This will be a seres of posts about “how to make machinima in virtual Worlds”. This one is about acting in the virtual world.

How to act in Machinima? It’s not about acting skills, it’s more about knowing your inventory, knowing how to move your avatar, to play animations and to show up in time when the director calls you for shooting

I’ve had a hard time because actors just did wear something they found in their inventory and couldn’t remember what it was. This makes it difficult to do additional shots later, if some scenes need extra shots or if a scene can’t be used for some reason. It’s also difficult to get the creator’s permission if you don’t know whom to ask.

It’s also difficult to plan if actors are not available most of the time. So it makes sense to assign main parts only to people who are in world very often. Otherwise a missing actor can ruin the schedule completely if 5 other people are waiting for this one to show up.

Regarding this problem it’s always a good idea to inform the director beforehand if somebody cannot show up. If somebody gets sick or have a RL emergency maybe in the family, everybody understands if there is no time to send a short notice. But other appointments like a job interview should be known in advance, so it should not be a problem to send a message in time.

We approached this problem in our production by using a double with the same shape and clothing as the original actor. With this solution, it’s very unlikely to miss an actor if you can call for the replacement.