Cinema! Take II, by Mary Wickentower, is an extension of her LEA interim piece, The Wonderful World of Particles, originally located at LEA13. Now a part of the LEA’s Full Sim Art series, it has relocated to LEA6 and shifted focus more towards machinima and photography.

Those who visited The Wonderful World of Particles, will find Cinema! Take II somewhat familiar, as it utilises the same large centre-piece movie theatre and drive-in movie space, complete with interlinking roads and tall palm trees. The observant may even note the greeter welcomes them to former, rather than Cinema! Take II!

However, this isn’t merely a relocation of the interim project. As noted, the focus is very much on machinima and photography. In terms of the former, the movie house, the Empire Movie Palace, is showing Princess Ambrosia’s Sakoku: Chained Country (which includes some adult-oriented themes), and also includes photo exhibition spaces, used to display entries into a number of photohunts and other photography-related activities being held throughout the month of March (the next being on Wednesday March 26, see below for details).

Outside, at the drive-in one can watch a veritable plethora of machinima by artists and film-makers from around the world. You’ll need media enabled for this (top right corner of the viewer). Click on the movie screen itself to start things, and use the media controls displayed above it to focus your camera or watch movies in a browser tab, etc. A complete list of film-makers can be obtained in a dialogue box by clicking the frame of the movie screen. Click on the button corresponding to a name to display a list of their available films. To select a film, again click on the number in the dialogue box corresponding to the film, then click on the screen itself if the film doesn’t start automatically after a few seconds.

I confess that I had some issues with the drive-in when using either Firestorm or the SL viewer. Often a movie would start, but either have no audio, or feature the audio of a preceding video. Stopping and re-starting media from the viewer’s controls (top right of the viewer window) generally resolved this.

Also included in the region are Danya’s Garden by Danya Sadofsky, a place of peace & quiet, the Swing Jim Dinner, which is the setting for sock hops and dances, the Gallery of Art featuring fine SL sculpture and Dr. Petrol’s Gas Station featuring a classic collection of pin-up posters.

Special events have been a part of the installation’s month-long run, and coming up next are a photohunt and a Visionaire Institute of Photography field trip.

The photohunt will take place at 18:00 SLT on Wednesday March 26th. Participants will be given a theme or landmark by the moderator, and will have 60 minutes to take a snapshot that best embodies that theme / landmark, with absolutely no external photo manipulation allowed. Finished entries will displayed in one of the Empire Movie Palace exhibition spaces.

On Thursday March 27th at 15:00 SLT, students from the Visionaire Institute of Photography will visit the region to photograph Cinema! Take II, with their work also displayed in one of the Empire Movie Palace exhibition spaces.

Cinema! Take II is open until the end of March.