The Experience of Film Production in Collaborative Virtual Environments

This paper describes an experience of collaborative project development using Second Life (SL) as the interaction media. SL is a virtual environment in which people can interact with each other through avatars. The group task involved the elaboration, planning and production of 1-minute movies. The task was conducted within a graduate course during two months. Participants were graduate students without previous experience in Second Life and in cinema techniques. Analysis based on the 3C collaboration model permitted a better understanding of advantages, limitations and challenges for collaborative work in 3D environments. Our observations included group meetings for definition and elaboration of the screenplay, creation and characterization of the characters, setting and description of the scenes, filming, editing, sound recording and documentation.