The Jetty

Before and after - click to enlarge

THE MOVIE

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We were talking about re-furbishing the Jetty and hopefully turning it into a tourist attrraction because it is directly on the Cleveland Way which attracts thousands of visitors each year. We asked Steve Thompson from the University of Teesside to come to talk to us and perhaps offer some help and guidance in “visioning” how a revitalised Jetty might look. We were thinking about presenting it in Virtual Reality because we had done this before with the University click here. Steve explained that the Hemispherum, a huge Virtual Reality sphere no longer existed but suggested we might be able to build something in Second Life. He logged on to Second Life and pretty quickly we had built something fairly passable. Next we created a promo video and the project began from there. Click here to see the first promo video.

When Steve became seconded to Destinations in Saltburn on The Digital Villages Network project we were able to spend some more time developing the Jetty project and we have come a long way. A lot of the developments can be found here on the project wiki or here on the audio blog

Children from Skinningrove attend two local schools now that the school in our village has closed. The young ones go to Whitecliffe Primary up the hill in Carlin How and then they move on to Freebrough Specialist Engineering College in Brotton. We have involved both of these schools in the project. The students from Freebrough helped with the early design and build in Teen Second Life using an Island run by the Open University called Schome Park. The whole thing was filmed by Teachers TV and broadcast in January 2009. You can see the Teachers TV program here or just the Teesside section here.

The children of Whitecliffe Primary are too young even for Teen Second Life and so they became involved in singing two songs for the virtual launch of the jetty. These songs both have a strong Skinningrove theme, one being about the flooding and the bonfire and the other about the boat brought back as a monument to our fishing heritage. You can read the lyrics to these songs here - “Fire and Water” -|- “When The Boat Comes Home” The children visited Skinningrove beach for further recording sessions and it is their voices and their singing you can hear in the finished movie. However, the children are played by adults “wearing” avatars made by local artist Derek Mosey. You can see the boat the children are singing about here and hear more of the story of the boat and the song here.

Ashok Kumar MP - Click to Enlarge.

Ashok Kumar MP lent his voice and support to the project too. He recorded his speech for the virtual launch but was unfortunately unable to attend the movie premiere due to Parliamentary business. We’re extremely grateful that he put such faith into how we would represent him in our film and we think he comes over rather well particularly in his dance scenes. Once again Derek Mosey made the lookalike avatar but it is Ashoks voice you can hear.

After the early work by children of Freebrough, Steve transferred their work and designs into the Main Grid of Second Life where the building continued. He got much assistance from others in this and many of them are known to him only by avatar name. In many instances he does not even know what part of the world they are from. He then gave a presentation of the project (In Second Life) to the residents of Cedar Island and he was given permission to locate the Jetty on their Island so that the film could be made.

Then the shooting of the film began. We (Tommy and Barry) recorded our voice parts for the Film. We had some help from Playwright Tom Kelly but we turned many of his lines into things we actually would say. This made it more natural. We recorded most of our voice parts in one take. The scenes were shot over November and December 2008 in finished in January 2009. We (Tommy and Barry) played some of our scenes and in others other people “inhabited” our avatars (hey we’re busy blokes!). The footage was shot in a computer lab at the University of Teesside with some really powerful computers (special thanks to Andrew Vause). Some of the “actors” were all present in the same computer lab but others contributed from other parts of the world.

The film was finally shown in February 2009 as part of the Animex International Animation Festival. This took place at Saltburn Community Theatre and the Matinee was packed to capacity and a decent crown of 75 people in the evening. The matinee was for schoolchildren and their teachers and parents and of course Whitecliffe Primary attended. The evening was presided over by Mike Findley the Mayor of Redcar and Cleveland who pledged his whole hearted support to the project to refurbish the Jetty. You can see pictures and watch the finished film here. This was also reported by the Evening Gazette and the Stockton and Darlington Times

The Mayor of Redcar & Cleveland - click to enlarge

Later the Mayor came into the same University Lab where the film was shot and the local press were in attandance. Again Drek Mosey had made a lookalike avatar for the occasion and we (Tommy and Barry) practised making our avatars bow before he arrived. The Mayor was amazed to see his avatar and to see the (virtual) Jetty in all its glory. When Steve showed him how his Avatar could fly he was determined that he had to appear in a second life film too. He recorded his audio track there and then. Before he went off he, once again pledged his support for the project and invited us all into council chambers to make a presentation to everyone, showing them our plans for the Jetty and, of course showing all the films (including “SuperMayor”). The invitation was also extended to the children of Whitecliffe Primary who are delighted. You can see the SuperMayor film here.

At this point in time we are awaiting a date to make our presentation in council chambers but the Mayor is coming to visit Skinningrove on April 15th.

[edit 26/03/09 ] our date to present in council chambers is April 23rd.

We noticed students at Brighton University were studying the Jetty Project so we sent them this message:

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Meanwhile there has been a tremendous amount of interest in this project particularly from the academic community and there have been a number of conference papers and presentations made.

Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference

ICTS For Social Inclusion CIRN 2008 – Prato, Tuscany

Practical Design For Social Action (PRADSA)
Researching Learning in Virtual Environments – ReLIVE08 (Open University)

And this one coming up:

Virtual Worlds Conference 2009 Sunderland University

ESTON TOWN HALL

From the Evening Gazette (click to enlarge)

On Thursday 23rd April at the invitation of His Worshipfulness the Mayor of Redcar & Cleveland we made our presentation at Eston Town Hall to a packed audience of Redcar & Cleveland councillors (see images below) . The presentation was very well received and there were some very enthusiastic offers of support at the end. We will next begin discussions about a feasibility study for the project. We’re moving from the Virtual to reality now!