Second Life/Creating a Machinima
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What is a Machinima?
A machinima is simply a movie created from video captured in a virtual environment. For this example, we're looking at the virtual world of Second Life (SL).
Tools Needed to Create a Machinima
Second Life (a desktop client you use to access the virtual world)
Alt-Zoom Camera (a collection of scripts available in SL that can be used to set up detailed and repeatable camera movement)
Snapz Pro X (a desktop client used to capture video footage)
iMovie (a desktop client used to edit the raw video footage)
Setting up the Scene
SL gives you the ability to film anything you can imagine -- as long as you can either build it yourself or buy it from someone else.
Once you decide the subject of your machinima you need to gather together the necessary sets and props. The most important issue regarding props is if your machinima requires actors, make sure that the props have the corrects permissions for the actors to interact with them.
When you capture your footage, the viewfinder is going to be your SL viewer. Snapz Pro X grabs a video stream of whatever is displayed on your screen. However, there are several ways to control the view that is going to be captured:
Over-the-shoulder point-of-view (POV)
This is the default POV when your avatars moves through SL. When using this view, your avatar will always be centered in the middle of the shot. When you move your avatar, the camera view follows, which can create jerky, disorienting camera movement.
Manipulate the SL Viewer to a different POV
You can use the camera view option in SL to create alternate POV's. For example, you can swing the viewer position around so that you can see your avatar's face. The only catch is that your avatar must remain motionless. If you move your avatar, the camera POV whips back around to the default, over-the-shoulder POV. If your avatar doesn't need to be in the shot, or if your avatar can remain motionless in the shot, then this is a good way to establish visually engaging cinematography.
Use the Alt-Zoom Camera to Script the POV
The Alt-Zoom camera script allows you to set-up a series of waypoints, each of which can be tweaked to capture a specific POV. A camera then smoothly moves from waypoint to waypoint on a timed script. This method allows you set up a very precise shot and can used to create extremely powerful cinematography that employs pans, zooms and any other kind of camerawork you can think of. The path you create for the camera is repeatable. If you miss the shot the first time, you can simply reinitialize the camera and shoot the scene again.
Capturing the Action
You are going to set up Snapz Pro X to grab a raw video stream of whatever is displayed in on SL viewer.
Snapz Pro X Does Not Save Video in Real-time
Snapz Pro X excels at grabbing video in real-time. However, it does not save the captured video stream in real-time. The video is held in a buffer until you stop filming. Then Snapz begins the process of saving the raw video to a .mov file. This is a very processor and time intensive activity.
Furthermore, you cannot capture any additional footage until the buffer is empty. For this reason, it is extremely important to plan out your shots and don't just leave the Snapz running. Only use Snapz in short bursts to minimize the amount of time that your machine will locked up saving the raw video to file.
Try to keep your video capture to 10-15 seconds or less. This amount of buffered footage will save to a .mov file within a minute and you'll be ready to capture again.
