Thursday meeting (10-4)

Quick note on our meeting for this Thursday. We’re lucky enough to be visiting with a rep from Simuality. So we’ll be meeting at there place (SLURL) at 3:30 to chat for a little, and then move on to talk about the final project and work on our Machinima.

I had intended to do a screencast about making Machinima, but two things get in the way of that. First, it’s pretty easy to do, and unlike (e.g.) building, it’s not something that is easily captured visually. That irony is packed on top of the fact that screen-recording the process of screen-recording is difficult, since just screen-recording can be very resource-intensive.

To that end, I’ll point you to some resources that should be helpful, and will catch up with you as groups to help out along the way.

What You Need

To get started, all you really need is a fast computer, with a big chunk of hard drive open. If your computer is already stumbling when just running SL, you might want to pick the person in the class with the fastest system.

You may eventually want to buy screen-capturing software, but for this assignment, feel free to use SL’s built-in recorder (which is spotty) or the free trial period FRAPS.

Finally, you’ll want to do some post-production. Any tool will work for this, including the free Windows Movie Maker (Windows), iMovie (Mac), or one of several online video editors.

Movie Making

The most important elements for movie-making, just as in the real world, are planning and patience.

Once you know just what you want to shoot, it’s a matter of coordinating your shot in-world. Even (especially) for something this short, pull out some paper and do some storyboarding. How many shots will it take to tell your story? What do you need in terms of sets, costumes, gestures, and actors?

Once you have a plan, block out the shots. Getting used to Alt-Zoom’s camera can be a pain at first, but it’s worth it. If you decide not to use it for this project, that’s fine, but it’s a useful tool to know how to use. Besides, it’s freeee.

Once you have the video, editing and titles is just like any other video production: keep it simple, and remember to tell the story. Don’t let your editing get in the way of that. Recording a B-roll in SL is particularly easy, so think about shooting some establishing shots and long shots while you are working so you have something to work with if you need it.

If you hit a stumbling point, ask me or ask your teammates. First time through, expect this to take several hours to get 30 seconds or a minute of final product.

Resources

Eric Linden’s top 10 tips is a really good place to start.

Alt-Zoom expands on this a little.

The Vidder Maker Six Gates article provides quite a bit more detail, and is a better tutorial than I could write. This one is a must read.

There is an SL group on YouTube that can give you an idea of what others have done. (See NASA’s, or this one, for example.)

A list of resources from the Second Life wiki.

Final Project

We’ll also be making some determinations on the final project in the class. Come again with ideas, perhaps even refined a bit, and we’ll do some teaming up.