What would it take...

Woe is I. Woe is all of us.

I was supposed to have a screening of this months Alt-Zoom film festival this evening, unfortunatley, I only recieved 2 entries for a total of about 7 minutes of footage. I decided to regroup, and show them for next months, but I don't want to be foiled again, so I turn to the thousand mouths and hundred ears that is the forums for councel.

I am taking the next week to prepare for the announcement of the next film festival. However, I need advice on how to keep people excited enough to want to make a movie in SL. I am going to try to get the word out to as many people as possible, but tell me - what would make you enter a film? Prizes? Fame? The Ladies? A better website? More evidence of community? Tutorials? Fellatio?

I await your counsel, oh mighty forums

bbc

how about asking LL to provide a client that does better than 5fps when recording? *grin*

I dunno about you, but when I use Fraps, I capture at 30+ fps....

of course, I have a beast of a machine, but fraps is good enough - I'll buy you a copy if you make a movie chage.

pheonym animations

that pretty much sums it up for me my computer is a bit behind the times, and unfortunately so is my wallet.

I googled this to no avail, what is it?

I think Neph means mouth animations.

I reckon the lack of financial gain will be what stops people from making movies. We can make the odd cheesey movie for fun. But SL movies wont sell. Not even in SL. Its hard to justify spending lots of time on something that isn't going to be beneficial to us when its done. We can't live on:- "Wow, that's awesome. Well done..."

Oooh I should stick a commercial in my next movie

I'd make some short skits in SL but I'm not sure I can record with my current HD, even with FRAPS. I only have 20gb or space and would need something bigger just to isntall editing software.

Okay smartypants, that could work.

and i was just telling a couple friends about the Alt-Zoom machinima contests.

i may not have anything to contribute on the side of submissions (heck, making one building is taking me months.. a movie? lol.. maybe someday. hehe), but i'll attempt to offer helpful advice.


1. prizes - i'm not saying DO THIS, but it would help though. when prizes are offered, the content tends to increase in both number and quality. although $L would be a decent draw, a respected no copy/trans/mod trophy of some sort might be even better. receiving an awards statue has always been a big draw in RL, why not in SL?

2. better website - don't get me wrong.. i'm a fan of minimalism, but the current site is a bit lack-luster. it doesn't have to be extravagant, but providing some examples of past entries, a section for "current project", perhaps a small tutorial section, links to resources and previous contestants sites.. and so on. it's a bit of a project and would require significantly more room than the current site, but it would help the image of the contest.
i would be willing to offer to do the site, but it's probably more practical for me to offer some help in design/graphics area instead. just saying, i'd be willing to help where i could. i think these contests do a lot to reinforce an impressive side of what can be done within SL and would love to see it grow into something much larger.

3. stronger community - absolutely. you can never go wrong there. encouraging comradery and friendly competition would even further enhance involvement and quality of submissions. perhaps by way of including a message board on the website? a central place for sharing tips, resources, critiques and more couldn't hurt.


.and yeah. animated mouths sure would help as well. even if we could get the Lindens to include a basic "blah, blah" animation, the immerson factor would be strengthened considerably.


good luck..

Hopefully the next contest won't catch so many of us buried in exams. =D

BuhBuhCuh, I toyed with the idea of participating, but having zero experience in making machinima I felt that a month was not enough time to try, particularly since I would be learning along the way.

So my first suggestion would be to make the period between the announcement and the submission something more like three months. Real life can really get in the way of a project like this.

Readily available resources that would help the machinima noob such as myself get a running start (remembering that some of us are on Macs) would be handy. Very specific SL machinima tutorials of some kind would be awesome. Maybe in-world assistance, a "live help" for Alt Zoom participants would encourage more to participate?

Filming even simple stuff can be a ton of work. How about a service where you match up people to existing projects? For instance, if I'm a script writer, I could somehow advertise my availability for an Alt Zoom Festival project at the Alt Zoom website. The same could be done for set builders, editors, on-camera talent, etc. That way there would be an option for people intimidated by the idea of doing it all themselves to group together with other specialists.

Regular in-world events for filmmakers would also help. People could discuss issues, talk about their progress, even show dailies to each other.


Some thoughts, anyway.

I think you mean phoneme

More info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme

BBC I'm working on one, but I'm also trying to solve problems related to not having full use of my right arm. My movie probably won't fit the themes and I'm going to take longer than yer basic people with no physical problems, but I'm making it. So far I've been preparing for the real movie and making little side bits to try things to test how agonising they are Because it's getting into the xmas season that slows things down, too. Don't despair. What do you know about scripted cameras?

The Ladies, definitely

Well, and if I could make animations. I feel like a good movie needs custom animations, since keyboard avatar controls are so clumsy.

Prizes ! The ladies ! (or both combined)

I'd do it if only I could. Last update, I was fine - for the first time in a long time. This update, I can hardly move. Not much point recording a video of you bouncing thru the floor or walking forward 200 meters, over a sim border and then pinging back several hundred meters at about 3 frames a second every time you briefly pressed the forward key to take a single step. As Chage said, yeah, I can record 30fps in Fraps, but since the client only updates once or twice a second, it isn't gonna help!

Or maybe I could. Perhaps I could make a video of 'How SL is for me' for those that don't believe how truly shit the experience is over here

I've been curious to do this, but my very brief test runs have been disappointing. Is it because I'm on a Mac? Is it because I don't know what I'm doing? Is it my breath? I don't know.

Ideally, a tutorial, or working on someone else's project first would be good. How about something like the SL Film School for people to learn techniques and skills?

BBC, if it takes work, most people won't bother. People don't like working, they do it because they have to, and for something to be considered fun it's usually important that the idea comes from them. So if nobody had ever even thought of making machinima, then they are less likely to do it... especially if it involves a certain set of rules and a timeframe
What I would really like to see would be people who exploit the capabilities of havok to make something like the Honda "cog" ad:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/honda-ad.html

A movie like this would be a great SL demo to put up on the home page. Tell that to your favorite linden, BBC, they might wanna sponsor such a thing

Teach me how to make a movie, and I will gladly make one.

Sure thing. Some breif intro as to the basics. I also agree that since some of us would be just getting going with this, some more time between announcement and submission. Lots of stuff in the queue already.

Clearly participation in BBC's film festival is not targeted at "most people." Probably the most productive discussion would be to figure out ways to push those like myself who are "on the fence" into taking the plunge and making a film.

BBC, if the theme for the next one is something that gives me ideas, I'll hopefully submit one. I've been wanting to have a go at this for a while now.

yes! thank you. that's what I meant.
we could really use that. it's definitely not the only limitation, but it's a big one.

for more information....

Other roadblocks:
Education about how to use the tools: there seems to be a need for tutorials on fraps, camera tricks, advice on free or extremely cheap editing software- and how to use that, as well.
Some friends and I are thinking of tackling that task, but there is no way we would be able to have the time to start work on it until at least the first of the year. So here's to hoping someone beats us to it.

Timing. I cant speak for anyone else, but the timing on this contest just didnt work out for me. With the holidays looming up ahead, I just didnt have the time it would take to create an entry.

Those two things aside though, the real reason I personally do not use SL to make short films -even though I have a bazillion ideas, and would LOVE to- is the lack of ability to lip sync effectively.
Most other animation limitations, I could work around.

Myself and a couple other people I am working with tried the various tutorials out there on how to approximate lip sync with the facial animations we do have acess to- but even with hours of work trying to get the blending just so, and even more hours experimenting with chopping and blending in editing, the most closely aproximated movement we could achieve still looked ridiculous.

Even more R&D time on this has gone down the tubes attempting to find a solution that could be composited in after filming-
Sadly, that yielded a rather creepy talking-painting kind of result, as it was neccesary to lock the avatar down to complete stillness in order to avoid the composited mouth sliding all over the face, which it did a bit of even with the most judicious frame-by-frame hand tracking of the composited element.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I could have shot and edited four or five shorts in the amount of time I have wasted trying to get a working lipsync solution.

All of which leads me to believe that until we have actual phoneme animations that we can either map to gestures or call via script, SL will remain in the Silent Film era.

Fellatio couldnt hurt either, tho.