Jamilah's Life in IST... Watch Me Work

Behind The Scenes With 'The Office' In Second Life Posted by Mitch Wagner, Oct 29, 2007 01:17 AM

Steve Nelson, an executive VP at Internet marketing company Clear Ink, took me behind the scenes last week for the TV show The Office in Second Life. The company created an elaborate Second Life sequence -- most of which ended on the cutting room floor. I'm hopeful we'll see the rest of The Office's Second Life adventures later this season.

On the show, we learn that Dwight Schrute -- the Frank Burns of The Office -- has been active in Second Life for the past year. He got involved in Second Life, he explains, because he loved his first life so much that he wanted more. Now that his first life has gone sour, he has retreated into the virtual world, going so far as to build his own "Second Second Life" inside Second Life, because retreating into Second Life isn't far enough.

We see a couple of minutes of Dwight's avatar flying around Second Life, as well as a close-up of another avatar that Jim, the show's hero and Dwight's nemesis, has built for himself.

YouTube has a clip where Dwight introduces Second Life to Jim and to us, the audience:

I talked with Clear Ink's Nelson on the phone and in-world Thursday afternoon, a few hours before the show's premiere.

The production started with a phone call from Kent Zbornak, co-executive producer of The Office, just a month ago, Nelson said. Clear Ink received a copy of the script, and set to work creating the Second Life sequences.

The work Clear Ink did for The Office is an example of machinima , video animation created in a game or virtual world. One of the weird and wonderful things about machinima in Second Life is that it's very much like filming in the real world. Clear Ink did the things that a real-world production company does when creating a video:

They scouted locations. Where they couldn't find suitable locations, they built sets.

They bought wardrobe and props.

They lined up extras. Like real-world extras, the avatars used in the sequence proved tricky to manage, prone to hamming it up and trying to steal scenes.

And then they got it all together and filmed and edited the results.

"We shot about eight different scenes," Nelson said. "Five of them were in locations that we found in the real Second Life, and three were sets that we created." Clear Ink also created avatars for Dwight and Jim, which closely resembled the characters on TV.

Clear Ink shot about 21 minutes of video, and only about two minutes made it to viewers. However, the scenes were so open-ended that I'm optimistic that we're just seeing the setup for future stories to play out over the course of the season.

Nelson gave me a tour of Clear Ink's production sets. They included a simplified version of the offices shown in The Office, with Pam's reception desk featured prominently.

The Second Life area also includes a neighborhood bar, a city street, a paintball field, and, on the second floor of one of the buildings on the street, Dwight's apartment.

(Yes, I know that in the show Dwight doesn't live in an apartment; he lives on a beet farm. But, Nelson explained, for the purpose of this episode, Dwight lives in a Scranton apartment. Nelson didn't resolve the discrepancy, and it didn't come up on the Thursday episode.)

A barroom. That's my avatar, Ziggy Figaro, on the left, standing next to Nelson's avatar, Kiwini Oe, in the Schrute Farms Beets sweatshirt.

The Dunder Mifflin offices. That's Troi Timtam, avatar designer and builder, between me and Nelson.

Dwight's Scranton apartment.

Exterior of the Dunder Mifflin offices.

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**This is my current events essay for my SRA 111 class**

Linden Lab’s virtual world “Second Life” has over 11,085,666(1) residents that conduct their everyday affairs through it online. There are over 140(2) “real life” companies and organizations in Second Life that carry out “real” business within it. Federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Congress have islands within this virtual world. On March 19, 2007, Government Computer News reported that the Department of Homeland Security is considering doing business within Second Life(3) .

GCN spoke with DHS’s deputy director of the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility, Tony Frater about having property in Second Life. According to GCN, “DHS is just at the point of having informal discussions with one company about setting up a virtual island for its Safecom program”. The purpose of the Safecom program is to set up a wireless first-response system for natural disaster, accidents, and terrorism. It is there to make sure the public is safe after such events. DHS as a part of Safecom has the responsibility of creating meetings with the public safety experts. Sometimes these people live across the world and it would cost a lot of money to get them to America for meetings. This is where Second Life can help. If each expert and DHS member created an avatar in SL and there was a secure place to meeting, they could certainly have their meeting through SL.

Not only could the Safecom program member meet in Second Life, but they could also simulate first-response events. These simulations would save the program a great deal of money. “Most public-safety agencies don’t have the resources to conduct “tabletop exercises,” which typically are simulations of first-responder events such as a pandemic or a biochemical attack, Frater said. One of these exercises usually requires public-safety workers to spend an entire weekend working at the event. And a tabletop exercise can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars” (Walsh). They could conduct mock hurricanes or oil spills and have the agents’ avatars follow regular procedure.

Aside from the excitement of this new idea, DHS is worried about Second Life’s “mature audience” aspects. It must take into account that SL is full of “casinos and unclothed beaches. The site also has its share of vandals, such as the “griefers” who recently defaced the Second Life site of presidential candidate John Edwards” (Walsh). In order to avoid exposure to such things, they are asking Linden to create a secure and private meeting place that only DHS can visit.

Personally, I think that the idea of the DHS’s Safecom program running though Second Life both can and can not work. The aspect that would reasonable work is simple meetings. Sharing ideas in an orderly fashion could definitely work. Each avatar could come to the secure private area, sit in a chair, and share their ideas on public safety. I have had a class or two be conducted within Second Life. Sometimes there are immature people flying into the lead speaker while he or she is talking, but DHS would not have to worry about that in their private area.

The aspect that I think will not work is the simulations. Second Life, while surprising and innovative, is surprising and innovative. Other avatars could attack while one strolls down the street. One could be teleported to “Sex and Orgy Island” at any moment. The virtual world is also very new. There are many times that I have been online and the game has crashed. Sometimes I would be flying and when I would try to stop flying, the game would freeze and my avatar would fly into the water around whichever island it was on. If the game did that while in a simulation, they would have to start over and time would be wasted.

Another strange thing I noticed is that the avatar cannot be hurt. As many times as I have flew into the water or dropped 20,000 ft, I have never had a scratch or bruise. I think that will affect the results of Safecom’s simulations. In the real world, if there were a hurricane, people would be hurt and unable to walk. However, in Second Life there could be a hurricane where people are flung around with it, but then walk away from it as if it was nothing. As Second Life grows as a virtual world, there will be fewer glitches and more realistic situation and consequences. When that time comes, I think, it will be safe and effective for the DHS to conduct their meetings and simulations in Second Life.

(1) “Economic Statistics.” Second Life. November 25, 2007. November 25, 2007 < http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php>.
(2) “Companies and Organisations in Second Life – Portal.” New Business Horizons. November 25, 2007 < http://www.nbhorizons.com/list.htm>.
(3) Walsh, Trudy. "DHS ponders foray into Second Life." Government Computer News. March 19, 2007. November 25, 2007 <http://www.gcn.com/print/26_06/43315-1.html?topic=homeland-security&CMP=OTC-RSS>.

When learning to build in Second Life, team HAL 9000 wanted to show our newly found skills and build a model of the Nittany Lion using a laptop. We split up the responsibilities within our group. Jamilah was responsible for creating the table, chair, and laptop for thee Nittany Lion’s use. Abby created the Nittany Lion. Jocelyn was supposed to create the document, however due to her incompetence this task has been reassigned to Jamilah.

When given the assignment in class. We, as a team, thought of many different things to make. Some ideas that crossed out minds included a cheeseburger, a poster of the IST building, a movie theater showing an IST movie created in class, the nerdy Nittany Lion playing golf, and the nerdy Nittany Lion on a laptop buying clothes. We choose the nerdy Nittany Lion on a laptop buying clothes. The reason behind this is that the Nittany Lion represents Penn State and the laptop represents IST. We wanted to convey that everyone including the Nittany Lion uses technology and that technology/Penn State is not exclusively educational. It can used to do fun and useful things such as shopping online for hot clothes.

After thinking so deeply about that matter, we brainstormed about how we wanted to present our Nittany Lion. We thought about having him sit Indian style with the laptop in his lap or even laying with the laptop in front of him. Those poses were too casual for what we were trying to convey. We wanted the lion to be sitting up right in a chair with the laptop on a table in front of him. This shows the intelligent side of the Nittany Lion. The computer screen shows a few women dressed in beautiful clothes. This shows that he was pondering weather or not he should buy his girlfriend those clothes for Christmas.

In order to create the table Jamilah used several cube shapes and altered them in a way she saw fit. She made sure that the arms and legs of the chair matched from each angle. The table took a bit longer to create because she wanted it to look rather modern. She used round shapes and altered them in order to look like a table. The laptop was by far the easiest object to create. It only took 3 cubes altered in different ways and a couple of different textures. The texture for the screen was from an outfit I brought on Freebie Island. When you buy the clothes, you get the poster just in case you want to advertise it yourself. Jamilah didn’t have access to the IST 110H zone, so she created her object in the sand box and Abby kindly brought the Nittany Lion over so it so everything could be resized.

Abby created the Nittany Lion. She used a lot of spheres. She altered them by making them bigger smaller, flatter, and taller. When she put them all together, she found a texture that matched the Nittany Lion’s fur and used it. The Nittany Lion she created very closely resembles the Nittany Lion found on Penn State’s campus.

There were many obstacles we, as a team, encountered while trying to complete this project. First, Jamilah was never able to get access to the IST 110H zone. Therefore, she decided to make her objects in the sand box and save them to her inventory. Then she and Abby were online at the same time and she sold the items to Abby so she could link them all together as one object. Jamilah made sure that all the rights on altering her object were given to the next owner. Then Abby had no problem adjusting the chair and table to fit the lion she had created. Abby had problems building the lion. At one point the entire lion was gone and she had to start over. Another obstacle we faced was the other users in SL. While Abby and Jamilah were trying to take pictures of the finished product, a guy with a motorcycle kept running into them causing the picture to change. It took a while for him to realize that we were trying to do homework. The last problem we encountered was with our team member Jocelyn. She was responsible for creating this document that I, Jamilah, am now creating. When I checked her blog, the posts was nowhere to be found. Earlier this semester, she stated that she was having problems with her blog and I suggested that anytime she has to post something for the group to send to Abby or myself. But she did'nt so this is yet another problem we had to face.

I explained to her that if she does not have the information she needs to finish her part of the project, she should email or call us to ask for help. If that failed, she could have easily gone into SL, examined the object we created, and thought about what we did to create those items. We all learned the same thing on how to create items in class so she should have had a pretty good idea. However, Jocelyn did not put any effort into her part of the project. It seems as if she simply wanted to copy and paste the information given by Abby and myself. In the end, I, as the team leader, tried my best to compose a document that fulfilled all of the requirements stated on Angel.

I am sorry if the above stated problem sounds harsh but thats the way the cookie crumbles. No one is perfect and we all, including myself, have to remember that. Right?

Overall, this project was one of the most creative I have encountered throughout the semester.