Vio Machinima Meet

Hey guys!!

AWM Mars and I will be leading a panel on Machinima at Vio (you can just type VIO in search and I think it's the first one). I'd love to see some of you come out- I think it'll be very informative!

It will be this Sunday the 23rd at 11AM SLT

Yep, we have collaborated, so we don't give the same presentation, but will be looking at machinima in different perspectives.

I'm looking forward to it.

A short commercial we made for VIO...

http://www.wba-advertising.com/vio/vio.html

Enjoyed both your presentations. Thank you. It even inspired me to blog about one of the points raised: http://www.skribeproductions.com/blog/2008/11/24/entertainment-not-advertisement/

skribe

Interesting take on some of the points presented by Areilla and myself.

A question was also raised 'how much does it cost?'. The answer is vital to the potential client, as it is they, that will judge any form of advertisings worth. We as humans do this all the time. What is considered expensive by one, is considered either cheap or good value for money by another.

When we started machinima advertisings in SL over 2 years ago, there was little if any being done. In fact, movies were considered a no no, by the vast majority due to lag issues. Our first task was to understand exactly the overheads, that movies caused to each viewer and see what can be achieved. Having established what percentage of the Client's rendering pipelines were available for movies, we set about creating templates for the output of our movies.

Going round SL and taking measurements of the loadings on the Client, when watching various types of movies, we discovered that the vast majority were loading the Client between 50-90%, whereas the Client has around 25-30% allowance. This was one of the major causes of lag associated with movies at the time. One of the other factors, was the codec's being used. Mp4 being popular as it greatly reduced the databit stream values, however the gross effect of the 'lag' was transfered also to the CPU having to decompress a complicated compressor on the fly.

Graphic Card improvements have reduced this effect and decompression for some codecs, is build in to the GC CPU. However the bandwidth sharing between the Client and media is coming under attack with the introduction of Voice, along with the reduced pipelines in the Client since the introduction of Windlight. Once again our templates are proving to be the answer.

Going back to my post, costs. Each machinima created is a bespoke product. It is customed in its concept, production and delivery. Sometimes those costs are higher or lower, depending how the message has to be delivered. Any product that is custom created will be higher than a templated or copiable version. Our own range of machinima costs stretch between 10kL$ to 250kL$ for SL only based business, and from 200-5,000 USD for RL business, based on contracts that we have done to date. When you consider that a lot of SL designers pay monthly, in the upper bracket of our machinima values for advertising in the SL Classifieds alone, that perhaps puts our level of work/costs into perspective.
Deploying actors for several hours of filming, set creations, studio work, animations, textures, scripting and wardrobe/stylists, storyboard creation, filming and editing. Add to that webhosting (servers) and streaming bandwidth all having a value, the profits against risk for machinima advertising, represents good value for money. The multiple skills required to make a successful production. Some business models used by Machinimast exclude hosting and streaming relying soley on the ilks of YouTube so that should be explained and reflected in the overall costs.

Always get a full explaination of what you will be getting for your money, demand a contract that explains and terms and conditions. Inspect their portfolio and ask around with their existing clients to see what effects the product has had for them. Testimonials should be displayed from existing clients, costs should always be transparent. If you are not sure, always ask.

Interesting points! And for those that couldn't make it, I'll be writing about the same topic in the RezLibris magazine, so I'll definitely post a link to the article specifically talking about whether machinima will be adopted by mainstream media.

thanks for coming out skribe and I really enjoyed reading your blog.