Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Students then posted their suggestions in the
blog. Most disappointing was the post by a stu-
dent who suggested several venues he had found
for the production. Since I thought I had made
it clear that the Greek Theatre (the one used for
class meetings) had been built for that express
purpose, I was a bit dismayed by that response.
Also, one student went on at length about special
effects for the opening, which of course is narrated
by Dionysus but doesn't actually take place, so
there is no need for a lightning bolt to kill Semele,
for example.
More useful was the student suggestion that,
“The avatar playing Pentheus might be able to
change his opacity (some script should be able to
do this) so he can be a little transparent when the
character dies, and just have him wander around
as a ghost.” Although we did not implement this,
it was an intriguing idea. More useful was the
suggestion that, “Tiresias should have his eyes
whited out because he is blind”; the avatar used
for Tiresias did in fact have all-white eyes.
In general, however, the students were not
successful with this assignment. Only six of the
twenty posted a suggestion, and the results were
quite mixed. In addition to the examples mentioned
above, one reiterated the idea of sparkles, but of-
fered nothing new. From this, I would surmise that
most of them never really absorbed the conventions
of SL in order to properly fulfill the assignment.
personal laptops. However, two students based
their final projects around Second Life.
One student wrote a short cinematic piece
in which he was searching for a friend in SL.
He visited several locations, and captured video
from each place. Because one location displayed
scripted weather (lightning and rain), he added
sound effects behind the dialogue. Utilizing the
conventions of SL, his avatar sat in an animated
chair, waiting, and then teleported to other lo-
cations. Dubbing in a voiceover for his mental
process (Where is the friend? Where should he
look for him?), the audience could easily follow
the action. The climax of the piece occurred
when his friend appeared, clearly falling from a
great height and splatting to the ground next to
him. Of course, there was no damage done to the
post-human, non-corporeal avatar, and so the new
arrival stood up, looked at his friend, and they
flew off to drink together at a club, to end a well
put-together piece.
A second student chose to do a “live” perfor-
mance. First, the student loaded songs she had com-
posed into her iTunes. Then, from her residence
hall room, she played the songs via Simplecast,
a software application that encodes audio in real
time for streaming over the Internet. (There are a
variety of such programs, including IceCast, and
Nicecast on the Macintosh platform.) While con-
nected to both SL and to the audio stream I had
rented and provided for the purpose, she was able
to play the role of DJ for her music. The songs she
played were of two different types: techno-style
instrumentals and other, vocal, works. For the
former, she stood behind the DJ booth, and the
booth animated her gestures to hold the headset
to her ear and touch the spinning turntables; for
the latter, she mounted the stage and stood be-
hind the microphone, while that object animated
her to hold the mic on the stand and move as if
singing. The audience consisted of myself, the
other students in the class, my TA Meghamora,
Persephone Phoenix (a longtime supporter of the
arts in SL and a member of the FFRC Board), and
THe FINAL STeP
For the final assignment in Theatre Technology,
students could choose from a variety of projects,
from audio only to short videos to a live SL perfor-
mance. SL could be integrated into many of these
projects, through performance and video capture,
creating what are called Machinima (or machine
cinema, films created within a virtual world). Many
of the students opted out of the virtual world for
their final projects, again due to the limitations
of the hardware within the classroom or on their
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