SL Cert - Basic Machinima

Introduction: Machinima Skills for Second Life

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to create and maintain a list of essential skills and tools that are required to successfully create Machinima projects in Second Life.

Skills Overview

Overall certification should require the basic understanding of pre-production requirements, production requirements, and post-production requirements. These include, but are not necessarily limited to, the use of camera techniques, recording techniques, and broadcasting in Second Life.

1. Pre-production: all those skills required to prepare for a machinima project before filming starts. These include storyboarding, location settings, scripts, actor preparations, costumes, licensing arrangements, and such.

2. Production: all those skills required to actually film the project. These include shooting scripts, direction, voice and audio recording, lip synch, lighting, puppeteering, animation, special effects (in world), camera skills, file saving, and such.

3. Post-production: all those skills required to actually edit and release the final film for end user viewing. These include, video editing techniques and software, audio post, motion graphics, titling, file types, distribution options (web, DVD, etc.) and such.

(Links to topics which can be found in this wiki will be added)

Software Skills

The primary software package that will be required is the Second Life viewer and all the features related to the area of machinima. This includes use of built-in recording capabilities, screen snaps, camera usage, camera controls, environment and local lighting, audio, in world text usage or removal, how to include or exclude HUD's and the UI, and more.

Other software skills that can be considered part of this topic include external editors such as iMovie, Final Cut, Premiere, Photoshop, Gimp, Motion, YouTube, Flash, Quicktime, Avid, Audio editors (Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Neundo, Digital Performer, Peak, Sonar), Dreamweaver, Silverlight, and such. This list will be refined over time and is not meant to be an exclusive list at this time.

External relevant certifications that can be considered part of this topic include: Apple Pro Certification (Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio, Aperture), Adobe Certification (Premiere, Photoshop, Flash, et al), Avid Certification (Avid, Pro Tools) and such.

Technical Skills:

This area will also require knowledge in certain technical areas. These include understanding file types (.mov, avi, etc.), compression, network streaming, and such.