I just discovered I can crop clips. My machinima buddy, Marc, sent a clip with black bars on the side and of course I managed to ruin a few takes filming underlying window edges. Now I can maybe use all that footage! Thanks iMovie
and maybe I should read the documentation....nnnnnnaaaaaawwwwww
Showing posts with label creative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creative. Show all posts
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Thursday, April 07, 2011
My turn as Director
We - my machinima buddy and I - started a new project today, one based on a story idea I had. This is the first time I"ve been the editor and director. I made a lot of mistakes but fortunately my buddy was patient while i got the software working. He was trying to be nice when he said my project was ambitious. I'm sure he was thinking...that girl is nuts...gonna crash and burn...but he didn't say it. Thanks!
Anyone in RL will tell you..i am a slow still photograph taker. I like to line things up just so and try different angles and amounts of zoom..all before I take a picture. Maybe why i take so few people pictures in RL...trees and rocks and the sky sit around and wait for me. I digress.
I laid out a list of the scenes I want in my video, in 2 column format. And we started shooting...and my well thought out scenes fell apart. I needed some transitions. Some scenes needed changes to be more logical in the flow of the movie.
I've been trying to pick out places to film. One was a plaza with an awesome fountain. When I'm places normally, i don't notice things like advertisements and tip jars and store windows. It took time today to lay out the camera angles and think where the actor could move. At the Machinima Monday meeting the other day someone mentioned putting up transparent walls to keep the actors in the shot; now I see what they were saying. It's difficult to explain what you're seeing on your screen to the actors; walls would stop them before they got out of the shot.
Here's some footage i started editing. It's from an early scene. There's no audio yet. Just to give you an idea of what i did today
Mistakes I made today
- filming away..and then noticed i was in the shot in the background
- managed to make the filming window in Snapz not as big as the window of Secondlife
- managed to move the SecondLife window but not the edit window, so i filmed some windows that were under SecondLife...that is really irritating because I got a good shot..and don't think i can trim that line of garbage off the left edge
- filmed things before they were completely rezzed
- realized without an external mic, I can't do voice to give directions to my actors when i have the SecondLife interface turned off
- realized i need to think more about motion...moving the actors, moving the camera.
Anyone in RL will tell you..i am a slow still photograph taker. I like to line things up just so and try different angles and amounts of zoom..all before I take a picture. Maybe why i take so few people pictures in RL...trees and rocks and the sky sit around and wait for me. I digress.
I laid out a list of the scenes I want in my video, in 2 column format. And we started shooting...and my well thought out scenes fell apart. I needed some transitions. Some scenes needed changes to be more logical in the flow of the movie.
I've been trying to pick out places to film. One was a plaza with an awesome fountain. When I'm places normally, i don't notice things like advertisements and tip jars and store windows. It took time today to lay out the camera angles and think where the actor could move. At the Machinima Monday meeting the other day someone mentioned putting up transparent walls to keep the actors in the shot; now I see what they were saying. It's difficult to explain what you're seeing on your screen to the actors; walls would stop them before they got out of the shot.
Here's some footage i started editing. It's from an early scene. There's no audio yet. Just to give you an idea of what i did today
Mistakes I made today
- filming away..and then noticed i was in the shot in the background
- managed to make the filming window in Snapz not as big as the window of Secondlife
- managed to move the SecondLife window but not the edit window, so i filmed some windows that were under SecondLife...that is really irritating because I got a good shot..and don't think i can trim that line of garbage off the left edge
- filmed things before they were completely rezzed
- realized without an external mic, I can't do voice to give directions to my actors when i have the SecondLife interface turned off
- realized i need to think more about motion...moving the actors, moving the camera.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
FIlming Checklist
Image via WikipediaThis is a post that will probably be edited many times as I learn more about making machinima in SecondLife - a checklist for things to do before you start the cameras rolling. Hopefully if I follow these steps I won't have to reshoot so many takes.CheckList as of 3/17/11
- Check for other avatars on the radar - maybe warn them you're filming
- Turn off HUDs - ALT-SHIFT-H
- Turn off interface - CTRL-ALT-F1
- Move the mouse out of the shot
Monday, March 14, 2011
Green Screen
I decided to try to do some green screen clips...film my avatar in SL before a green screen and superimpose her on some real life footage. I filmed the beach when we were in Florida...waves rolling, seagulls squawking. It's nothing exciting but thought it was plain enough i could easily put my avie in there without worrying about walking over people in the RL footage.
I built a green screen studio in SecondLife. It's a big cylinder and floor *didn't put a roof but may need to because sometimes the camera moves up sometimes as you walk and the shot of blue sky messes up. Here are a couple of shots of the studio with my avatar in it. I"m the little tiny dot since my camera is pulled way up. I used a megaprim to make the studio and colored the cylinder and the floor prim *another megaprim* just basic green.
Here's a closeup of me in the studio. You can see the seam where the cylinder meets the floor.
I played around with the windlight settings and found that one called Nam Optimal Skin1 completely wiped out that line. I took a couple of pictures with that setting. No Seam! I gotta tell ya tho - makes walking hard because there's no clue where the walls are. And sometimes you'll run into the wall and your camera will go outside. Not sure how to deal with that yet.
Here's a bit of the footage i shot in the green screen. It's not very exciting. Remember I mentioned the fact that there are no clues to where the walls are? Well that means it kind of looks like my avatar is walking in place.
Why isn't there a clip of the final product? iMovie seems to make it very very easy to do green screen..there's an option in the menu for goodness sakes. I'm doing something wrong...and yes, I can boil water and I can walk and chew gum. But. at this point i keep getting xray looking results for my avatar. The two clips individually look just fine. I drop the avatar footage on the real life footage, pick green screen..and wham...xray. Not what I wanted at all. So hopefully I'll figure it out and add a paragraph and a clip..very soon..*fingers crossed*
Here's a clip with problems..that xray issue I mentioned and fuzzy footage. Not sure what happened.
ANd here's a clip that worked..strange content I realize but I got these great wrestling action figures from my machinima buddy and wanted to play with them. No I wouldn't play with them on the beach normally. But I haven't found any good old school wrestling footage yet.
I built a green screen studio in SecondLife. It's a big cylinder and floor *didn't put a roof but may need to because sometimes the camera moves up sometimes as you walk and the shot of blue sky messes up. Here are a couple of shots of the studio with my avatar in it. I"m the little tiny dot since my camera is pulled way up. I used a megaprim to make the studio and colored the cylinder and the floor prim *another megaprim* just basic green.
Here's a closeup of me in the studio. You can see the seam where the cylinder meets the floor.
I played around with the windlight settings and found that one called Nam Optimal Skin1 completely wiped out that line. I took a couple of pictures with that setting. No Seam! I gotta tell ya tho - makes walking hard because there's no clue where the walls are. And sometimes you'll run into the wall and your camera will go outside. Not sure how to deal with that yet.
Here's a bit of the footage i shot in the green screen. It's not very exciting. Remember I mentioned the fact that there are no clues to where the walls are? Well that means it kind of looks like my avatar is walking in place.
Why isn't there a clip of the final product? iMovie seems to make it very very easy to do green screen..there's an option in the menu for goodness sakes. I'm doing something wrong...and yes, I can boil water and I can walk and chew gum. But. at this point i keep getting xray looking results for my avatar. The two clips individually look just fine. I drop the avatar footage on the real life footage, pick green screen..and wham...xray. Not what I wanted at all. So hopefully I'll figure it out and add a paragraph and a clip..very soon..*fingers crossed*
Here's a clip with problems..that xray issue I mentioned and fuzzy footage. Not sure what happened.
ANd here's a clip that worked..strange content I realize but I got these great wrestling action figures from my machinima buddy and wanted to play with them. No I wouldn't play with them on the beach normally. But I haven't found any good old school wrestling footage yet.
Friday, March 11, 2011
New focus for a bit
Since I"m not teaching this year...I haven't been doing anything in SL with students. So I haven't been posting much. However, I am starting to get into making machinima...movies in SecondLife. I always hoped the students would get into making machinima as a way to use their media making skills combined with what htey learned in SL, but no one ever took me up on it. So, now I"m going to give it a shot. A friend and I have started making an episodic spy movie. We're not filming in order *laughs*...we filmed a bit that was fun, then decided we needed some back story and we'll need some kind of ending. So we're filming around our initial bit. Kind of like writing a research paper...we'll probably need to go back and reshoot the first bit to take advantage of what we've learned along the way.
We're also talking about shooting a video for the machinima contest sponsored by the University of We
Image via Wikipediastern Australia, a college that is really active in SL. We're still kicking around ideas for the story for this video, but probably it will be a drama. You have to start or end your movie at the SL recreation of their famous clocktower, seen in the picture over there (somewhere...look around..you'll find it in this post) We know we're up against very stiff competition. We'll learn a lot about moving making and have fun, both of which are our main goals for the project.
I'm going to play around with green screen so I can put my avatar into RL footage. I took some shots at the beach in florida; I think my avatar will look cool walking on the beach in some boardie shorts and shades. Look for a link to that in the near future.
Here are a couple of links:
We're playing around with some different toys - camera HUDs, fight systems, animations for holding guns. In the next few posts, I"ll talk about some of them.
Here are some links to other assorted sites and news
We're also talking about shooting a video for the machinima contest sponsored by the University of We
Image via Wikipediastern Australia, a college that is really active in SL. We're still kicking around ideas for the story for this video, but probably it will be a drama. You have to start or end your movie at the SL recreation of their famous clocktower, seen in the picture over there (somewhere...look around..you'll find it in this post) We know we're up against very stiff competition. We'll learn a lot about moving making and have fun, both of which are our main goals for the project.I'm going to play around with green screen so I can put my avatar into RL footage. I took some shots at the beach in florida; I think my avatar will look cool walking on the beach in some boardie shorts and shades. Look for a link to that in the near future.
Here are a couple of links:
- the initial version of our spy video mentioned in the first paragraph..no, the woman's voice is not me - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqAz6I8EhN8
- the official SecondLife channel on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/Secondlife
- videos by Toxic Menges on YouTube (she's an active machinima maker in SL) - http://www.youtube.com/user/toxicmenges
- videos by Chantal Harvey on YouTube (another active machinima maker who organizes annual machinima festivals in SL) - http://www.youtube.com/user/ChantalHarvey
We're playing around with some different toys - camera HUDs, fight systems, animations for holding guns. In the next few posts, I"ll talk about some of them.
Here are some links to other assorted sites and news
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