I spoke with Jackson Redstarof https://www.youtube.com/c/jackson-redstar. He is a seasoned SL resident with a little
bit of experience in almost everything.
He is now one of the hottest videographers in SL posting music videos
with original choreography, SL Events [such as weddings] and some SL
Advertising. I will ask him about some
of his work and his ideas in our interview. I wonder how many of you had seen or heard of
machinma and do not know what it is…we will be speaking about that today
too. Let’s welcome Jackson.
Seersha
Heart: Jackson, thank you for
agreeing to share your art with the readers of SL Enquirer.
Jackson: Thank you for interviewing me
Seersha
Heart: I learned of your videography
when a facebook friend shared your Comfortably Numb video. I visited your youtube page and I was blown
away by your diversity and the sheer volume of your work. Of course, I subscribed to your page right
away. Let’s begin with something basic
to help the readers get to know you. How
did you originally come to live in SL?
Any experience you wish to share?
Jackson: I came in SL in 2007, when it
was featured on a CSI NY show had to go check it out and never left. I've done
all sorts of things over the years from combat RP to western RP where I RP'd as
a Native American, I spent over year here as a big ole fat bear, I tried
building a bit built a few houses back in the day then got into photography
when I finally had a strong enough laptop to handle the load
Seersha: When did you first begin filming
in SL? Do you film in other virtual
worlds?
Jackson:
I believe it was about 2 years ago or so I started getting into the filming,
and at the time I used Windows Movie Maker, then I decided I wanted to shoot
weddings as I was already photographing them, so I sat down and learned Adobe
Premiere.
I
did, I believe, (create) the first ever
music video in Sansar, Queensryche - Silent Lucidity. Not a big fan of Sansar,
yet. While graphically amazing, it is just all set. The user can't change
anything in the environment and the cam controls arrgh!
Seersha: Sansar has so far been “the greatest thing
that isn’t” to me. All those
promises. Getting back to you, from what
I was able to see on your youtube page, this is a business of yours in rl and
sl. Do you have an sl store or location
people may visit?
Jackson:
I used to in RL do Real Estate photography on the side though not any more. As
far as a store here, no, all my work relies on word of mouth. My 'store' is
youtube and flickr.
Seersha: Tell me about the computer you use for
filming. It is my understanding to film
as you do requires a durable computer. What kind of computer are you running
on? Will you share the software you use?
Jackson:
I used to do my work on a pretty strong Dell laptop, but it really struggled
shooting weddings and got very hot, so I decided I needed a desktop. Here I
have to thank Strawberry Signh I have been a follower of her for a while and
she wrote a piece on what her computer was with all the components, so I
basically followed her list and built my desktop. In a nutshell, it is a core
i7, 16 gigs of ram and a Nvidia GTX 970, and I use 2 monitors, a 27” inch ISP,
and a standard 23” inch monitor.
For
editing and color grading, I currently use Adobe Premiere Pro, and sometimes
use After Effects. Used to use SpeedGrade for colorizing, but sadly Adobe
jettisoned that and put it all inside of Premiere.
Seersha: Years ago the programs used most for
videography were Fraps and Bandicam.
What requirements does a software need to meet for you to use it?
Jackson:
I uses fraps for screen record. I like software that is reliable and easy to
use with a logical UI. I have been using Adobe since we installed photoshop
with like 15 disks, so all of their software the UI is roughly the same so it
is easy to learn a new Adobe product.
Seersha: What does it mean to capture pictures in
SL? Will you explain the process of what
you are recording?
Jackson:
Well, in Fraps, you record the entire active screen, so you need to set your
screen size to the appropriate ratio. for full 16:9 HD, that is 1920x1080, and
that setting is found in the advanced menu. I also use what is known as a
virtual flycam that works like a 3D mouse, but uses the keyboard to move the
cam. It was a beta when I installed it, and it appears the guy who created it
gave it up. But on that I can turn off the HUDS and UI for recording,
otherwise, you need to use keyboard shortcuts to do that.
Optimally
I want to get at least 12fps so I can move the camera smoothly - often at
weddings that isn't possible. Movies are usually set at either 30 or 24 fps.
Recording our screen of SL we are basically taking x amount of snapshots per second so if a sim
will give you 30fps, it is taking 30 snapshots per second and everything should
be pretty smooth. If I want to do some slomo in post, it needs to get up to
about 60 fps at least for smooth slomo in post. But lag is almost present, so I
have to work with what I got. The more lag the slower I can move the cam
without jitter. Sometimes just a still video then I can scale up a little in
post to give the appearance of a slow zoom in.
Because
I use the software flycam, often I need to set up the shot first, get the right
angle zoom in turns, etc then record it, or in some cases I might be zooming
through a scene and do the turns and adjust height etc on the fly. Not nearly
as easy as using a 3D mouse to do that kind of camera work.
Then
there is the whole issue of poses and animations and body parts going through
things and other people, clothing breaking in some poses etc... so the angles
have to be chosen carefully to hide that or at least minimize it if I can. I use one HUD that can change the pose of an
avi on a pose, works even on animated poses as long as the priority isn't too
high. I also use the Lumi Pro Hud a lot, for either lites on an avi that can be
worn or using the projector lamps which can be used to add color lights in a
scene or spotlight an avi. They can be either rezzed or attached to the avi.
Seersha: I can tell that your process is second nature
to you now. It sounds complicated to
me. I recently worked with a
photographer on a full-blown shoot. I
had no idea all the items that had to be “just right” to take the
pictures. Makes my screen shots seem a
bit lazy :) On your YouTube page, are
the types of things you will record and upload for viewing?
Jackson:
Being on youtube, of course, cannot be anything adult. Even though I may have
had the occasional accidental nip slip (woops). But I enjoy doing music videos,
sometimes they are just fun, others I try to weave a story into it. And I
really do like doing wedding videos for couples. I like to be able to capture
their special virtual day for them and they can watch it and share it any time
with people outside of the virtual world. Some of the comments I get, usually
from brides, makes it all worthwhile.
Besides
that, I also have been doing adverts for some vendors and events
Seersha: How long does it take for you to edit a, say,
wedding you film?
Jackson:
That can all vary on the wedding but usually a few hours. The couple select the
music track they want used and how many songs, then I edit to the music. But
editing film from SL is 2 parts - the editing of the footage, then color
grading. I like to get it about 95% what I want inworld, I create a new
windlight for every wedding I do, then enhance it further in color grading. And
until just recently, uploading has always been a nightmare. My broadband upload
speed was painfully slow, like 85kbs, which is barely faster than 1990s dial
up, so a 8 minute video could take at least 7 hours to upload. I've shot a
couple hour long events for people that took almost 4 days to upload!
Seersha:
GASPS
Jackson: Music videos that can be a whole
different story. I always edit to the music, but some is simple editing and
simple cuts, and some are really wild like with my Physcosocial by Slipnot
video. I tend to do a lot more color grading in music videos as well to try to
set a particular mood or feeling for that scene.
Seersha: My favorites on your page is Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd Second Life and Blue Ain’t Your Color Second Life. What drew me to Blue was the name and then I
look and it is in black and white.
Clever! I would consider Blue to
be artistic, not really a music video.
Will you tell me a little about this video? The inspiration?
Jackson:
Well I was thinking what other genres of music I could do, I really am a metal
head, so was searching country music and heard this song. When I listen to some
songs I might get a story pop up in my mind and I start piecing it together
mentally. Keith Urban shot that in BW and that sparked the idea, never having
done a SL music video in BW before, which believe me, is much harder than you
would think. After that it was recruiting an actress (I was the mean jerk BF in
that video) and finding animations - which can be one of the most
time-consuming parts to creating a music vid. I have a pretty big inventory of
LMs so I already had some locations in mind. And often when shooting I'll
listen to the music over and over. I'm not a storyboarder - everything is in my
head.
Seersha: Sounds like you have a full head
**laughs**. What viewer do you use? Is Black Dragon(BD) your favorite?
Jackson:
I used to use Black Dragon all the time, back even when it was Nirans. But I
think a lot of the recent changes in SL made it a little more unstable, and for
doing machinima Firestorm's phototool panel is first rate. I crashed a couple
times at a wedding on BD so after that it was always Firestorm. I go back now
and then and use BD and it seems it has been updated a lot, it is, in my
opinion, still better graphics, the shadow system is better and DOF is better,
and of course there is Tone Mapping which is fantastic when shooing really dark
scenes. But my everyday viewer and Weddings is Firestorm. But again, knowing
how to do color grading in post, I can enhance the look of any footage so the
advantages BD may have graphically is more 'straight out of the camera'.
Seersha: How would you define machinma? Videography in SL? Just an example for a simple thinker like
myself.
Jackson: I personally dislike the word
machinima. It sounds steam punkish. To me, this is videography. We might not
have the actual camera, but we can change the camera lens zoom like in RL, we
can add fill lighting, zoom, pan and
sweep the camera - almost
everything one would do in RL videography.. And of course one advantage here is
that at weddings, we can sit in the back row, get great footage, and not be in
anyone's way or annoy the officiant!
Seersha: I take videos in world using Quicktime screen
capture. Would it be any value to edit
and to process it? It is probably the
worst quality.
Jackson: I tried camtasia early on I just
didn't like the whole interface. For some it works perfectly. I just prefer
Fraps as it is very light, easy to use, and captures standard .avi files, which
is uncompressed video footage. But those would be the only 2 programs I tried
for capture here.
Almost
all footage needs to be edited in some fashion to make a final video. And yes
to have the ability to do some minor color correction as brightness,
contrast, temperature would be nice too.
I sometimes help someone who vlogs and uses Camtasia studio - and while 99% of
the videos turn out great as she uses good windlight in world, on some rare
occasions when color correction is needed that is not available in that
software. There are some other editors i have looked at that do those basic
functions at a fraction of the cost of using Adobe software.
Seersha: I have one last question for you, at least
for now. Is there anything, advice,
information, that you would like to pass along to our readers?
Jackson:
I wish more people did video in SL. It seems vastly under appreciated.
Everybody does photos and there are hundreds of awesomely talented
photographers, but not very much in the way of video. And sadly, the most
popular SL videos are the lame trolling videos. We are seeing more and more
videos now as vlogging has started taking off which is great.
But
keep in mind that what sometimes can take RL CGI people months to create a
'virtual world' or colorize a film in a unique way, a lot of that is at our
fingertips in SL. We can create almost any avi we need, we can defy gravity, we
can jump off of the tallest skyscraper and never break a leg. We can create the
atmosphere and lighting to almost anything we can dream up. We may be limited
with the ability to "act" and we have to find animations for
everything, but Bento is now getting the acting up to speed. I'd like to see
more people give video a shot makes it as big as photography is today in SL.
And that right now can also be one of the frustrating parts of doing video in
SL, is putting all the time and effort and even money into doing a vid, for it
to get maybe 200-300 views. There is editing software out there that is really
good and not nearly as expensive as Adobe software and tons of tutorials on
youtube on all aspects of video editing and color grading as well.
And
I wanted to add one more thing about Youtube and copyrighted music as there is
so much misinformation about this. Youtube has an extensive database of almost
every song one can think of and have a policy for usage rights that the
copyright owner sets. Just search for the song then look at its usage rights.
Most will be viewable worldwide. Some might restrict certain countries and
oddly enough, on certain devices like mobile phones, and very few are not
permitted to use at all. No need to say anything in the description, Youtube's
Content Aware knows exactly what music that was uploaded and sets the policy
for it. The link is https://www.youtube.com/music_policies.
Of course, one can always use attribution music which there is a lot out there,
just give the artist credit in the description.
Seersha: Thank you for chatting with me today. So you heard him readers; let’s check out
some video taken in SL then give it a try ourselves.
Contact Info:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackson.redstar
Twitter:
@jacksonredstar
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