One of the many different things I want to learn now in SL is machinema. I’ve always wanted to, but now I have time to try and play with it. So when Carol told me that she was preparing an workshop on e-security, I immediately offered for filming: a way to practice some of the tricks I’ve learnt in a workshop Misy brought me to, and a way of returning a favour to Carol, who made me thousands of them.
Let’s see what I’ve learnt with this experience:
- I’ve learnt a lot about e-safety and children and the internet.
For me it was very interesting and very useful.
- Interface visible or not?
I decided to film with the interface visible because this is not a movie. This recording documents a workshop, and therefore it was right to record everything that goes on on the screen (i.e. teleporting, notecards with questions, chat of a discussion, etc.) This material will be probably used to show how workshops are in SL to those who do not know anything of the metaverse.
- There is no need to record the whole thing: chosen bits are better.
The first day I filmed everything with Fraps, and added voice at the film. The huge resulting files all my HD (and my Pc was threatening awful and scary actions if I did not find a solution.. and quickly). Therefore, I was not able to record the second part of the workshop, crashed, and.. most important, when I saw the material I saw that most of the recording was not necessary. I mean. Nobody is going to torture its audience with a 90 minutes film of people discussing on a given topic. In my opinion, a good film of this kind is 2-6 minutes long.
- Voice? Better keep it separate.
As well, we saw that when cutting the scenes, if the voice is in the same file, it gets cut. Much better to have it on a separate file recorded with Audacity: keeps files leaner and gives more freedom when producing the video.
- If you know what’s next, better.
At the beginning of each session, Carol told me more or less the program (video? Discussion in the sky? Etc). That allowed me to think a bit on the best way to render it.
- And now? How do I send it?
Even in shorter bits and without sound, the resulting files are very big. I had to compress them before sending. Very good the election of dropbox: it spared us much time and it’s easy to use.
