Second Skin is one of those documentaries that will have immense appeal all those who share a common bond with its subjects, in this case obsessive players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. But the film also succeeds in illuminating the phenomenon of virtual worlds for the uninitiated. I talked with director Juan Carlos Pieiro Escoriaza and producers Peter Schieffelin Brauer and Victor M. Pieiro III after Friday’s premiere about the film’s balance, the precision of machinima, and binging on World of WarCraft as “research.” Read a full review of the film here.

Second Skin Interview

Kevin Buist: Obviously, there is a built in audience, but what was the original idea, what was the seed of the idea to first want to make it?

Juan Carlos Pieiro Escoriaza: Well, I guess we started with one of Victor’s teacher friends. He was playing Star Wars Galaxies. He got really deep and into it. And he got Victor the game and then we started playing together. And two months in, we were like, all right, well, cool, that’s it. And he just went, whoosh like a jet into it.

Then after that, he was going on lunch breaks back to his house to play a little, this and that. He was about to get married, and we just saw this really crazy dynamic of being this mayor in a [virtual] town of 300 people, and then trying to live this life, where he is trying to get married in the real world. And that balancing act, how difficult it really became for him. And so from there, it then went on…

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