Silver Bells and Golden Spurs
Complete Making Of

By Eric Call
Senior Artist
Linden Lab

On The Horizon
I came across the story of Silver Bells and Golden Spurs in a book of cowboy poetry several years ago, and after my first reading, I knew I had to make it into a movie.I reread the poem several times, making notes in the margins of the book describing how I might film each stanza. When I finally decided to write a screen play adaptation, the notes proved very useful.

I began to model buildings, props and characters in Maya, but quickly realized I was in over my head; I had neither the time nor the energy to allocate to such a project, so I put the whole project on the back burner.

Then, one of Linden Lab's engineers demoed a QuickTime movie applied to an avatar face mesh. A light bulb lit up in my mind, and I resurrected the screen play from the recesses of my hard drive. What follows is a narrative of the Silver Bells and Golden Spurs production, along with some anecdotes and lessons learned along the way…

Saddlin' Up
While writing the screen play I realized that making this movie would require the help of many people, including specialists modelers, texture artists, costumers, scriptors and character animators. Having worked with Bedazzle Studios capturing video of Chinatown (a rich and compelling environment they had recently completed), I presented them with my idea. They jumped at the opportunity –acknowledging an interest to make movies in Second Life themselves. We set up a contract and began designing the production, building props and the set.

During this phase I visited several mining and ghost towns in the Sierra Nevada to gather reference material and textures for the production. I researched in books and on the Internet to find images of the right buildings, clothing and props, and sent the best of these to the Bedazzle Studios artists for recreation in Second Life.

In 1859 William "Waterman" Bodey discovered gold near what is now called Bodie Bluff. It started with about 20 miners and grew to an estimated 10,000 people by 1880. By that time, the town bustled with families, robbers, miners, store owners, gunfighters and prostitutes of all kinds. At one time there was reported to be 65 saloons in town. Amongst the saloons were numerous brothels and 'houses of ill repute', gambling halls and opium dens.

Bedazzle Studios has a great production staff of quality artists, meaning I could focus on direction, look, styling, and audio. All of the materials and information I sent to the artists went through Bedazzle Studios first, which had both positive and negative results. On the positive side, it protected me from having to get too involved with the artists (and visa versa), and on the negative side I had some difficulty relaying concise information in a timely manner to the artists.

Bib and Tucker
During set construction I occasionally met with Jimmy Thomson of Bedazzle Studios to discuss the details and progression of set construction. We'd walk through the set together discussing the buildings and props, and I would describe what my plans were for camera moves and character blocking. In hind sight, I should have provided storyboards of my shots so Jimmy would have an accurate idea of what I was thinking. It was difficult to explain each shot in chat. Everyone involved would have benefited if I had provided storyboards at the beginning. Fortunately, I showed dailies from the first night of shooting, and everyone understood immediately what I was after. My direction for character blocking, camera movement, and overall styling were now clear to the production staff and actors.

Also in production during this phase were the character costumes and props. DarkDharma Daguerre was busy making high quality clothing and accessories for each character. Once she had developed a few characters to a certain point she would send them to me for review. I would write comments and suggestions, and sometimes provide a few more images for reference, and send them to her via Bedazzle Studios. She would make the necessary changes or adjustments, then deliver the completed costumes to me in-world.

By Hook Or Crook
When I first considered making this movie I thought about the goals I would set for myself, for Linden Lab, and for Second Life. I felt strongly that this production could serve as a proof of concept for several features, the most obvious being speech emulation.

A beta version of Second Life was compiled, giving me the ability to explore this potential. The process of making QuickTime movies with character mouth movements (or visemes) was quite laborious. First, I video taped myself lip syncing to the dialogue in each stanza of the poem. Then, I transferred the raw video to my hard drive and imported it into AfterEffects. I composited the footage onto the character face maps (supplied by DarkDharma Daguerre), masking out everything but the mouth and lips. Finally, I rendered each character's lines out as QuickTime movies so I could upload them into Second Life.

One of the composite files in Adobe AfterEffects. In order to sync mouth movement to the audio I had to view the waveform itself to get queues for specific parts of character dialogue. This ensured that the lip movements matched the video footage.

Although I believed from the start that this process wasn't the right way Linden Lab to develop and utilize visemes, it did what I intended it to; it proves the viability of speech emulation in Second Life.

Ridin' Herd
When all of the assets were completed and in place, a rough shooting schedule was made for the 25-30 actors needed for the Lucky Star Saloon sequence. Since this was where the bulk of the story took place, it was important that everyone be in the proper place and act out the proper animations – and do so repeatedly until all the camera angles were covered.

In preparation for this I took a top-down snapshot of the saloon with the roof removed and drew a diagram of character blocking and camera positioning. I then took some snapshots of a few 'stand-in' avatars to illustrate the kinds of camera angles I had in mind. I used the snapshots to create storyboards and delivered them to Web Page, Bedazzled Studios' character animator. Web told me later that those storyboards proved incredibly valuable in his work to block in- and prepare scripts for each of the characters.

All of the actors were given a library of character animations they could manipulate through control scripts, and I directed them to perform specific actions during video capture. This allowed them some creative freedom so they could personalize their character, and at the same time assured me that I'd get the kind of actions I wanted.

Spurs-a-Jinglin'
Sound is huge. It was important that I find a sound track that could stand on its own. I wanted something cinematic, something rich – with a clear western theme. I searched extensively for just the right music, and after a month or so I stumbled on a piece on Dittybase.com called "Hang 'Em High." I loved it from my first listening, but wasn't sure if it was sinister enough for the emotion I wanted to elicit from the audience. I continued searching, but realized over time that this was, in fact, it. At the same time I looked for 'mood' music and audio effects to round out the sound track.

Next was the task of finding the right voice talent to read the rolls of the Dandy, Stranger, and the Narrator. I found the perfect actor through an agency in Phoenix, set up a contract and e-mailed the dialogue. Bruce Miles' extensive range and experience were just what I needed.

Recording the dialogue was a lot of fun. Bruce did all of the recording in his home studio, and I directed him over the phone as he recorded it. He'd read a few lines, pause, and I'd direct him to slow down, speed up, change inflection, whatever I needed. The end result – which he e-mailed me as .mp3 files – is totally seamless, crystal clear voice over that worked perfectly in my editing timeline.

Round 'Em up
When it came time to edit (which happened even before all of the shooting was completed) I planned not to do any post production compositing or effects. I wanted to use raw footage and let it stand on its own, using only simple dissolves and titles – which are common in most bundled software on off-the-shelf computer systems. I wanted to show would-be movie makers that anyone can create compelling stories and show interesting visuals if they approach their projects with creativity and thoughtfulness. That's really all Bells and Spurs is: a collection of sequential, cohesive images - put together in a thoughtful, creative and compelling way.

Both of these images represent the visual styling of Bells and Spurs. The gambling miners on the left are shot using a static camera. The image on the right has more of a 'Spaghetti Western' feel, moving left to right behind Dandy Ran as he prepares to gun down a challenger in the streets of Golden Gulch.

Been Through The Mill
Silver Bells and Golden Spurs was a grand adventure in movie making inside Second Life. It served as a proof of concept for a number of creative and development ideas, and provided Linden Lab with a number of learning experiences along the way.

Uncovering bugs, developing techniques for building and texturing, and revealing areas for improvement are just a few of the benefits to Linden Lab. Bells and Spurs sets new goals for quality and creativity in resident creations. It promotes a level of thoughtfulness and craftsmanship that will empower residents to use more of Second Life's capabilities.