As you may know, I have released in 2014 the HD Video System that lets you watch movies in Second Life. Four years later, in summer 2018, I have released the RemVision system that also lets you watch movies except its screen is worn and can be locked, and it is more a restraint than an entertainment system. But both let you watch movies and what's more, make your own and possibly sell them !
However, making a movie is not a trivial task, it takes time and money and requires a lot of creativity because you have to be the director, producer and usually at least one of the actors. Having created a lot of movies myself, mostly erotic movies, I have learned as I went, developed new techniques, and I am happy to share my knowledge with you in this tutorial that will be so long that it spans over several blog posts. This is the introduction to this series of tutorials.
The HD Video System comes with a notecard named "Director's Manual". It's long, it's comprehensive, sometimes very technical, it's a manual. A manual tells you what you can do and how to do it, but a tutorial leads you by the hand from a fresh start to a finished product. Both are necessary, I think, to really grasp a complex product and become an expert at it. Think of a manual as a map to find your way through a maze, and a tutorial as a solution to said maze. It won't lead you to all the possible rooms, it will simply give you the quickest way to a certain result you want to achieve.
Here I will try to do a little bit of both. I won't make a whole movie and lead you through it from A to Z (that would be 100% tutorial, 0% manual), and I won't just say what you can do and how to do it (that would be 100% manual, 0% tutorial). I will do both, showing you how I do X and why, for example how many zoom levels you need depending on what you are shooting, or how to synchronize animations, etc. Think of these tutorials as tips and tricks for every situation one can think of.
I also provide for free some of the tools I made for myself (like the glow HUD, the video frame HUD etc) at my shop to help you through it.
What is a movie ?
The word "movie" will be employed a lot in this tutorial, so it is important to be clear about its meaning. Here, a movie is not one you watch on your real life TV, nor a YouTube video (or Vimeo or DailyMotion or Netflix or anything like that).
A movie here refers to a set of SL textures, sounds and subtitles that are displayed sequentially. A tape contains all those items and the Track scripts in it are in charge of retaining their UUIDs and to serve them to the TV screen inside Second Life when appropriate (i.e. when the player asks them to). In other words, it is like a slideshow, although parts of it may be animated and have sound, plus text. It's a story told with still and animated pictures. Which is exactly what a movie is.
This means that all the pictures you see on the TV or RemVision screen come from Second Life and not from anywhere else. The usual way in Second Life to watch a movie or listen to music is to tune your viewer to an external media source, which will be played over a particular texture, if the media is a video. Typically that's what most SL televisions do, although some now use media-on-a-prim to do that, but the result is the same. The consequences of this technique are :
- You don't control what you connect to, the source could be potentially malicious (that's how your IP is given away to malicious servers, for example).
- You don't control how long the video/music will be available so you can't really sell content.
- You can't be sure that your friends are watching the same scene as you are at any given time, so you can't really comment on what's going on without spoiling it for the others.
With the HD Video System and RemVision, all the points above do not apply as all the data come from the SL region you are in. Nothing comes from any external source, it is all in-world. In other words :
- The data is perfectly safe, you can't compromise a viewer with SL textures, SL sounds or text.
- You control the content and it is not going anywhere, no risk of an external source taking it away from you, if you own a tape you own the data in it (own as in you are able to watch it when you want, that doen't mean you own the intellectual property rights, of course, those belong to the author of the movie).
- You are sure that your friends are watching the same scene as you are at any given time, so you can comment with them without fear of spoiling.
Here is an example to illustrate this. This is the Basic Manual tape for the HD Video System :
And here is a part of its contents, at least for the work version (the one that is not finalized) :
As you can see, it contains scripts, sounds and textures (and also a notecard but you can't see it on this snapshot). This is the data that is served to the player, then in turn to the TV, to play to you when you watch the movie.
Once finalized, the contents of the tape look like this :
The textures, sounds and the notecard have vanished, all their data being contained in the three Track scripts. That's the kind of tape that is sold and watched by users.
So, to recapitulate, a movie is a set of textures (my tapes usually contain 220 to 250 textures average), a movie script, which is a notecard, not to be confused with an SL script which is a program. More about the movie script later.
Why make movies ?
If you're creative and like to tell stories, then you might already have some stories in mind but don't know how to tell them. Or maybe you already did on websites like DeviantArt, for example. Second Life has evolved so much over the years that it now looks better than most video games. I kid you not !
If you look at modern, "next-gen" video games with a realistic setting, they all have materials like Second Life. Some of them render materials better as they are PBR (Physically Based Rendering) while SL is not, but you can still go far with the "spec/gloss" shader model of SL by playing with the lighting.
Mesh bodies and heads are for most of them more defined than the best defined video games characters and even better, they deform along with your shape, as designed with the "Bento" features. Most video games do not allow you to modify both the face and the body shape of your character because it adds a layer of complexity to the rigging of the developed clothes and items. What's more, most video games are designed to let you see your character only from pretty far (think third person shooters where you always see at least half of your character's body) while SL allows you to make closeups.
Of course, all of this is possible if you are willing to spend money to buy quality material. In my case, I use the Maitreya Lara mesh body (plus my Proud Girls for some characters and situations but not always) and the Lelutka Simone 2.0 mesh head. With those two, and with a little taste and patience when adjusting the shape, you can go very far and make very pretty pictures. I also often use my When You're Hot sweat appliers and/or Need For Seed cum appliers when "action" is taking place.
As for the clothes, furniture and structures, a lot of creators in SL are 3D designers in RL so they are pretty skilled, letting you create good scenes as well with professional-level tools. It often doesn't take much to make a good scene. Look at Alis for example, which takes place in a modified Restrained Freedom padded cell during pretty much the whole movie.
So, now that you know that you can make movies in SL, and hopefully know why and have the means and will to go through the amount of work this requires, let's move on to the next question...
Why sell movies ?
This question might sound a little trivial, but the answer can be multiple.
One answer could be "to make money, of course". Honestly, I make movies because not only it is fun to tell stories, but it is also fun to make movies. The creative kind of fun. I don't do this for the money and I don't even think that given the time and money I have invested in them, I will recoup my expenses before long. It can be time-consuming of course, depending on how far you want to go, but I've never found it to be a chore. When I shot Alis, I spent 12 hours a day every day (including weekend) for one week and a half. That's a lot more than I usually take to make movies, but it involved making props and testing stuff, in particular the overlays, so it required a lot of work overall. Plus the movie itself is very long. The same went for New Life. Other movies didn't require so much work but were still fun to make.
Another answer would be "because I value my work and you should too", and that's a better answer in my opinion. Your time is worth money, and people tend to confuse value and price. Usually, the more money you spend to purchase something, the more you value it, regardless of its intrinsic value. Conversely, if you get something for free you tend to look down at it and not necessarily see its value for what it is, but for what it cost you. A good example of this is free software and free art. If you go on DeviantArt, for example, you can look at many very good pictures (taken in SL or otherwise, or drawings, or photographs, whatever) and although you find they are pretty good, you don't spend any money to watch them, so you switch to the next without a second thought. And that's a shame because some of these pictures and stories are really good, required a lot of time and creativity, so they hold a high value. Their price does not represent that at all.
Speaking of DeviantArt, some pictures have full stories attached to them, and some stories come without pictures. I find that the story is the lifeblood of the movie, its backbone. Take away the pictures and you still have a novel. Take away the novel and you have unrelated, random pictures (even if they are very good). In my experience, people tend to like stories a lot more than pictures and comment stories a lot more than text-less pictures, unless those are very original. Once again, it takes time (but no money) to write a good story, and your time must be valued.
Of course, nothing keeps you from making a movie and giving it away for free !
How to sell movies ?
Well this one is easy. Second Life has its Marketplace on which you can buy and sell products, purchases being made mainly in L$. All you have to do is put the textures, sounds and notecard(s) inside a HD Video System tape and follow the instructions from the Director's notecard and you're all set. I don't need to repeat them here, the instructions are straightforward and easy to follow, it's just a technical step to take after having spent most of your time into making the actual movie.
You don't actually need to own the HD Video System to make a movie, all you need to own is an empty tape and I'll gladly give you one if you ask me (Marine Kelley) in IM and don't want to buy a video system. I recommend having the video system or the RemVision system though, in order to test your movie during its making, otherwise you won't really know what you are selling.
How to make movies ?
Now THIS is the actual question, and this is the whole point of this series of tutorials. This is also where the introduction ends and the interesting stuff begins.
Are you ready ?
Let's go...
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