Student Panel Presentation for Virtual Center for Archives and Records Management Colloquium Series.

1. Creating Displays of Virtual
Objects and Events
Marie Vans
(amvans.Lapis
March 5, 2014

2. This: and this:
•
Why Should we care?
Are now This: And This:

3. Documenting Virtual Worlds
• Objects you build exist only in your inventory
or in the VW environment if pulled out
• No other way to back up your work in-world
– Except maybe give copies to another avatar
• Other VW programs may let you import/export
objects, but generally not in SecondLife

4. What if we want to re-create it?
Intricate Builds Modified over time
Similar Experiences & Events

5. Capturing Spontaneous Events
Jousting Dance
Meeting new friends Saying Good-bye

6. Document Builds
The Butcher The Baker
The Candlestick User?

7. Capturing Your Work
Books about Tudor Architecture Book that can be thumbed through
Artifacts related to the Tudor Era A Machinima documenting the Renaissance
Faire

8. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of
Photography
• Default Mode: Take pictures using your in-
world camera where ever you go and save
them to your hard drive.
– In-world events
– Field trips
– Your own builds
– Other people’s builds
– Your environment
– Whatever you might want to keep a record of.

9. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of Photography
• Use a video screen-capture program to record events
real-time
– Not very easy if you have to interact heavily
• Especially the free-version of Fraps where you
have to hit F9 every 30 seconds.
– Can freeze your system and you won’t be able to
move easily in-world
– Try very hard to get the back of your head out of the
picture – learn how to use mouse-view and your
keyboard to move the camera around

10. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of Photography
• Things I learned the hard way:
– Forgetting to turn off button clicks and ambient sound in
preferences.
– Getting rid of unnecessary windows (like mini-map,
minimized inventory)
– Turning off notifications (“A hot new outfit has been
released by….”)
– Turning off tags when there are a lot of avatars in the
picture.
– Pan around to keep it interesting, it becomes boring if you
use the same angle and focus for the whole shoot.
• Remember
– You probably won’t use all the footage you take
• BUT…you can’t add back what you don’t have

11. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of
Photography
• Editing
– Get a good video editing program so you can cut your
head out of the picture in the event it shows up.
– Put photos, into an order that makes sense, such as the
correct sequence of an event…tell a story
– Mix it up – try interspersing photos with video.
– ADD Titles – it helps the viewer figure out what they are
looking at
– Get an audio recording/editing program (like Audacity)
– Give everyone credit
• If you use royalty free music, make sure to give the artist
credit and add the URL so viewers can find it for
themselves.

12. A final message
–Videos and photos can be kept outside of
the VW environment
• YouTube, Vimeo, Picassa, Facebook,
other Social networks
• But… no guarantee your favorite social
network will still exist in 3-5 years
• So…keep copies of your photos and
videos backed up on your own computer
&/or storage devices