Edditing

Well I have been furiously editing down in 'the dungeon' (the basement) and the suite is really well equiped and I have spent more time downstairs, over the past week. And i am very pleased with the work that i have produced. The only thing which has been a pain, is the fact that i had trouble capturing at the start etc. I would have had that extra edditing time etc and wuld have got the piece even better perfected.

The previous week....

...has been bloody hell! I have had many problems when it has come to capyuring second life fotage to tape. First of all when i go down to the dungeon on weds afternoon and find out that it hasnt been set up properly, i was quite infuriated, cause we had to show something on the friday morning for the final crit, and i hadnt even got the footage, never mind the editing. The only decent piece of structue that i had was the edited audio, cause all i had to do was add the visuals to the audio, if you like. So for editing it was quite easy, it was just a matter of choosing the right pose in the footage clips. As i spent all afternoon in the dungeon, trying to set the capture device up, i had many problems where, second life kept on crashing and at the same time i had to keep running up and down them stairs to tell rob, that it had crashed, and to wait etc. Rob was my sl actor, to pose and do a few poses etc. Anyway, once we got it working right, i got rob to controll his character and i recorded this straight to tape. At least i thort it had! I decided to review it before dooing more poses, and for some strange reason there was no footage on the tape, it turns out you have to press the red and the play button at the same time, for it to record to the tape! This was my suggestion to Matt, the dungeon keeper, and he was like 'oh yeah, so it does!' I was quite mad because i had spent a full day trying to organise to get some footage to tape and at the end of the day, left with the same amout of footage as i came with, which was very little, or pretty much nothing. So as soon as i got home, i turned on my PC and got FRAPS working and second life windlight on, which was looking much better and not even crashing, whilst the ones in the dungeon were not as good. So i am pleased i have got full quality graphics rather than lower, which i would have got if i had recorded it onto tape. But at the same time, i was anoyed that i had literally had to start the day all over as soon as i got home, and i wasnt even feeling well enough to go into college in the first place, which means, cause i did it at home, i could have stayed at cozy warm home, where there is comfy chairs and sky tv.

I am very pleased tho to come out in the end a good looking prototype for my final crit, i am happy with it. I have a bit of editing to do, when it comes to sound, i need to get rid of negative comments etc and also i need some more live action footage and second life footage with people working together etc.

qavimator

I have had Avimator for a while now on my pc, i had it for quite a while, it was gathering dust somewhere on one of the sectors of one of my many harddrives. The reason why i havnt used it, was because i belived the layout sucked! You cudnt see the frames on the timeline and there was very little things to do if u made a mistake, and you had to make everything perfect 1st time round, or u wud have to start from scratch. And i believed this was so stupid because u wud have to be a super expert in timing etc, for u to be able to master it etc. Because t was a while since i downloaded it, i looked for a new one, and got the latest one. I was amazed to find that it had seperate timelines for each individual limb and body part. I have made a few poses for my sceen capture session tomorow, and am quite pleased with wat i have done. I am now used to it, and it is actually very easy to do. I am just delighted they sorted the problem out with the keyframes etc. It is much better, tho u cant see the individual frames, u will know because the time slider snaps to each one. So for my final thing i will have custom animations. I am very happy.

interviews and windlight-2 blogs in one

Well i was very happy with my interviewing of fellow class mates, even tho, when i finished interviewing luke, he asked me if he shud send elf in, and i felt like a tutor,lol. Once i got all the footage together i realised that i was gunna have a lot of work to do to edit it all down. I got loads of interesting matterial, probably over half an hours worth. There were a lot of stuff which was great for advertisement purposes and loads of funny stuff, but i have only 2 mins, which is not a lot, when u got a lot of interviewd stuff with loads of questions etc, i just have to cut loads of stuff and only feature like 3 of the 6 or 7 questions that i asked people. But of the selected answers i chose, i feel its the best arangement, for the brief. Theres been certain answers that have been heavily edited, due to pauses, and uming and erring, to get that extra time. I mean, as well as that i have to feature some live action, which i havnt filmed yet, and the final crit is in 3 days!!!It shudnt be too much of a problem tho, cause i know what i want, and its only very quick, maybe a few seconds.
Also the newly founded 'Windlight' an alternative SL client, is so awesome, it features amazing water and amazing skies with editable cloud cover and sea colour!!, its so koool!!! its yet suposed to feature in the normal secondlife client, so its kind of a massive beta test at the moment. Oh so just to let u know, i am filming the sl bits in Windlight.

Edirol R-09

These little devices are so kool and inoitive technology, i borrowed one from the bloke in the dungeon and they are soo good, regarding recording sound, u can set em for the sensitivity of the mic etc, dependent on where you are, conditions etc. I initially borrowed it to record some interviews etc for my moving image brief. What i learnt from the wee device was that it can be set to record people in a room, and only them, even if there is background noise going on. I decided to take it to a gig, last thursday, sneaked it in, and recorded the entire 'Within Temptation' gig (didnt record the support-cause they were shite- they were the 69 eyes and were total dicks, looked like a combination of motley crue, with sound-a-like of HIM and the lead singer looked like vince noir from mighty boosh).
Anyway, i concealed the device in my coat pocket and wraped a few tissues and stuff round it to difuse it. And guesss what it worked really nice. I was very impressed, next time im going to have a more of a professional approach, like make a wind sock or something.lol

Machinia vs Frag Video

I found this really good video, which is of course a machinima made film, but ilustrating the few points, when it comes to ameatur film making, some people just film how 'elite' they are and 'awesome' they are. But they are just filming something to show off, but there si no actual plot or inteligience involved in them. Where as machinima involves many people working together to create a movie, all in digital and use of existing matrials.

Second Human Life!

Well i havnt had chance to start working on our new brief, so ive just been looking around at videos and found a rather funny viral style ad which involves people pretending to be avatars in second life. This of which was something that i did for a joke, and thought it wud be funny to do something like this,looks like someone else thought of it. Im still gunna do sumot similar tho, in a sepeate project maybe.