Monday, March 21, 2011

Continuity

As we start to edit the 2nd episode of our spy thriller we discovered we need to reshoot a scene (because we forgot to move the mouse out of the way...see the checklist I posted earlier).  The problem is I can't remember exactly what i was wearing.

In machinima, just as in RL video productions, continuity is important. There are at least three ways to deal with it. I'd say consider a combination of steps. I"m going to be doing steps one and two frm now on.

1. Take still photos. That gives you a sense of where things were in the shot, where th ecamera was. You can save them to the hard drive (costs nothing) and share them with the crew on flickr or in a google doc.
2. Save the outfit in your inventory. Give it a name like name of production, name of scene or location, maybe the date of the shoot. The new viewers just put links to the clothing into the outfit so it doens't increse the size of your inventory. Be sure to include any props or specialized HUDS you have attached to you in the shot.
3 Create a notecard and write down the names of things you were wearing and any notes about the scene. This is a good technique especilaly if you're using a viewer that doesn't use the new folder structure. This wil keep copies of clothing from cluttering up your inventory.

No comments: