My latest time-lapse video, A Day in the Second Life, is now fit for viewing. If you don't see the below movie player, you can view it here @ YouTube. What a doozy this turned out to be! Almost exactly 4,000 still frames captured over the course of 6+ hours, being technically closer to a "Day.5", but that doesn't sound as tidy. One frame was taken every 5 seconds by an automated macro whirring away with the Ctrl-` shortcut for takin' pictures. My hard drive literally grinded as my video editor endeavored to read each and every snapshot in sequential order and condense that span into under 3 minutes. On top of that, I added a light toasting of effects, straining my CPUs further.
Each time I do one of these films, I'm endowed with a little more experience. Added up, it allows me to provide a better incidental viewing experience for my viewers — hopefully you! — and inevitably has me exploring new possibilities.
This installment takes place in Second Life (as always), in the classic Welcome Area. (Same location as my earlier Welcome video.) It happened after I aspired to do an episode shot aboard a certain orange tram, the prematurely-halted results of which you can see the likes of, due to being tossed off ungraciously. It is pretty kewl to see so much in motion, with the vehicle remaining relatively steady in the shot, but given the unstability of said tram, I'll have to wait until I can record at night without getting dropped.
During A Day in the Second Life, I wanted to provide a sense of coziness yet unfamiliarity at the same time: hence the jerky, snowy TV static that begins the affair, and adapts into something smoother and more suitable, piece by piece, until the view is a naked one, as any Resi in Second Life might see — only much faster. I did my fave Ctrl-8 to zoom back in Mouselook, and was also careful to frame the shot to see the moon coming up beautifully. That's a direct tip-of-the-hat to Koyaanisqatsi's own lunar sequence, albeit with more benches and less skyscraper.
Aside from the obvious digital magic and little accents like transitions, the only other thing I added was a light touch of contrast and saturation: you see, video compression, with its inherent degradation of the source material, dulls the artifacted end output, so it's a great idea to add "a little something extra" upfront to compensate.
What really thrilled me is when I awoke and reviewed the captured footage, and witnessed so much vivacious activity just happening: from the swooping dragon to the bubbles floating in the air, to the scintillating particle effects at night to the assorted mix of avatars coming and going, it's such a thrill. Suitably, it was unscripted and the only I input I had into all of this was to sit, record, edit, and playback the unfolding excitement — everyday Second Life!
Having come this way…
I hope this will encourage accomplished machinimakers to produce far more ambitious time-lapse feature-lengths. And if that doesn't happen, I just may have to do it myself. 
Thank you graciously in advance for watching this. 
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I *love* the intro… kind of looks like a surveillance camera coming into focus.
So, I'm trying to figure this out. How did you get this footage? Was it a script you put in a prim or something or did you leave an alt there and have it run a script to take the photos? In any case what's the script for this because I would love to give it a shot sometime.
Yes, "surveillance camera" was exactly the effect I thought of with that initial sequence…a broken one, gradually coming into focus, then fading away to the true-life rendering.
The music is also well-picked…it has a very multilayered, motoric rhythm that keeps the pace moving along, and cycles back just like the day-night cycle does.
Thankyou-thankyou for watching!
Basically, I leave my tester alt, and… any external macro program capable of repetitive, timed keystrokes in an app can do this: generally, I set it to take a picture every X seconds within Second Life.
Alas, we don't have LSL support for taking pictures more integratedly, but it's something I've heard brought up before — I think Koz Farina did — and it sure would be ace.
The surveillance style appeals to me because… I see a lot of machinima that's very glossy and produced, like MTV productions. I love the contrast and those saturated tones, but at the same time, I like "candid"-style, amateur footage. Like the cameras in Big Brother.
Moving in two harmonious directions: SL videos often look bland (intentionally) because video artifacting degrades the already-somewhat-dull tonal palette. It's why I add saturation in post-production.
I've been looking at more plugins and whatnot to give "grit" — what if we could have those sort of visuals realtime in Second Life? I know I've seen it in other games; Deus Ex: Invisible War's botvision sort of comes to mind. There was another game, Stubbs the Zombie, where you can detach your hand, and the handcam is soooo kewl. And of course, classic Metal Gear Solid is an inspiration too.
Erbo, precisely! That's exactly why I selected that piece. It's "the aspergian theme". I'm sure you've also noticed that the steady beat occasionally gets splintered apart and varied, like ball bearings dropping.
Ok, cool. So, being a complete idiot about certain computer things, what would be a good macro program to use for this?
Ah, I like QuicKeys (stems from my Mac days), AutoHotKey (FREE), and PhraseExpress (also FREE for personal use) for this and more SL-related things. There are lots! I bet Lifehacker has more options. Specifically for taking photos, anything which will trigger a keystroke at timer intervals will do. It's that simple.
If you make some kewl movies, lemme know!
Ok, awesome! Thanks!
Arrgghh, it didn't take my comment…Lets start again. It's a few days old, but hey…why not.
IM in UR Camera Stealin UR Framez
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/9902/cat-camera.jpg
I had mean to comment on this a while back (and honestly thought I had) so today I took another gander (goose and cow).
Please don't think I'm ripping on your fun - I always offer up-sides to all the fumbles I see
I just want to be a helpy helperton is all.
@Orchid: I don't know what you mean by "ripping", but I really like the term "helpy helperton"! First time I've ever heard that.
@Shockwave: Looks like that's a feline with an eye for vintage!
@Alexander: Belated you're welcomes!