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. :)