Video Streaming on the Collective Island

With our college getting a Quicktime Streaming Server up and running, I can finally look at some ideas of how to combine Live Video with Second Life activities.
Certainly it starts opening up the opportunity of broadcasting live performance works at the college into a SL gallery context, as well as RL/SL mashup performances.
I certainly want to look at ways of getting the students to take ownership of it - as a way of creating live shows / and mixed reality events.

What's good is the server is constantly on ( well if it doesn't crash ) - and the streams are accessible from outside the college firewall. Presently live broadcasts have to be done from within the college, so we'll have to see if in the future we can get access to the Quicktime server when we're offsite.

Something I'm quite excited about exploring in the future, is how it can also be tied into Life Long Learning & Creative Industry events - by streaming guest speakers from the college into SL - to be accessible by far a field Alumni, and 'friends' of the college who can't attend in RL.

Anyway , that's the new toy to play with for a while....

Exploring Shot Composition Basics with SL

I've played with creating some Photography Grid HUD's before, and I thought I'd refine it into a post comparing two classic principles.

Rule of Thirds



The Rule of Thirds, is the division of the frame into equal thirds vertically and horizontally. The intersection of the lines are considered focus of interests, and the lines themselves can help balance out the element of the shot.



The focus of interest here is the face - which falls into the topright intersection. The body ( mainly head and spine ) falls on the right vertically third. and the ground lies along the bottom third.



The Final Shot -
more info on Rule of Thirds here


Dynamic Symmetry



Dynamic Symmetry is based on the Golden Section. Draw lines diagonally from each corner of the frame, then draw lines perpendicular to the first lines that go back to the opposite corners. Again the intersections of the lines are the hotspots of interest.



Again the focus of interest is the face, falling into the top right intersection. The body falls vertically between the two areas of interest, and the ground runs through the areas of interest on the bottom.



The Final Shot.
Some further info on Golden Section / Phi 1.618 here -
and quite a creepy video on Golden Mean here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zWivbG0RIo

With either principle of composition, it is important to keep things simple - particularly having only ONE focus of interest.

Personally I prefer the dynamic symmetry layout - which seems more visually exciting when applied to a HD video framing.

Design for Digital Media - End of Year Show 2009 in Second Life

Now open to the public - The Collective Island is host to the Leeds College of Art's - End of Year Show for the BA(Hons) Design for Digital Media course..



In the studio building, you can find examples of Development work and Screenshots from Final Year Project work, plus links to their web-portfolios.



Streaming in the second room of the studio building, is a 15 min showreel of Moving image work... on it you'll find a Personal tale about Epilepsy, 3D Animation, and Music Videos...
plus its got a nifty reflective floor... :)



The big part of the SL exhibition is the work of Jetsunami Duell ( Rob Kirk in RL ) - who's built a half sim medieval city inspired by the Discworld books. It is designed for Virtual World Community Role players, as opposed to being a game level. The work has its own distinct look - with all textures been hand rendered... giving it a cartoony look...

The Show will be up for several weeks, but once is gone - it'll be gone... wiped clean for a new semester of teaching.

SLURL - http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Collective/189/33/36