Learning Machinima – Public Health in Second Life, the Video

I have for some months been observing Anne Perorazio explore and develop skills as a machinima artist and videographer. Initially Anne thought this was going to be easier than it ended up being. A year ago I had partnered with the School of Dentistry to make a machinima video about science in Second Life. I had taken all the machinima clips, recorded the voiceover (without a script), delivered these to the producer and videographer for final editing, and we had a final product in just about exactly three days from when we agreed to do it. That made it look easy, but it isn’t really as easy any more.
A huge part of what made it easier for me was working with the team, with Sharon Grayden as producer making all the hard decisions, and especially having access to Dan Bruell, a very experienced video editor. It also made it easier that, at that time, that the Second Life browser on the Macintosh supported recording video without needing an external application. That is no longer true, and while the command remains available in the browser it does nothing but cause a crash.
Anne was faced with a very different set of technological challenges and had available very different resources. She negotiated for Camtasia, and a new computer; took classes on video capture and video editing; explored locations in Second Life as possibilities for the shoots; worked with Gillian as a producer to come up with a specific plan for the purpose and message of the video. When the script was agreed upon, Anne also did the voiceover and edited that into the video edit. Much of this required doing things over, and over, and over as part of the learning curve. Gillian provided oversight, coherence, vision, and functioned as a producer for the project.
Personally, I am enormously impressed with the production quality of the final effort as well as the elegance with which the content was selected and quilted together into a coherent whole with a very worthwhile message. Bravo to both Anne and Gillian!
MBlog: UM HSL: Second Life and Public Health Video: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/hsl/archives/2008/08/second_life_and.html
Click here to view the high quality Quicktime video version in a browser window.
Alternatively, you can watch the low resolution version from YouTube below.