Digitizing the short documentary Unmasking the Masquerade by Ryan Slavinsky, featuring LARP players in the Midwest in the early 2000s
Welcome, CFIA readers! The Center for Immersive Arts is a project to preserve and explore the history of immersive arts. You can learn more about the CFIA by subscribing to the newsletter, and get behind-the-scenes updates and info by supporting my work on Patreon.
Recently Dawn Vogel sent me a DVD containing footage of her Vampire: the Masquerade LARP group from the early 00s.
Thanks to the support of my backers on Patreon, I bought a disk drive and digitized the files, which I’m sharing on the Center for Immersive Arts Youtube channel and on the Internet Archive.
Links:
– View the documentary on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cp9-D4pK-X0 (11:27)
– View thirty minutes of additional footage and interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-TaXTr7YN4 (31:06)
– View the documentary and footage on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/unmasking-the-masquerade-larp-documentary-ryan-slavinsky-behind-the-scenes
The documentary and additional footage feature players of the live action role play game (LARP) Mind’s Eye Theater: The Masquerade, part of the White Wolf World of Darkness/Vampire: The Masquerade universe, in Carbondale, Illinois, Edwardsville, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, Paducah, Kentucky, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The documentary was filmed from 2004-2005 by Ryan Slavinsky when he was a senior at Southern Illinois University.
“I was trying to figure out what to do for my senior project, and was trying to decide between doing a documentary or a narrative film,” Slavinsky said. “When I saw a flier for the SIUC [Southern Illinois University Carbondale] chapter of Vampire the Masquerade looking for people to join that fall, I knew of the game, but hadn’t played. I was curious to know more, as it seemed to be a minor extension from the games I played.”
“Turned out I worked with Robert Crosby who was a senior member of the group,” he added. “This gave me an in with the group and I wanted to do the subject justice. I was happy with how it turned out, and the group seemed quite pleased with how it turned out.”
The documentary is a fascinating look at local and regional communities of LARP players gathering in-person to play games together in the early 2000s.
The interviews in both videos touch on a breadth of topics: how people heard about the games and why they joined, how the game works for players (for example, wearing paper tags with written attributes to communicate appearance), and how LARP is perceived by non-players (or even players of different LARP styles).
“The common belief is that we are a bunch of people who get together on a nightly basis and pretend to be these blood-sucking fiends who are out there trying to rule the world,” one organizer says. “The honest truth is, that is the case. We are a game of socio-political interaction that emphasizes roleplay, where you actually try to portray your character as completely as possible, without dropping out of your character. It’s like being on a stage.”
There’s even a fun in-character interview in the behind-the-scenes footage that conveys a lot about the character’s arc and the plot of the game.
I also appreciate how many of the conversations are about planning for and running events, and managing the community. The events are dynamic and responsive, creating avenues for collaborative storytelling. One organizer shows off a gallery of in-character art pieces contributed by players affiliated with an art-loving vampire clan; another describes how their group developed a relationship with a church venue: despite the potentially dark subject matter of the vampire-themed games, they treat the location respectfully and organize a drive for players to contribute food and clothing to the church’s food pantry.
Thanks to Ryan Slavinsky for granting me permission to share the videos, to Dawn Vogel for sending me the DVD, and to my generous backers on Patreon for making this all possible. I’m grateful to be able to delve into this small snapshot of a community in their element, sharing their memories and experiences, and to be able to share and preserve it for the future.
Unmasking the Masquerade Credits:
Directing, camera work and editing by Ryan Slavinsky
Additional sound recording by Adam Hofmann, Jen Willis and Brent Surratt
Interviews:
Dave Kraus
Bob Spircoff
Robert Crosby
Jerry Boyle
Jenny from St. Louis
Nick Blew
Jason from Edwardsville
If you enjoyed these videos, please consider supporting me and my work on the Center for Immersive Arts with a recurring pledge on Patreon.
The support of Patreon backers like Ariock ® and Shiina Markov make this project possible! Join them as a supporter today — as a bonus you’ll get early access to videos like these, plus behind-the-scenes looks at what I’m working on, as I’m working on it.
The Center for Immersive Arts is reader-supported. When you buy through links on this site, I may earn an affiliate commission.
Leave a Reply