Now that we have a broad overview of machinima in Second Life (see Part I), let’s take a brief walkthrough of the technical process of creating a film, from the moment the camera rolls, to the moment when you’re ready, say, to try and sell your short as a pilot on the Comedy Channel.

Capturing Video

Shooting basic video capture in Second Life is as simple as selecting the proper pulldown menu command (File - Start/Stop Movie to Disk)-- or via hotkeys, Ctrl+Shift+A. When you hit this command, an interface menu will ask you to choose a resolution and a file type.

“I think most novice filmmakers will opt for the lower resolution (320x240 compressed),” Linden Labs’ Eric Call tells me. “But for the more advanced folks, I would definitely recommend going big, with no compression. It all boils down to disk space. If you have a lot of free space on your hard drive, I recommend setting your viewer size to 640x480 and capture 'uncompressed' footage. If you don't have the space, try setting the viewer size to 320x240 and choose either an MPEG 4 or a Windows Media codec from the list.” Lower resolution is best for trial runs and experimentation, in other words, while a higher resolution gets you better quality down the road, in post-production. “Try to capture footage in a larger format than what you plan to deliver it in,” Eric advises. “For example, I always capture at 640x480 when I know my output is going to be 320x240. You’ll maintain higher quality throughout the editing process.”

As many machinima makers already know, it’s not even necessary to use an internal capture function. “Second Life has built-in presets for frame size and codecs,” Eric notes, “but I prefer using a third-party program called Fraps. It’s designed specifically for capturing real-time video on PCs, and it’s downloadable for about $30. It does a great job of capturing high quality footage while maintaining high frame rates.” Another advantage, if you plan to use sync sound in your film: Fraps captures that, as well, while Second Life’s native vidcap does not, at least in its current build.

“Regardless of how you capture,” Eric continues, “there are two important things to keep in mind: make sure you have a significant amount of free space on your hard drive, and make sure you have the most current codecs.”

By default, your camera in Second Life is positioned over your avatar’s shoulder, and the user interface is displayed. So if you want to get yourself out of the picture, go into first-person view by hitting “M” for mouselook. “Hide the UI during capture by holding down the Alt key and pressing U.” Eric adds. “To bring the UI back again when you're done, hold Alt and press U again.”

All Second Life’s created objects and avatars are streamed, which means that the more of these there are on your display, the greater the chance your shot can be ruined by lag. To avoid this, says Eric, “Try to isolate your action in a way that prevents extraneous background objects from coming into view. This will help you maintain a more consistent frame rate-- especially if there is a lot of action in the scene.”

Avoiding the dread "Shakey Cam"

“We’re shooting this scene in cinema verite,” goes the joke about the pretentious filmmaker explaining the film process, “That’s French for ‘wobbly cameras.’” Since Second Life’s camera is controlled by an onscreen, mouse-driven interface, it’s a challenge to avoid shaky, jarring camera moves, and end up with clean pan and tracking shots.

Fortunately, there are several workarounds. The easiest, as Eric suggests, is to capture video in mouse-look mode. “You can get smoother camera movements this way,” he says. Another method is to take advantage of Second Life’s auto-follow function. To use this, right click on an onscreen avatar—usually, the active character in that particular shot— and select Follow from the pie menu. The camera will now automatically (and smoothly) follow this avatar’s movements.

When he shot the low budget cult classic The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi created a poor man’s Steadicam™ by fastening his camera onto the middle of a long plank, and getting two guys to run with it while the camera rolled. As it happens, another handy workaround for smooth video capture in Second Life is similar. In what we’ll call a SLeadicam™ shot, the cameraman sits on an object (a simple wooden block will suffice), while a dolly grip uses the object editing tools to move the block (and the cameraman) in the desired direction.

Since Second Life has an internal scripting system that allows them to create particle effects, and objects with physics, some machinima makers create visual effects internally-- or buy them “off the rack” from the many in-world scripters who make their living from creating visual effects. It’s also possible, of course, to add visuals in the post-production stage, with third party tools; to add the gory effects to “Bloody Mary”, Pierce Portocarrero employed a combination of features from Photoshop, After Effects, and Digital Fusion. To create the dreamy visuals in a marriage video I reported on for New World Notes, Second Life artist Nephilaine Protagonist ran her footage through Digital Fusion’s Soft Glow filter.

“There are two scenes where a television presenter morphs into the protagonist’s dream girl,” says SerpentRouge Mendicant of a scene in “The Imperfect.” “This morph was done in AfterEffects 5.5, where two independent clips were joined together.”

I love to score

While it’s easy enough to add music and sound effects in post production, Second Life allows residents to stream music and sound effects onto property they own. This opens up new potential for incorporating sync sound effects and incidental music “live” into your shots. There’s also a Second Life community of musicians who stream and sell their own music in-world—and are looking for creative projects to collaborate on. This is an important consideration in SL machinima, because it enables the creators to retain full intellectual property rights over their work. Something to consider, if you want to take your creativity to the next inevitable step. Which leads us to the final point in our short tour…

Pwnage

As mentioned in Part I, Second Life operates on a policy in which IP rightsover objects created in-world are retained by the residents who created them— including films. Because of this, many residents have been able to make all or part of their real world living from their creativity in Second Life—selling avatar fashion, running successful mini-games they built, and so on, and then taking the in-world money (known as Linden Dollars) and selling it for real dollars on third-party sites like Gaming Open Market. As of now, it’s not possible to screen machinima in-world, but filmmakers can also take their work out of Second Life, and find new audiences to show it to. Most SL machinima is hosted on the websites of the residents who made them, but unlike machinima made on other platforms, this is not even a technical copyright violation. So it’s possible to do so much more with it—create a running episodic series, as with “Red vs. Blue”, and platform it onto DVD, as they did. (Just without waiting for a wink and nod from the company who owns the game, first.) Sell it as a computer animated TV pilot to a cable network-- or why stop there, create a full length feature film, and look for a distributor. There are rumors that some Second Life machinima makers are already doing that very thing. After almost two years of reporting in-world, I’ve come to believe no level of creative ambition is impossible, with the right residents working together.

So now you a little bit about the backlot we call a world. All it’s waiting for now is a machinima New Wave. I hope the readers of Machinima.com become a part of it.

<b>Second Life basic information</b>
Second Life runs on Windows and Mac OSX and higher, and requires a high end 3D card and broadband (DSL or faster). Basic accounts are $9.95 one-time fee; free 7 days trials are also available. For more information, visit the official site .