Second Skin, a documentary to be featured later this week in the Spotlight Premieres section at SXSW, follows a handful of gamers who are deeply devoted to Massively Multiplayer Online games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. The film premieres on Friday at 9pm at the Austin Convention Center. Check out the trailer above, and answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody, from director Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza, and producers Victor Pineiro and Peter Schieffelin Brauer below. Victor Piniero and I are also speaking on the same SXSW panel, Blogs, Buzz and Buddy Lists, which goes down on Sunday, March 9.

Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.

Juan Carlos: This flick is like An Inconvenient Truth meets Errol Morris. Except that the movie we’ve been making for two years doesn’t involve an environmental crisis. I kept on coming back to An Inconvenient Truth, because online games (MMO’s) have the power to change the landscape of our society. Games like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and Second Life have and will continue to make our global community closer in ways that I think are just becoming clear now. I’m not trying to imply that it is going to cause problems on the scale of global flooding, but I think it is a societal evolution that we are running to catch up with. Errol Morris’ Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control on the other hand takes a really intimate look into people’s obsessions. Which is to say that our movie is about people who tend to play a lot of MMO’s. In our film I try to balance between that gigantic cultural phenomenon, and the personal lives of people who are ‘just gamers’. Finding a way to say this movie is about a burgeoning sub-culture AND seven people - is a delicate balance. Suffice to say I think you’ll be pretty surprised where everything ends up.

Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.

Juan Carlos: We don’t have time for day jobs! We’ve been deep in the trenches for two years trying to make this picture. Since production began Peter and I had a tiny reserve of cash from running our industrial docu company. That money floated us for two months. Victor left teaching in summer ‘06, and since then we’ve found new ways of being in debt. Along the way (especially recently) I’ve gone below the red a few times, and it’s terrible to look at a negative balance in your bank account! It’s scary when you can’t afford to go down the street for a slice of pizza. Thanks to very generous loans from family and friends we were able to skim by for as long as we did.

Peter: We raised a significant portion of the money for the film by making market research films for large pharmaceutical companies. These films often had tons very tight shots of skin diseases like a health class text book. Nothing like suffering through 40 hours of discussions about aging issues to remind you how much you care about
making Second Skin.

Have you been to SXSW before? If so, tell us about your funniest story from the experience. If not, what are you looking forward to re: the festival and/or the city of Austin?

Victor: Juan and I spent our childhood in San Antonio, so what’s most exciting is coming home. Another bonus is having the premiere audience consist of friends from playgroup and elementary school.

Juan Carlos: We’ve never been to SXSW, and I’ve heard for years how good it is. Plus, we have a bunch of buddies from when we were kids who live in Texas so hanging out with them should be pretty awesome. It’s exciting because I’ve always wanted to make a trek to SXSW….The added bonus is that we have a flick showing there.

Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?

Juan Carlos: The first one is harder than the second. So I’ll start with #2 instead. The last thing I’d watch before dying is Baraka. Not only was that movie absolutely beautiful, but I felt its theories about the environment and society were dead on. By the end I just felt serene and full of understanding. I think that’s what would probably
be the best mindset for my last moments. Maybe my first film I’d watch would be Weird Science because I’ve always really loved that comedy. I mean John Hughes is great, and he’s made a bunch of good movies, but Weird Science to me gets the fan favorite award. The idea behind that movie was so inventive and hilarious. Plus there is just something awesome when aliens come to crash a party in the middle of a teen comedy. So I’d laugh to start, and then get a little Zen.

Peter: First I would watch Thin Blue Line to bolster my hopes of last minute reprieve. Then I would watch Dead Man Walking to bring me back down to earth again. Might as well make those last moments a true roller coaster. Get busy living and get busy dying. Also, I know they execute a lot people in Texas, is that what inspired the question?