User:Phaylen Fairchild

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Phaylen Fairchild

ABOUT

Charter Member Phaylen Fairchild began her Second life on New Years Eve 2002, making her one of the oldest virtual residents on the Second Life Grid today. Her passion began primarily in MMORPG's, which she later integrated into her real life work, starting as Assistant Site Manager for The Warcry networks Everquest 2 community site and soon taking on the task of Site Manager for Warcry's Matrix Online Portal. During her time at Warcry, Phaylen eventually worked actively across all of the networks community sites, including the Central Hub where she managed and provided content, recruited volunteers, developed incentive programs and worked with game developers to strategize the release of information regarding high profile titles to ensure maximum demographic exposure. While at Warcry, she was the first to interview ex-VP of Marketing and Community Development for Linden Lab.

In the early days of Second Life, it was not uncommon for Linden Lab to phone residents to inquire about their thoughts and suggestions on the development of the new world and Miss Harper and Phaylen spoke often regarding it's direction and future.


After leaving Warcry, Phaylen moved on to IGN to join their budding World Of Warcraft community portal team. Similar to her position at Warcry, she wrote content for the website, hired volunteer staff and moderated the community forums. She developed a strong working relationship with the Developers at Blizzard and participated in the very early stages of their Alpha Phase.


Phaylen eventually left behind her virtual duties to resume her longtime aspiration of writing Screenplays and Novels which she has set aside prematurely years before when she achieved success as an award winning writer at the age of twenty. While still dabbling in Second Life in her spare time, she discovered it's potential for storytelling and eventually began filming short sequences within the platform. Soon, she had taught herself to use advanced editing software and special effects programs and the hobby of virtual film making became a irreplaceable creative outlet which she utilizes to this day.

EVOLUTION OF AN AVATAR

Phaylen was the creator of the first interactive gridwide event in March 2003 with her well-devised Alice in Wonderland themed scavenger hunt. Many residents attended, and found themselves greeted by Alice herself (Portrayed by Fairchild) who commissioned their help to retrieve a destructive Oracle that had fallen into the possession of the vicious Queen Of Hearts (Portrayed by ex-Linden Lab Employee Jennifer Linden.) Because betraying ears lurked in unseen places, She set them out on a gridwide adventure spanning all 12 sims where riddles would lead them to encounters with iconic characters from the story itself including the White Rabbit, The Wise Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat, all who lead them to their place of final conflict with the Queen Of Hearts where players literally engaged in a combat scenario with her, attempting to knock her from the catwalks of the Rizal Sports Arena to retrieve the Oracle and return it to Alice.


During her early days in Second Life, Phaylen also performed in the role of Official Instructor, teaching residents to build. She was also active in the Mentorship program where she acclimated new residents to the virtual environment. Many early residents recall her as their first teacher.

As the grid evolved, so did Phaylen, who was actually the the first Prim Dress designer. In 2005 she devised a program that would honor the efforts and achievements of residents in Second Life in a sort of Virtual Oscars Ceremony. For a month, Residents submitted nominees in a plethora of categories such as "Achievement in Design" and "Notable Group Achievment." In the second month, nominees submissions were counted and narrowed down to five finalists per category, and residents then were asked to vote between them. The event culminated in a huge ceremony, complete with red carpet in a custom built auditorium where awards were handed out. Phaylen had commissioned real life artist T. King, the lead designer for the Sony MMORPG Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes to create the award statuette that would be distributed.


In 2006, Phaylen was asked by the creators of the real world television show Big Brother to participate as a contestant in their virtual version of the popular series. She remained in the house with 15 other residents including Kit Maitland (who would later become her co-star in the long running virtual Sitcom DiVAS.) After her eviction in week six, Phaylen joined the Endemol Virtual Team, who intended to transition more of their intellectual properties to the virtual platform, as a consultant and producer of their content. She assisted with the development of their follow-up to Big Brother, Tila Tequila's Paradise, a region dedicated to the reality television star and internet phenom Tila Tequila, who was to film her music video virtually. Phaylen also created Tila's line of clothing from real to virtual on Endemol's behalf as well as supervising development of the region.


Once that role was completed, Phaylen was approached by Italian producers from Magnolia Television who had seen her in Big Brother and knew of her work with Endemol. Their goal was to transition their own intellectual property from real to virtual. Magnolia producers are the originators of the worldwide franchise Survivor. Phaylen came on board as a consultant and co-organizor of the event, blogging for the English speaking audience of Italian broadcaster Rai.Due TV. The show was aired on television once weekly in Germany, Japan and Italy, and the live stream was accessible throughout the duration of the event via Rai.Due's official website. The show was an enormous commercial success.


Coming off of Survivor: Second Life, Phaylen was approached by a friend to organize the first Day of Remembrance which celebrated the lives of Virtual residents who had passed away. As a community advocate, Phaylen agreed. In the process of organization, Linden Lab decided to make the Event Official by sponsoring it and assigning a liaison to work with the team. With the support of Dusty Linden, Phaylen lead a phenomenal team through the organization of an event that spanned 24 hours of live music and events. The event fetched incredibly community support and the success of it reached real world media outlets.


After Day Of Remembrance, Phaylen began production on DiVAS, a sitcom filmed within the virtual world. Originally conceived as a vehicle for actor Damon Wayans and actress Molly Shannon while Phaylen worked in Hollywood, she altered the lead characters and the setting but kept the colorful sense of humor. The first episode of DiVAS premiered on December 1st, 2007. The series garnered a lot of praise from both the community and the outside world from educators and spectators who had been watching the development of various types of content coming from Second Life. One Professor is quoted saying "As for Machinima in Second Life it seems my experience is just the tip of the iceberg. A media company has produced a virtual comedy series using Second Life... 5 episodes so far called "Divas" sort of a cross between 'Desperate Housewives' and the Film 'Death Becomes Her'."

As she continued work on DiVAS, which she wrote, directed, edited and starred in alongside Big Brother Alumni Kit Maitland and Second Life Veteran Evie Fairchild (no relation) she was approached once again by Linden Lab to step into her organization shoes for Second Life's Fifth Anniversary festivities (or SL5B) after the previous organizers had abandoned the project a month prior to launch. Unaware of the controversy surrounding the event at the time, Phaylen came on board, recruited a volunteer team, working with those she had worked with previously on past projects and once again, with liaison Dusty linden, they put together a fantastic event which featured opening keynote speeches by Second Life Founder Philip Rosedale and Linden Lab Chairman (As well as founder of Lotus and Chair of the Mozilla Foundation at its inception in 2003) Mitch Kapor.

Almost immediately after SL5B she fell into a key organization role for Burning Life, another Linden Lab sponsored event, as head of communications, an obvious role due to her community outreach. Once again she worked with key personnel at the company, working with Dusty Linden for a third time, Katt Linden and Everett Linden. She had become the go-to resident for key tasks. In December, DiVAS broke through the virtual glass ceiling, even showing at the Museum of Natural History for their Virtual Renaissance exhibition.

While deep in organization of Burning Life, simultaneously she was asked by Mia Linden to begin organization and region development for the annual SLCC (Second Life Community Convention) In-World events, which takes place both physically and virtually. The in-world events are an alternative for residents who cannot attend the convention which takes place each year in a different American city.

In early 2009 she began production on a new concept for filmed virtual Television Show that manifested itself in form of "I Wanna Be A Celebrity." The title was intended to be a play on words, referencing more how someone feels about their own personal achievements rather than how they are perceived externally by others. Celebrity was an eight episode reality series that took 6 Second Life residents from various walks of real life and put their virtual skills to the test with weekly challenges relevant to the platform. Contestants met with virtual mentors at the top of their respective fields during each episode, focusing on building, photography, performing arts and - yes - even Machinima production. The show was designed to be a positive asset to the community of Second Life, with the intention of later viewers being moved to further develop their own virtual skillsets by watching others do the same. The show was produced in a collaboration with Metaverse-TV and aired over 8 weeks, with the finale debuting in June 2009. Also in June, she was once again approached to organize Linden Lab's Sixth Anniversary Festivities. Having done it under unusual circumstances and still turning out a success the year prior, She saw an opportunity to put on a phenomenal show on behalf of her fellow residents. From concept to design she was involved in every aspect, recruiting a team of volunteers, developing the highly successful tiers of volunteerism program and working in every sector of planning. Dallier's Hope, which was designed as a barren rock recently colonized by the residents of Second Life was created to mimic the feel that Phaylen had when she stepped into the barren Second Life regions Seven years prior when possibility and promise was infinite. It is regarded as the most phenomenal and successful birthday event to date. In response to the success and she received a public thanks from founder Philip Linden and flowers from the employees at Linden Lab. It was a a wonderful, albeit unexpected, tip of the hat to a woman who had been largely responsible for some of the most major virtual events during the past several years.

In mid 2009, she took a break from event organization to refocus her attention to her Machinima efforts. Although she had created small cinematic features for Burning Life, the game Angels and Demons, and a feature for designer Moxie Polano, DiVAS had been in a long hiatus. Her Second Life machinima works, including her very first foray into the art of virtual film making (Which now has over 124,000 hits!) have sent countless viewers not only to her YouTube channel, but also to Second Life as new residents. Phaylen took on the role of Blogger for creative social networking website Koinup.com as an ambassador to the Machinima community with her column Stories From The Machine. She donned her organization cap briefly for Mia Linden once again to develop another region for the Second Life Community Convention in August.

On December 13th, 2009 Phaylen performed a live show as her sitcom character and reminisced with an enthusiastic audience on her amusing, sometimes poignant, often hilarious adventures in the virtual world.

After 16 months, the sitcom DiVAS returned with a bang on December 8th 2009 and pioneered yet another first. Her Second Life Avatar was dropped into the popular World Of Warcraft environment where she realistically interacted with Avatars from that platform. The episode, titled "Phaylen Seeks A World Of Warcraft Guild", had crossed the virtual boundary and become the most successful episode of the entire series, transitioning it into a new era - and a surprising direction. The episode also caught the attention of Blizzard who sent a thoughtful email of praise.

In January of 2010, A week after her 7th anniversary as an Avatar in Second Life, she was contacted by actor Tom Cruise to contribute to his blog as a guest columnist to discuss how movies shaped her life as a virtual film maker. On January 5th, 2010, her first piece appeared on his Official Website.

On January 23rd, 2010 she organized and hosted the cross world Conference on Virtual Filmed Media and Entertainment which was attended by agents and executives from real life media representation companies such as William Morris and ICM. She spoke to the panel about the viability of transitioning virtually created television and films to real life audiences. The conference was incredibly successful and opened up a dialog between virtual content creators and executives in media in pursuit of exploring the possibilities.

In July of 2010, Phaylen released a spoof of the viral Old Spice commercials featuring a rotating backdrop with the tag like "I'm on a horse." Her machinima featured her avatar in the same scenario, from a female perspective, ending with a reveal of her being on a Yak. In November of 2010, it was discovered that UK's Sun Magazine had copied her premise using a real woman, but instead of revealing a yak at the end of the clip, it revealed the bikini clad woman on a car.

Throughout 2010, the DiVAS series continues to evolve, adapting stellar vocal performances guest stars who embodied World Of Warcraft Avatars.

In September, Phaylen was invited to juror the annual 48 hour film project along with award winning film director Peter Greenaway and Machinima icon Tom Jantol, the individual responsible for coining the term "Machinima."

On November 4th, Phaylen released a mixed reality short film entitled HARBINGER. The psychological thriller focused on a young woman being tormented by a Hannibal Lector-like character threatening to murder the player on the other side of the screen if she does not answer 5 questions. The concept of a deranged murdered with idealizations and paranoia regarding the internet, privacy and anonymity sent virtual worlds players into a state of introspection and fetched the film rave reviews. The 15 minute film, shot in real time, showed reflections and silhouettes of the players in their computer screens, emphasizing the state of disclosure.

Past Projects

2005

  • The 2005 Metaverse Awards Program - Primary Organizer

2006

  • Endemol Entertainment Presents Virtual Big Brother [1]
  • Endemol Entertainment Present Tila Tequila's Virtual Paradise - Consultant & Designer

2008

2009

  • SL6B - Second Life's 6th Birthday Celebration - Lead Resident Organizer - June 09
  • SLCC 2009 - Second Life Community Convention in-world events - Main Organizer
  • Phaylen Live! A One Hour Live Comedy Special took place on December 13th, 2009

2010

  • Virtual Media And Entertainment Conference - Host and Main Organizer
  • Jury Member of The 48 Hour Film Project [2]
  • Released Mixed reality psychological thriller HARBINGER
  • Character design for Current TV's series BAR KARMA [3] (As part of Creation Project)

Machinima Projects

A selection of some of her recent Projects:

Phaylen On The Web

See Also

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