What would it take...

Perhaps helping people ease into it could be part of the festivals. Use the festival to grow a community.

Rather than starting off with "Show us a film", you could start with things most everyone can do or learn; breaking it down into bite-size chunks. Maybe the first month's effort is nothing more than a film treatment people can share at a roundtable. Or... maybe there are multiple areas. The first month could be one week long, with a day set aside for writing the story, a day for discussing free/low-cost tools, a day for discussing anims, a day for audio, a day for whatever, aso.

Do these over, say, six months with people working toward a final machinima piece. The final event would be a "preFestival"... and a core group of people with skills who become SL's machinima ambassadors. After this you move forward based on the results. Maybe more of the same or something more ambitious.

My .02

i actually toyed with doing one as well but it just got buried among other projects and computer problems (hard drive and graphics card both having to be replaced).

i have two major issues:
1. animations, like i've wanted to do either a machinima or storyboard film-noir piece ever since enabran posted his P.I. for hire snippet in the forums... but it would only work if the animations were good... I don't even own poser, and it sounds like the work to create some basic animations to make this interesting would be tough

2. coordinating with actors... one thing I have found with just creating a few SL comics is that the camera is very tough to use on yourself, but at least you're always available when it's convenient

writing scripts and building sets are more in my sweet spot lol... sounds like i need to team up with some folks first

Yeah, this is the whole point. The original poster probably has a far above average computer (most vid enthusiasts seem to), and does not realise that video is out of the question for most folks.

Every video I have ever tried is motionless for the first 30 seconds to a minute while my HD tries to decide what to do with all that data, then records a roughly 5 FPSs "movie" with a quality somewhat less than your average animated GIF. Even if it worked, you need to spend a ton of time editing after the fact.

The best videos I have ever seen made in SL are (lets face it) very very poor quality compared even to ...

hmmm, a flick file from a 1980's Autocad program?

BBC, I've contemplated making one, even did some rough passes on doing some footage. (I have a complete storyboard worked up, actually.) The honest truth is, capturing from SL on the same machine you're running the client on is a very hit-or-miss kind of thing. I will try to do this with two machines in tandem, one running SL, the other directly hooked up as the destination, but I don't know how well that will go.

The best way to get it going? Maybe some example configurations, hardware and software, whatever, just so people can get the basic 'studio' going. I have enough resources where I can mess around on my own and probably figure it out, but not everyone will have that same level of interest after initial client captures go awry.

I like the idea of machinima, its just the mechanics of it can be quite frustrating.

For me it is several reasons, but mostly it comes down to a lack of tools, that requires Linden support. As good as the tools developed by the community (yourself included, say thankya) they do not come anywhere near the tools one normally finds in a package like Maya, Lightwave or 3dsMax.

What I think is needed.....

Keyframable camera

1. Open any 3d package (aside from poser) and take a look at the controls on has over the camera, not only do you have keyframes but multiple types of splines to use, stepped, linear, bezier (with handles), TCB/Hermite etc.
   
2. In addition to the keyframing we have the ability to edit these keyframes (and tension on the curves and spline type) on a per knot basis in a graph editor (visually). This allows someone to get exactly the camera move needed, add camera shake, speed it up out of one knot and slow it down coming into another.
   
3. Targeting, one can target a specific null object (that is also keyframable)
   
4. Parenting, one can parent a camera to a null and move the null, this is used for various camera moves, some of the smoother more impressive moves.
   

In short we lack all the standard abilities of a 3d animation package designed to make movies. Primarily key-framing abilities both for cameras and objects. But as I have said before this is nothing that you can do or anyone else in world, this the lindens have to take on themselves.

Speed is also an issue, with local lighting and all that jazz on even with a good machine as soon as fraps kicks on getting 30fps while on the main grid is hard as hell. Off the main grid it gets easier.

The other factor is time, right now I'm getting ready for a cross country move and its that season as well.

The length of time given for these also seems to be a tad limited, in a 3d package or in sl or another game, creating these things takes time. The sets must be built, the avatars customized, the animations for the avatars created etc.

Lots of reasons and for everyone its different.

The above dont stop me from trying but they make it less desirable to start and finish.

I'd be happy to create Lightwave and Maya scenes demonstrating the various things I mentioned above should a Linden become interested in this.


Also, I ran across this the other day while trying to do some shooting, the mouse sensativity slider doesnt go low enough and there isnt something that will smooth out the mouse motion motions. Several games include a mouse smoothing option, sl needs one something awful.

Yikes! I guess Neil's post points to another issue, the issue of expectations. Personally, words like Maya and Lightwave scare the shit out of me, because they scream "professionally produced 3D animation with impeccable production values." And that implies a very high standard of quality.

Still, Neil's comments are well-taken; if I were a pro I probably wouldn't use SL to make machinima. So think about positioning SL-produced films as the iMovie of machinima (rather than the Final Cut Pro of machinima). Something that the casual hobbyist might be able to wrap their amateur arms around. Show how it's both easy and low-pressure. I think the Ed Wood festival was definitely a good step in that direction.

I agree completely Pol.

In the long term, it would be awesome for the art of machinima in general if tools that rival those found in traditional 3d packages were available.

Until then, it is absolutely true that instruction on how to use the tools we already have needs to be more available and obvious.

That's interesting, are there no camera scripts out there? I've seen so much mention of machinima in SL that I assumed there were. It doesn't seem like a keyframable camera would be impossible. I'm just thinking about it now so maybe I'm missing something. But if an avatar sits on an object and doesn't move its head, it would function as a camera. So if you keyframe the object's translation and rotation, that would be a keyframable camera. Maybe not with a fancy editor, but at least a keyframe mechanism with interpolation. The av could control the zoom, almost like a focus puller. You could link a reticle to the object so the av could synch up its view. You could combine a sensor and rotation (or maybe just llLookAt) to follow a target. If those invisibility loopholes are still around, you wouldn't have to worry about the camera/av showing up in a scene with multiple cameras. I understand rotations are a pain, and it wouldn't be as slick as an animation package camera, but it seems possible.

Um, or maybe someone has already done this, or there's an issue I don't understand. It seems like an interesting project.

Something that kept me at a distance from this, and this is speaking purely personal, is the lack (I can't find one) of an easy-to-use movie editor on Windows PCs. On Macs, I know iMovie, and that is just fab, but Windows Movie Maker is something I couldn't come to an agreement with.

And in SL itself, the ability I can't lock the camera to a position... for example, rotate around to my face and then "freeze" the cam angle, so that when I keep walking around, it stays there.

Other tools that have been named are great.

Some simple things make a big diff tho.

First of all, I'm glad that there are so many people interested in making movies in Second Life. Thanks for all of the responses so far.

I bugged Xenon Linden (The LL artist who did the animations) about lip synching. He says they are working on it, but makes no promises as to when, or what it entails - only that it will be better than what we have now.

As for framerates, My advice is usually to capture at 640*480, use fraps, do it on an island with not much content, with a low draw distance. Don't have an island available? I can help a bit with that. 7 fps is too low, yes - but if you can get over 10fps while filming, the movie should be watchable.

For server lag - I have no idea.

Education - Yes, this makes sense. I think someone proposed having classes in conjunction with the festival. I'd love to see a class where once or twice a week we met and covered som part of making movies in SL, with the goal of having made a movie by the end of the series of classes. I'm not sure I'm the best person to teach these though - I know the mechanics, but I'm still learning the art, if that makes sense. Maybe 2 classes a week, 1 mechanics, 1 cinimatology, with notes posted on the web afterwords.

This would also foster community.

Timespan - this is a toughy. I know that a silly, fun film can be made in a weekend. I am pretty sure that a better, but still fun film can be made in a month. I limit festival entries to 5 minutes, so that it is harder to get over your head. I think it was the immortal ButtonPusher Jones who told me that people in Second Life have a two week attention span, so I am worried that a month is too long already. 3 months seems much too long.

This is not to say I am not encouraging people to make longer films and take longer to make them, but belive me that it is a good idea to start small.

Prizes, website - these are in progress.

bbc

Cadroe, I have already done this pretty much - but it's not quite as nice as what neil describes. I will be happy to share my camera with anyone making movies - I think it works well, but it still needs some work.

Speaking for myself, I think a large part of the problem is the editing portion - something I don't have much experience in.

I've spoken with some Windows movie makers and they seem to prefer Adobe Premier - at $600, it's a bit of a stiff investment for a tool I wouldn't use on at least weekly basis.

Another barrier to me is the audio portion of a movie - a good voice actor/actress would be tremendously helpful. Another aspect of that is the music - I'm not at a point in my musical talent where I can develop a good soundtrack. Up until now, I've been fortunate that Torley has been able to help out so tremendously

I'm not saying that these are my only barriers - making a good movie is a huuuuge timesink, and it's hard to find that kind of time. What you did with the Ed Wood film festival - limiting it to just one week - was a good idea I think. It forced the bar "down" so that more people felt like they could participate because expectations were lower. (Although the results were really amazing!)

An another note...

In the movie industry, I'm told that manufacturers will pay film studios for product placements. In the last film fest, I was quite flattered that some of my creations were used as plot devices

Going forward, if it's okay with BBC, I would be happy to discuss product placements in people's movies for added incentive

that would be a plus.

I have a fairly decent system and it runs SL quite well, but once fraps is going I get like 5 - 10 fps... which is 100% the reason why I haven't entered anything in the film fests or go into making machinima yet.

As fun and wonderful as it can be, I've learned the hard way to not bother asking people to help you out in SL.

Don't look at me - they aren't my movies! I'm looking forward to the day when Cartoon Network buys someone's machinima series for Adult Swim or something. If you can figure out a way to make money and make movies, all the better