Second Life Machinima – Near round up
So, Thursday is the hand in date for the optional Pathway brief and Alex and myself are almost done.
Every last bit of footage was shot by the end of last week, the only problem being we have alot of interview footage to root through and pick out the key points we want to get across. Then, it’s editing all the Second Life footage too to work with the interviews and finishing the thing off! From the looks of things, there is tonight and all of Wednesday of which to work on it and in my mind it is do-able. Well, I hope so.
If you haven’t already seen the intro we initialy choped together, here it is again:
Another problem I think we might have is all our source footage is nearing 40GB and to hand all that in will take 11ish DVD’s filled to the brim! We havn’t looked at outtakes, deleted parts or putting the initial storyboard and stuff on the disk yet either, so might have to start organising files soonish.
Researching what others are doing!
So today, Mike has helped me and Alex by getting us to research more into the Machinima brief than to just sit down and make a Machinima. So, check out this blog at the end of the day as I will update this post as we find stuff.
This is a good video and right up our street! Their advertising Ohio University’s promo video to show off their Second Life campus for students of the Uni and people all over the world. It’s about the same length as what we are allowed, so I have faith we can fit it all in.
This is a small advert someone has made. It made me chuckle, hehe. 
But yeh, I think this is good for us because we are putting elements of Live Action into our Machinima of which should sync with the Second Life footage. So, it shows it can be done, although me being me I would want the SL stuff to mimic the Live Action stuff perfectly. :p
This is good. This is promoting Derby Uni’s involvement with SL inside their Games department. Whats more about this is my good friend Mark attends this Uni AND that course. (He is currently on his placement year in London.) He had to so some Second Life stuff before and I went on to annoy him. They too have done some mimicing of Live Action and SL footage, although already they have avatars walking over tables and dancing, of which we will add, but not a lot of.
Another alright video. My instant problem with it is that the shots are waaaaaaay to long, the camera could of been better positioned and there is no dialouge. Without dialouge it means as a viewer I have to do all the work to find out whats going on, and i simply don’t get anything from this other than some avatars walking about with a Rammstein soundtrack. :s
Much the same as the KitKat advert. Not the worlds best, but better than some.
Photography in Second Life
I thought today I would try out the camera viewing angles and limitations in Second Life. Me and Alex have a firm idea of what we want to accomplish and will work more on it tomorrow, but today I had a play about with taking pictures.
I’ve always been able to setup a camera and take a very well framed picture ever since I was a small kid. This has also helped me soooo much when it comes to my SLR photography and also when ever I use a camera. I usualy get commented on it being rather good and unique in the way I shoot, so I guess it can only be good compliments if everyone says the same thing.
Anyway, I just messed about and did some shot framing really. Feel free to tell me if their poop or rather good.
I prefer SLR Photography, wihout a doubt, in comparison to this. But still, it’s a nice virtual alternative.
Also, from these shots, atleast to me, I dont think we will have much problems having a nice looking visual stance for our Machinima.
Machinima’s
For my new Moving Image brief, I have chosen to do the Machinima brief with Alex. We seem to be doing every brief together this year (atleast so far) so should be good teamwork skills for me to adapt to and learn from.
So, I’m looking into what makes a good Machinima. I want to be rather professional with a hint of comedy along with lots of fancy things for this brief because the final video could potentialy become a video that goes on the college’s website and shown to prospective students of the future. We have had a few ideas already thrown about between eachother but nothing down on paper as of yet, so while he’s afk, I’m going to do some notes of Machinimas I have seen before and like quite well, not anything specific to education or a certain subject, but just general, well done machinimas.
SO, first off I and going to show off Arby ‘n’ the Chief. This is a series of Machinimas done by a dude nicknamed ‘DigitalPh33r’ He has also done various other Halo machinimas. He uses the built in abilities of Halo 3 and the machinima revolves around the two main characters who are toy models of the Master Chief from Halo and the Arbitor. They play videos games on the Xbox 360 (mainly Halo) and only play while their owner ‘John’ is out. The Master Chief talks like a steriotypical ’1337′ (LEET) gamer who talks in gaming slang and has the voice of Microsoft Sam. The Arbitor is very intelectual and says all his words correctly like most mature gamers do theres days and he has the voice of Microsoft Mike.
http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2A495FEAC8080F3F
There is a link to all of the eppisodes, I cant really pick out a few videos to show because their all really funny and as good as eachother (with a few being no very good, but the odd one isn’t all that bad.)
The next is a single Machninma called ‘A Day in the Life of a Turret’ and resolves around a day two turrets from the game Portal’s happenings. This is a rather simple (editing wise) machinima as there are no real mouths to move or otherwise. The concept is good, it plays on all off the small jokes inside Portal and you would only really get them properly if you have played Portal or at least Half Life 2.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz2_NkyTv8E
The last video for this post is a Second Life one. For the project we have to use Second Life as the machinima tool beings it would be what prospective students would be using when they come here. Also, it inadvertantly gives them a taster of what second life can do and what they could possibly do inside it.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ZmjA7GCzQ
I think this is an advert of sorts, and works rather well. Camera and editing is very well done, even the mouths move when an actor is speaking. I mgiht look into how to do that.
That’s all for now. I’m going to try and find out how to animate mouths and also see what other Institutions have done in the way of Second Life and machinimas/adverts. I am also going to look for specifics too. I’m not the worlds best builder inside Second Life, so a few tutorials might show me something I don’t know already. A main one would be cameras. I know about how to move and change the lens viewing angle, but not alot more. Something like a tracking shot, or one of them shots (I have forgot the name now! Grr!) where the camera gets closer and the zoom decreases. A good effect but never seen it in a game.
Other tools I have used/know of that can make machinimas:
Garrys Mod, World of Warcraft, Half Life 1 (built into Garrys Mod to sandbox) and GTA4.
