User:Allen Kerensky

Allen Kerensky

Allen Kerensky writes science-fiction screenplays, creates machinima (machine cinema) in collaboration with Moebius Overdrive, and roleplays in the SecondLife region of Splintered Rock

April 2008 Interview

an interview with machinima maker Allen Kerensky posted to Orange Island by Yesterday Demain on Thursday May 1, 2008, from an interview conducted in-world on Thursday April 17, 2008 by Natty Foggarty

Who is Allen Kerensky?

I am part of a team, with Moebius Overdrive.

What is your background?

Buhbuhcuh Fairchild dared us to do it. It was fun, so we kept on.

How would you define your work?

Impulsive.

What gear & software would you recommend for machinima?

Use the tools that work for you. Try as many as you can lay your hands on, in real projects, preferably side by side, and develop your own toolchain that you are comfortable with for each step in the pipeline. This also helps for future projects to know which tool might fit those projects best, or how to design around harder to work parts of various tools in your pipeline. Personally, I run from Fedora Linux [1], and use free/open source almost exclusively, and hoping nVidia will open source as much of their driver as possible so I can run completely from open source. Open source means you can see exactly what it does, how it does, and make changes if you want. That’s the kind of software I recommend for anything.

Which machinima communities / sources do you follow?

None. Why chase after others at all when you can follow your own vision. If someone follows you, great, be willing to help them. This is why I would rather teach, or do, than talk about myself and machinima in general.

What are your favorite SL Machinima pieces?

I am jealous of “Better Life” [2] by Robbie Wright because he did everything I ever wanted to do with machinima before I thought to do it, in this one film. I am also jealous of Aimee Weber pieces like “Tour of the Solar System” [3] that nail the true power of machinima for educational and other inspiring uses, so elegantly.

Do you have a “machinima trick” you’d like to share ?

The main trick is entirely mental. You have to WANT to step outside of your comfort zone, ignore the fact that you are beating software into delivering your vision even when it doesn’t want to, and accept the challenge of getting to the finish despite the aggravation. Just like real life. You can’t do it, if you don’t try.

What’s on your machinima-made-easier wishlist?

Everyone always says facial animation, which would help a lot of folks who make movies that need faces, so I agree. I like robots more, which don’t need faces, so my personal choice is to incorporate Celtx [4], and its Tadpole extensions to Mozilla, into the browser built into the Viewer. The client is open source, so it should be possible, but I am not that much of a C++ programmer myself.

What are your upcoming projects?

Ed Wood Film Festival [5] 2008?

Website(s)

Moebius Overdrive's Lunadude.com [6]

Video sites where your films can be seen (URLs):

Archives - Blip.TV [7]

START (2006) - Machinima.com [8]

SL Locations featuring contents you made:

Tabletop Gamer’s Space, Old Town (194, 87, 36) [9] [10] is where I setup my experimental table to play pen-and-paper RPGs using this as a virtual tabletop.

-- original available at Orange Island [11]

Filmography

• Mad Science Film Festival (2008)
• It Came From The Origin of Where Bad Things Come From (2007)
  • Winner, 2nd place at 3rd Annual Ed Wood Film Festival, 2007.
• A Zombie Stole My Heart (2006)
  • Winner: Worst Film, 2nd Annual Ed Wood Film Festival, 2006.
• SekretMenuz (2006)
  • SL Community Gathering 2006 introduction film.
  • Best story award for Take5 Festival, August 2006.
• START (2006)
  • Critically acclaimed steampunk compared to Isaac Asimov at machinima.com.
• Scream In The Dark of the Night (2005)
  • Winner: Worst Acting and Worst Story, 1st Annual Ed Wood Film Festival, 2005.
  • Featured on the SecondLife homepage for more than a year afterwards.

Crew Credits

• Story developer
• Screenwriter
• Voice actor
• Avatar actor
• Music and sound FX coordination
• LSL scripting
• Final editing

Affiliations

• Alt-Zoom Studios, Lukanida (founding contributor since its inception in September, 2005)
• MachiniMafia, Old Town (under construction)

Tips

• Set your SL Viewer to NTSC or PAL before recording, using the File Menu -> Switch Window Size submenu.
• Enable Advanced Menu with CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D
• Use Advanced Menu -> Debug Settings -> Play Typing Anim -> FALSE to stop people from adding typing sounds to your captures
  • Note: Newer SL Viewers have an Edit Preference for this now.
• Linux users can use xmodmap -e "keycode 67 = F1 F1" to stop Linux from switching to text console when pressing CTRL-ALT-F1.
  • xmodmap -e "keycode 67 = F1 XF86_Switch_VT_1" to restore normal Linux behavior
• Parcel Owners can build huge video walls to use as easily selectable backdrops without requiring you to pay to upload tons of textures.
  • Project quicktime on the media texture as a form of animated rear-projection.
  • Quicktime shows MANY media types as its stream, including still or animated images such as GIF.
• Don't laugh, but the Restrained Life BDSM toolset grants a film-maker fine-grained voice, menu, or even scripted control over an actor avatar's costume, attachments, and even Windlight environment views.
• Roleplaying is a great way to develop character, plot, and story-telling skills.
  • Building a 3D roleplay game in-world requires most of the same skills required for machinima, and provides a way to keep skills sharp between film projects, while having fun.

Hardware Platform

• AMD Athlon X2 64 4000+ (2.1GHz dual-proc) with 4GB RAM and 320GB storage
• nVidia GeForce 8600GT, PCIE, 256MB
• nVidia High-Definiton Audio
• Logitech USB headset microphone
• 3DConnexion Space Navigator

Software Toolbox

• Fedora Linux, 64-bit operating system
• nVidia unified video driver, OpenGL, and GL extensions
• Pulse Audio networked sound engine over ALSA
• OpenSimulator for offworld development and testing
• SL Viewer for rendering
• CoolViewer patches for performance, stability, and the RestrainedLife API
• RecordMyDesktop for video capture (full quality Theora)
• Istanbul for video capture (quick and dirty, low quality Theora)
• byzanz-record for stillframe captures (animated GIF)
• Pitivi for video editing
• Audacity for audio editing
• MPlayer for audio stream capture
• IceCast for audio streaming into SL
• GIMP for building titles and credits

In-World Tools

• Buhbuhcuh Fairchild's Alt-Zoom Machinima Cam, StillCam, Blocking Block, and basic physics scripts
• Geuis Dassin's Filming Path HUD, CamTP HUD, and Motor Mouth for realtime facial animation
• CodeBastard RedGrave's MachinimaCam HUD
• Torley Linden's FollowCam
• RacerX Gullwing's rez-into-place
• Aimee Weber's Storm
• Andrew Linden's Particle System Tool
• Marine Kelley's RestrainedLife BDSM API and tools

Roleplay

• Splintered Rock - an immersive roleplay region where I have contributed build and scripting to since May 2008, inspired by Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterpiece DUNE.
• The 13 best electronic versions of Dungeons & Dragons (March 2008) - the SLH article below was listed as one of the 13 best ways to roleplay D&D electronically
• Scripted Dice Roll Themselves: D&D Comes to SL (October 2006) - original SLH article about Ama Ree, Moebius Overdrive, and myself playing D&D with custom-built map, dice, and NPC speech tools.