new TV Channel -- perhaps too ambitious?

please keep your questions and comments coming here, I honestly appreciate your criticism, I would have been disappointed if there was no discussion in the forums....Im going to do my best to respond, here goes:

1st of all:

The details of compensation and time commitment required for the SLTV project are open to some adjustment. The last thing we want to do is insult our user community or come across as trying to mine the residents for cheap labor. In fact, our approach here is to establish more of a business-like relationship with the eventual project managers. We debated how much to emphasize this in the initial post but there is an opportunity to make significant cash based on the affiliate program. I will post more details about the program this week. That might help put some of our requirements and expectations into perspective...

2nd of all:

we are not expecting four hours of professionally edited, broadcast quality, one-of-a-kind machinima featurettes. I think these quotes from this thread best reflect what we are looking for:

'I don't think SL is looking for movies and cinema, but rather people wondering about and showing off the cool content that SL has in interesting ways.'

'Basically if you're good at the inworld camera, have an eye for popular content, type in a way that is grammatically correct, and you have a high FPS machine, willing to do a little bit of editting, I'm sure LL will be happy with whatever you do.'

I understand the level of time and resources that traditional broadcasting requires. Second Life is part pf a unique medium that carries a different set of advantages and challenges than those of radio, tv, or film. We wouldn't have posted this project if we didn't believe it could be reasonably achieved without tremendous expense using widely available off-the-shelf technology. To this end, we are happy to provide technical support.

To be honest with you and pull back the curtain a bit, Video Linden runs on nothing more than a consumer grade Dell PC, a free version of the Microsoft Windows Media Encoder, and a small time investment on the part of one of our developers. We are even offering to pay for the stream hosting which is the most costly part of the enterprise. We are hoping to share the technical know-how behind the avatar-as-camera as widely as possible to empower several potential Video Lindens throughout SL.

In response to:

'And live streaming of events... what, World Series of Tringo? Moneyball Leeching 101?'

and

'LL has willfully let the state of events in SL rot, and now they want 4 hours of live content each day. If they hadn't thoroughly hosed the event system, it might not seem like such a herculean task'

This is an effort to help inspire better events not just hold up a mirror to the status quo. Video Linden as an experiment has shown us that there is lots of fantastic content out there...I've watched spontaneous talk show builds pop up in Morris, Texas line dancing, SL boxing, surfing, the Cory Doctorow appearence, Frogg Marlowe's concerts, stunt flying with Cubey Terra, and lots more...all this captured with minimal effort on the part of LL. Our thinking was we were only scratching the surface here and that our residents could do a much better job than us finding great events, creating great events, and opening up a window into SL to the outside world in general.

so yeah, lots more to say....work with me here and we can make SLTV something great for everyone.

It is really resource intensive to develop a machinema in SL.

You can't just alt-zoom on something while recording it in FRAPS and make a movie... it'll look like crap that took you 5 minutes and would be barely compelling to watch for more than a few seconds.

Pre-production in the SL world takes every single skill there is and then some. You need builders, texture artists, wardrobe, av's, animators (the hardest part), scripters, plus actors, filmers, directors, and post-production -- sound designers, music, video editors, motion graphics, etc.

True -- you could take your alt-zoom camera and shoot some video of av's standing around waving their arms in that hypnotic typing trance to some music in the background and call it a video. Maybe shoot something of you flying to random places with your favorite Jessica Simpson(tm) track playing... but that's about as fun to watch as someone walking around with their DV cam through the street.

I've already tried producing a series -- there's not even enough people in SL who can commit the time, effort, and necessary skills to pull off a full-on production.

Even building the website for this channel is rediculous to ask for without decent compensation. It would take a lot of my free and/or paying time to work on something that only *might* make me a little money when enough content is being developed -- if it can reach an epoch to drive sales to a reasonable profit on my part as a developer.

And generating content for this thing out of the goodness of your soul? You'd have to find a group of your best unemployed friends who have 10 hours a day to spend working on it with you. Unless of course you can do everything yourself, film it yourself, edit it and encode it... yourself. Rough but possible.

I dunno -- I truly want to see a media culture thrive and develop in SL -- and am still working towards it. But process is important and this is something that goes beyond just right-clicking and choosing Edit... I don't think SL is ready to produce that much content. As it was pointed out previously -- it's taken how much for like 20mins of content to be produced in 3 years?

Best of luck.

Icon, I think you are misunderstanding the scope and intent of the project...while fully cinematic machinima would be neat, we aren't asking for anything nearly that intensive production-wise. It would also defeat the purpose of capturing 'Live Video' and all the cool spontenaity of Second Life that goes with it.

I think that's precisely the problem, Jesse - the scope of the project has not been communicated to us effectively.

The current message makes us, as residents, feel that this is a very large production and that Linden Labs is offering peanuts for it. My advice would be to take what you just said and use it to revise the current announcement. That way, we'll have something more cohesive to discuss and in the light you want.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss it here.

As much as i'd love the position of Head Programming Director or even Errand Boy, there would need to be alot more work done on the SL client for a successful tv setup. I can think of a few ideas for shows that COULD be done live, but we'd need voice support, other things to all work at once for it to be successful.

Perhaps -- but 'live' is even harder to do with just a bunch of typing avatars standing around.

I myself am looking for ways to produce machinema in SL that is at least watchable and hopefully somewhat entertaining. However, the process is a difficult hurdle. While there are advantages to creating media from within SL, there is also a lot of pre-production set up required.

If LL is trying to keep the scope to just a collection of resident-run video lindens.. then yeah, I'd say the scope was miscommunicated. What I got from it was a lot more than a few more in-world feeds.

I'd be curious to talk about some of the techniques.

I think other than some fast equipment, being able to log in with two accounts at once might be cool.

One avatar could act as the "video linden" and the other avatar could be used to perform the invertviewing / animations / etc. Or, I guess, you could just learn to work really well with another fellow over skype or something.

You know, while someone is interviewing, you could suggest animations and stuff they might use. You could swing the camera around quickly to get different views with zooming and panning and then after the fact, you could edit (or not) the camera view switches out.

What software is really easy to use to edit (and compress) these movies with?

I apologize if the scope was not communicated clearly but I suppose that was partly intentional. The original post in the announcements is a Request for Proposal, leaving the scope somewhat open ended and up to the project team to decide. One of the criteria for choosing a winning proposal is that it seems feasible ... so if you can demonstrate that particular components of the project as described in the announcement aren't practical, that's perfectly acceptable.

Skype works great with Video Linden, we downloaded the free version. Also the folks who run the SL Future Salon have done a good job incorporating VoIP into their events

OUT of world - Baked Alaska Films / Echo Productions WOULD be available for such a thing...

Mind you - considering my qualifications - I don't come cheap.

SL is my SL - RL is my RL... I play Second Life to escape the real.. if I'm hired in the real, then I would want a real (realistic) paycheck..

Siggy.

If you want to inspire better events, there are more efficient ways to do so, aren't there?


I agree that the residents of SL do interesting things, whether a camera is trained on them or not. And, as Video Linden has proven, people will play to the camera. But as you mention above, this project is about "opening up a window into SL to the outside world in general." It's a marketing tactic. Which is fine in and of itself; we all want to see SL succeed.

Still, I see LL investing $L and prestige into an effort to produce a very narrow window for a small amount of content, hopefully to draw more outsiders into SL. Why not throw an equal amount of $L and prestige at the residents of SL who could salvage the borked events system? We desperately need events above and beyond that which is in front of a camera at any given time. This TV project gives me the distinct impression that LL cares more about how SL looks to outsiders than it cares about the day-to-day in-world experience. It's not an impression I usually get from you folks.

Thanks for the additional info, Jesse. My comments were really just in response to Enebran's comments about video in general and weren't really specific to this project. Without particular thought to the feasability of it I would love to see something like this get off the ground. Having SL-centric programming available for people to stream in SL is a really great idea and I hope someone rises to the challenge.

I think programming will become less problematic once the initial hurdles are overcome because once there's an existing venue and audience a lot more people will become interested in doing machinema and other programming to help fill out the broadcast schedule.

Just my two cents...

I would really like to see some educational stuff in the non-live portion of SLTV... maybe a guided lesson on something like waterfall building, advanced texturing and building, something like that. I often miss the tutorial & learning type events I want to go to in SL.

Even though I'm not in a position to bid on this project, I think the idea of LL putting paid work out there for those who are interested in providing it is A Good Thing.

I hope folks will be constructive in their criticism, lest the trend is stifled before it can truly get off the ground.

Just remember -- LL putting out paid ($L) work for folks to bid on and provide is a great way to get people interested and involved in creating content for the world. Perhaps at the moment, demand is higher than supply, but hopefully with a steady stream of this, that will change and everyone will benefit for it.

If I had the actual computing power to record and produce a show, I would.

Exactly -- and the initial hurdles are pretty big. There's a few people trying to break the barrier as we speak, but it will take time. For now perhaps a collection of streams rather than a single one is a start.

However, I don't imagine a great deal of SLers will find it very engaging. It will probably only be intriguing to those only discovering SL.

Just wait though.. one day we may yet have a vibrant in-world media culture.

I agree Icon, I think machinema has a huge future.

However, I think the critical detail in machinema will be NPC avatars.

That doesn't make sense. People don't interact with video, they watch.

Television shows don't have cardboard cutouts for cast extras.

LF

Perfectly fine. Given I'm only looking at this from a policy perspective, my goal is to improve the process here. I like this new trend to publicly accepting proposals from residents, but feel it still has some problems to iron out. I'm not trying to rake you over hot coals, so don't worry.

My issue is the required features versus the actual return. Specifically:



... versus ...


Now, I'm of two minds on this. I feel, first, that "Linden Lab will work with the winner" should be fleshed out a bit. Then, I see it phrased as a "contest," which boggles me. If I were looking at this as someone seriously hoping to participate, I would want assurances that I would receive top notch support when the time came. I say this coming from the Game Dev Contest, which I feel has its own nagging issues.

Secondly, I would point out the potential side benefits of starting this form of broadcast media. Such a production is a huge opportunity for marketing and show placement revenue, but due to the emphasis on the direct aspects coming from LL, these elements are downplayed unnecessarily. I would also point out sites and stores where the equipment can be downloaded or purchased.

Finally, I feel the "contest" structure to this is slightly doublespeak, because it undermines the professional setting for Request For Proposals. In the real bid or proposal market, the presence of "Prizes [for Winning]" is a misnomer, and makes me feel that this isn't a serious offer. In my opinion, placing the prizes as "compensation for winning bids" or similar would make the process more palatable to serious offers.

At the end of the day, I'm interested in seeing these proposals become a more robust experience for residents and to see everyone (including LL) happy with them. If you'd like, we can continue this discussion via email; I'm placing this here because I feel everyone should have input on it.

COMING UP ON THE NEXT SKITS OF THE PRIM REAPER

(two PR pirates are standing in the launching bay prepping a Freak Rocket when Burke, dashing captain, walks into view with a steering wheel attached to his crotch, grinning over an eternally stupid joke he's about to make)
Pirate #1: Sir, are you aware of the fact that you have a steering wheel attached to your johnson?
Burke: Arrr. It's drivin' me nuts!
(everyone looks seriously shocked for a moment, Burke winks, dramatic music plays with To Be Continued appearing.)

Ok after coming home and looking over the proposal.. 4 hours of live content (presumably news) per day.. and a 5 person team..

I can say:

I doubt VERY HIGHTLY doubt this can be done with any quality to the content whatsoever..

This is not a blow smoke around post - this is my professional opinion, from working in a TV news room for around a decade.

Consider -- even in the crappiest establishment your going to have around a 3-1 ratio of shoot to air video.. this isn't even taking into account that you need to actually BE where the news happens..

so 4 hours -- assuming el crapo 3-1 (In RL I make a 20 second News open from over 3 hours of available raw footage) You need 12 hours of video to have any range of content.
Thats not even assuming travelling around to actually SHOOT 12 hours of news footage.. or even have the news in the first place


Assume : Ye olde Tringo megabucks winner is worthy of 40 seconds of airtime -- maximum.. your outstanding stories may run up to 1:30 - and your 'special report' can weigh in up to 3:00.


A professional line editor can turn the actual video for voice overs in a 1/2 hour newscast in about 2 hours.

A 1 minute long package will take 45 minutes to 1 hour to edit with any amount of quality.

A special report can take from 3 to 8 hours in the edit bay to create.


This doesn't include writing the story copy -- taking the facts and making a worthwhile story from them.



I do this crap day in, day out - week round... And I do 4 1/2 news shows a day -- along with a team that numbers around 60 - 70 people.

Re-recorded movie clips circling video clips you can do... Live news content - 4 hours a day.... with 5 guys and a bootleg copy of adobe premier?



Not to dash ppls hopes -- but lets set our goals more realistic here!



Team of 5 guys... does 15 minute to 1/2 hour max single newscast...gathering - PHOTOJOURNALISTS

Now get multiple teams of guys together.. let them communicate and swap the recources they need to share (storys video etc.)

So - your multiple teams get together with another 5 guy team -- PRODUCTION

again 5 guys PER NEWSCAST


They edit your journo's video to script and 'put it on the air'




Now your talking news.... Otherwise you got one big pie in the sky.

Somehow, after reading this thread, I get a vague and slight feeling that people are skeptical about this endeavor.

No I was being rather toned down in my opinions for the sake of some peoples widdle feelings

I personally think it's nucking futs.

Siggy.

Just wait until you see my Second Life Live show on Saturday nites.

It may compel you to reconsider your stance when you see the giant, shaved, dancing poodles during the intro.

Bill Clinton and the Wet Spots will be the show's first musical guest. His sax will spray Lawrence Welk type bubbles, only thicker and foamier.

Our first guest host will be Robert Blake.

Special guest appearance by Triumph the insult comic dog.

Siggy's right. These are bare bones requirements to produce something watchable.

Remove the budget, take away the equipment and let talking heads run the show. Final result, disaster. I don't know a single competent producer, editor or writer that would touch this with a 10 foot pole. What's the alternative? Let amateurs do it? For free?

You get what you pay for. Crappy production can do more harm than good.