20th Century Fox Signs SL Musician

October 29, 2008 | Vetting explained

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Winston Ackland, a musician in Second Life, has been signed by 20^th Century Fox for the soundtrack of a forthcoming film staring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson. The film ‘Marley and Me' is due to be released on Christmas Day 2008. I contacted Winston and his wife (and manager) Sesi, through Winston's in world publicist Jula Shepherd (of Metahype). Winston kindly agreed to answer some questions for me. I asked Winston how he had heard that 20^th Century Fox had wanted to use his material for the film. He told me "I received a phone call from a guy at CD Baby, the online place where I sell my CDs. He told me that someone had contacted them about using my version of the Kurt Cobain song "Lithium" in a movie. "20th Century Fox... a movie about a dog," is the way he described it". He said "I later found out that the film's editor had put the song up against a sequence in the movie, and it worked well." Winston said he felt like he had won the lottery when he heard, he said "So many people work very hard to get their music into movies, and this just fell into my lap. It's unreal. It'll be the biggest audience I've ever had, hearing something I did. Literally millions of ears!" I asked Winston if he would mind people knowing his real name, the person behind his avatar, he told me "My real name will be used in the credits in the movie." He continued, "When I started up in Second Life, I wanted there to be a total break between the SL me and the RL me. That's just how I chose to play the game. I knew that, at some point, my RL name may come out, but I wasn't going to worry about it too much. Winston will never utter "that other guy's" name, but I don't mind if other avatars happen to know how it's pronounced. In the long run, it's not that big a deal. Winston told me about his musical background saying "I've been playing music most of my life, starting with taking piano lessons as a kid and then learning to play guitar as a teenager. By the time I got to Second Life, I'd had many, many years of recording and performing music under my belt." He said "Playing music inworld was something that I didn't do until more than a year after I got a Second Life account. I just didn't have the bandwidth at home to properly stream audio. When I did eventually start playing shows inworld, I didn't do it with the mind of promoting anything RL. I wanted it to be its own thing. That's how I chose to play the game." Winston went on to say "I first heard of Second Life in a magazine article about Anche Chung and her virtual real estate empire. While I wasn't at all interested in going into business, I was interested in the concept of virtual land. To wander through it, to explore it. Even more intriguing to me was the thought that everything in this world was build by someone who lived here and that maybe I could learn to build things as well. That's what pulled me in. At the time, my wife Sesi, before she became my wife, lived several hours drive from me. Second Life was a place where we could do many of the things that couples do even as our real lives kept us physically apart. We could set up a virtual home together. We could gaze together at the same virtual sunset..." I asked Winston how he had started out as a musician in SL, he said "I did start from scratch, with no contacts. I would go see other performers play and then seek auditions at the venues where I thought I would fit in. It was at one such audition that I met my first manager. He was managing a couple of venues but was thinking more about concentrating on managing and finding bookings for performers. So he and I played the game together for a few months until we came to a parting of ways. After that, Sesi took over the management duties (quite fabulously, I might add), and we've been working like that ever since." I wanted to know how Winston described his music, he told me "A friend of mine once said to me that listening to a CD of mine was more like listening to a compilation. The styles of music tend to vary widely. I grew up on the Beatles, and one thing that I took away from listening to their records was that it is good to try different styles- to let the song, itself, tell you how it wants to be played and then try to play it that way. So, one song might want to be a very textured, almost psychedelic, abstract sort of thing. Another might be a John Lee Hooker style blues thing. Another might be a children's song. Another, a folk song." "The record I made from which "Lithium" comes is a different thing. I set out to make a mood record, a lounge record, muzak. The songs that I chose were very different, one from another, and it was my job to take these divergent songs and make them all one style. Kind of like making sausage from a great variety of ingredients." As Winston is securing his position as a real life celebrity in the real world, I asked him if he thought he might no longer have time to perform in Second Life. He said "I hope that I will always have the opportunity to play in Second Life. I really don't know how much RL fame "Marley" will bring me or how time consuming that will be. There is something unique in playing a show in Second Life. It's part house concert, part live radio show. Each listener, while virtually in attendance at the venue, is probably alone at the computer, RL, maybe listening to me with headphones on. Quite an intimate thing. Where else can you do that?" I met Sesi today and she had some more fantastic news for me, she told me "we found out yesterday they want to use the song on the soundtrack which will be released 12/9" What a lovely note to end on, I would like to thank publicist Jura Shepherd for putting me in touch with Winston and Sesi, and I wish Winston all the success in the world in his real life venture. http://www.myspace.com/winstonackland

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Stories from Second Life

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