Thanks to all participants for their help

Starting from this weekend, SlipStream will produce a chapter from “The Witch of Portobello”, the latest book from best selling author Paulo Coelho. This will be a contribution to the “experimental witch project” that Coelho announces on his bog:

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/experimental-witch/

We are producing the view of Paul Sherney, the employer of Athena, which is the main character in the book. You can read this chapter online on Coelho’s blog:

http://en.paulocoelhoblog.com/witch-of-portobello/13.04.2007/tenth-chapter/

The building of the sets are almost finished (we are shooting in Second Life®), we will start shooting this weekend and I will cast voice actors (Germans) for this production. I will keep you informed on the progress here at the blog.

local Lights

When using local lights for the indoor sets (set SL to midnight) I found that they don’t always work. It seems (according to the LSL-Wiki) that we can only use 6 objects with local light (including face lights) and that the light will disappear when the avatar (the one who is filming) is not close to the objects. So if I moved my avatar to another room, the lights in the room where I wanted to shoot, did not work.

As a workaround, I just selected the light objects for editing, which turned on the lights again, but only as long as I kept the edit window open and the objects selected. That is not optimal if I need to move my camera around. Another approach will be to move my avatar into the center of the actual set and try to hide it from the camera.
Missing Images

One time, I could not see the clothing (just “missing image”) that I put on my avatar in the other viewer (the viewer I used for filming). Relog and clearing the cache did not help. I solved the problem by using another suit because we did not do any shooting for that scene before, so it was not a problem to put on another suit here.

Maybe a better workaround would be to change the viewer accounts next time. I was filming as Jim2 but needed the avatar outfit for Jim. The clothing looked fine if I was logged in as Jim on the other machine, so maybe next time I can just switch machines to overcome the problem. But this will only work if I act as myself and do the filming at the same time. This is not always possible.

My first goal with the project was to create some episodes of a Machinima serial that we can publish on the Internet.

This is the first step in viral marketing, to offer something for free to a big audience. The basic idea is, that people who might need a Machinima production, will contact us because they are already impressed by our results. It also shows a potential customer, that we have solved most of the problems that other people may have when doing movies in virtual worlds.

Another valuable goal for this project is learning. I believe everybody in the team learned something new about Second Life or film making. I learned something about the workflow for a real movie production, others learned how to overcome glitches in SL. So, even if we don’t cash in much money with the final product, it should be a success for all team members at last.

I found that this project may be a source for profitable business if I really take it seriously. That means that I don’t make a difference if it’s Second Life or any other business that I do for living. It’s the same with my Internet business. If I would have said “I don’t care much about my customers on the Web because it’s only Internet (or it’s only e-Learning)” then I would not have gotten some profitable projects.

The good thing about the Internet is, that you can do work from your home without the necessity to leave the house. I do this for a few years right now and I am very happy that I don’t have to drive to customers any longer. But your mileage may vary and SL is just a hobby for some people. That’s okay too, so these people may not expect any income from their effort they do in SL. For all the others, the project should also be a financial success.

You should also make sure to have a backup off all your stuff. The best method to do this is to select all objects and take them into the inventory as a set of objects. In SL you can use “take copy” to make an identical copy.

Backups are important just in case the simulator (aka as Sim) will crash and loose data or if (like in our project) the sim owner will just disappear and resell the whole sim, so that you have no longer access to your sets.

The best solution is, to build all the sets on your own sim. If you don’t want to do that, it’s always best to take sets with you after building or you can also use in world scripts called “holodecks” that will create your pre-created set at request.

The Producer for our first episode provided a note-card template that we could use to fill out and send to the creator. This step took some time to follow up all the people who did not respond to this note-card, but in the end almost all of the creators were pleased that their creations will show up in a movie, so it’s worth the effort.

Another aspect of this is, that everybody who gives permission to use their creation in the movie, is also interested in seeing it. So, with the permissions, we also created a list of potential viewers and possible fans for our movie. If a creator likes the movie, it is very likely that he/she will invite friends to watch the movie also.

Another very hard and time consuming part is costume- and avatar-makeover. This will be even harder if an actor cannot show up for some reason. The person who is responsible for avatars and costumes should write down all the details that are necessary to find all the items, shapes and skins again, just in case that the original avatar will get lost.

Anyway, it’s still too much work to do all the stuff twice if we found out that an avatar is not available. Therefore it’s a good idea to always fit up two avatars with the same outfit. Best solution would be if the director is one of the two, because he will be always available for shooting.

To make it easier to shoot, the actor avatar should be another account, separate from the account who will do the actual shooting.

Another good point would be, that all the stuff that is transfer-enabled, should be transferred to somebody else after the shooting. This should be a person who is also often available in world, so that we can use it on any other avatar if needed. Sometimes there is a need for extra shots to clean up stuff or do extra details. If there is a deadline for the production, this can result in a lot of stress if the needed actor in it’s proper outfit is not available for these shots.

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.

http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/pm/displayaudition.php?id=1131

If anybody is interested, please send me a sound file.

Marian