-it-on acuity.
The Langs took notice of Second Life in 2006 after they saw an article in
Business Week magazine promoting a machinima contest offering a prize of 100,000 linden$ or $25,000. (Machinima is a mixture of machine and cinema that carries the ambience of
anime, the futuristic comic book art. It refers to the art and process of filmmaking in virtual worlds.)
The article prompted the Langs to action. In three weeks, they bought programs, studied, and submitted an action video. They won the contest, and logged 500,000 views on
YouTube along the way.
Of course, in the world of production, the Langs already had a leg up on the competition. Dave started at
WKAR TV 30 years ago and has been making documentaries since. (Now he has added machinimatographer to his resume.) Bev has won numerous awards for writing and scripting, and has been named a top producer in America.
So Bev and Dave, the real-world couple, designed Silver and Goldie, the virtual couple. They bought their virtual island, Studio Shores, for $1,200 U.S., and pay $200 a month maintenance. (Second Life sold 64 acres in 2003, its first year. Now it manages 65,000 acres—after all, land can be grown with a couple of mouse clicks.)
And the Langs pay no property taxes, no utility bills for their Second Life studio.
Bev calls it their “backlot” where they can stage any scene, cast any character and film any activity imaginable.
Meetings and MoreThe Langs are gaining exposure as well as income in Second Life. Other groups are, too.
The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has built a simulation it uses as an educational tool showing environmental and weather phenomenon at its most extreme. You can watch a glacier melt or get on a plane and fly through the eye of a hurricane.
In June,
Ontario Public Service held a virtual open house to answer questions about working there. It was held at the interactive career recruitment center on OPS’ Career Island in Second Life where users can interact with various career experiences ranging from taking water samples to firefighting.
Groups are holding meetings in Second Life, too. The
Written Word group puts on an Autumn Writers Exhibition in Second Life each year. Two months ago,
Trend Micro had 75 people, including from Asia and Europe, attending a first of its kind training event for the Internet security company’s Virtual Technical University held at
Virtualis, Second Life’s new professional meeting venue.
Attendees never left their home workstations. But at the conference in Second Life, their individual avatars were clad in a specially designed Trend Micro t-shirt, and conference activities took place with training videos, Power Point presentations, and even social gatherings. There were no expenses for hotel rooms, travel, or even food.
And Goldie and Silver were there, videoing the conference in preparation for a promotional video for the meeting facilitators.
Big Time in Second LifeSilver and Goldie are major players in the world of Second Life.
The work of the Lang avatars appeared before Congress last April at the first-ever Congressional hearing on virtual worlds. They produced a video for retailer
Meijer and
The Nature Conservancy to teach about the destructive impact of invasive plant species.
They even served as a virtual co-host of a general manager's meeting in Las Vegas for
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma, makers of the drug Flomax.
The time will come when everyone will have an avatar, says Dave Lang. One day, he suggests, people will go down the aisles at Amazon.com, browsing and picking up purchases.
Bev and Dave expect to be there, working in their “electronic cottage,” a term coined by Alvin Toffler, the futurist, describing the place where people will run their home-based businesses.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happening with the local economy,” says Bev. “We can create work for ourselves, right here from our wonderful rural property”—with a little help from Goldie and Silver.
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Gretchen Cochran writes for various local publications. If she had an avatar, she’d make it a “furry” or animal creature, one that could fly, and she’d take some lessons from the falcons at the BWL.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
The Lang's avatar's, Silver & Goldie
The offices of LTS Productions
Multiple monitors showing Second Life scenes
The virtual island, Studio Shores
Beverly and David Lang
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie