SL Cert - Basic Machinima

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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 skills required to prepare for a machinima project before filming starts. These include:

  • Storyboarding
  • Location settings
  • Scripts (as in "film scripts")
  • Actor preparations
  • Costumes
  • Licensing arrangements


2. Production:

All skills required during the filming the project. These include

  • Shooting scripts
  • Direction
  • Voice and audio recording
  • Lip synch
  • Lighting
  • Puppeteering
  • Animation
  • Special effects (in world)
  • Camera skills
  • Frame rate utilization
  • FPS and codecs
  • File management
  • Still imaging

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)

Levels

There are three levels of certification possible:

Level One: Demonstrate the basic skills necessary to produce short machinima. This level will not include lip-synching.

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.

Software skills that are part of this topic include:

Video and Graphics Editors

  • iMovie
  • Final Cut Pro
  • Color
  • Compressor
  • Motion
  • Shake
  • Premiere
  • After Effects
  • Photoshop
  • Gimp
  • Quicktime
  • Avid

Audio Editors

  • GarageBand
  • Pro Tools
  • Logic
  • Cubase
  • Neundo
  • Digital Performer
  • Peak
  • Sonar
  • Soundtrack Pro


Other Relevant Editing Tools

  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Flash
  • Dreamweaver
  • Silverlight
  • Fraps
  • Snapz Pro X.

This list will be amended over time as new tools come to market.

External relevant certifications that are 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). Others may be considered where relevant.

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.