The Pamela series initially got it's inspiration from a video I found and downloaded called "Skahld Newt aka Weenie Face" (which you can download from my website).  When I saw that, I asked myself like so many others who view these, "Hey!  How did he do that?"  

I had already read about video capture and I new the hardware was out there.  I did a little reading up and research and decided on purchasing the Dazzle Video Creator II and an MSI GForce 4 Ti4200 video card.  This dynamic duo combination and 2 computers is the key to how I capture and record videos.

My first video I tried was a short snippet of Pamela running around in the Blackburrow zone killing gnolls.  As I sat and watched it, a story began to form in my mind.  I thought, "Well, hey, why is she here?  What made her want to come and kill these gnolls?"  And from there the Pamela series began taking shape.

Part I was setup to introduce Pamela and how a Halfling ended up in the predominantly human city of Qeynos, and also to begin the premise of the whole story; the fact that she is a rejected individual but who wants to prove her worth to the people of the city.

Part II was meant to show Pamela's determination toward her goal of being accepted by the Qeynos community.

Part III is what ties the beginning and the end together.  It's the slow "boring" part where much of the explaining takes place, but every good book, movie, and story has them.

Part IV is where she uses the advice she is given in Part III and tears apart the Gnolls of Blackburrow.  This is also where my original concept video was created and the story was built from this sequence.

Part V is where the people of Qeynos finally show their appreciation of Pamela, accepting and rewarding her for her valiant deeds.

The scenes were all captured in "full-screen mode"; hitting F10 in the game.  This allowed for a full view without the obstructions of the GUI getting in the way.  I use a lot of panning and strafing angles and I try to shy away from camera rotation.  The reason is with panning and strafing,  the animation is smooth and fluid and I also have some control of the speed.  Using the /duck command, it slows down the "cameraman" so the shot slows down as well.  My "camerman" was also a druid (the one whom  you see rescue Pamela in Part II), so to further slow down panning shots, I would have the druid ensnare himself.  You can see an example of this at the end of Part I where Pamela is on the pier looking out over the ocean and the camera is very slowly panning toward her.

The reason why I don't really like to rotate the camera from a 3rd person point of view is that, using the keyboard, it is way too fast and doesn't look realistic.  It can be done slower using the mouse, but then it appears too choppy and looks more like the game than a movie.  If anyone knows of a way to do a smooth, slow 3rd person point of view camera rotation in EQ, let me know!  It's an awesome angle, and one that Peter Jackson likes to use extensively in his Lord of the Rings movies.

For the Pamela series, the music was all chosen beforehand.  From there, I was able to adapt the video to the music which gave greater continuity, emotion, and power to what was being viewed.  The EverQuest music has themes that most players are familiar with and I thought it would lend itself well to the overall feel of watching a movie in Parts I-III, but still being in the EverQuest world.  The music for Parts IV and V boldly break away from this tradition, however.  Using very familiar tunes though, most people are still able to identify with the character since her identity has already been established and the music now propels her to another level.

There were so many challenges in creating the series!  Everything from in-game interruptions like EQ time-of-day, other players unknowingly walking into the middle of a "shoot", to the EQ weather (notice it's always a clear sky), to losing all the rendering I had done with an "Illegal Operation" error; Ulead Video Studio still has some bugs =(.   There were times I got so frustrated I could no longer be creative and would have to shut it all off and come back another day to continue it.

Part V was particularly the most challenging of all.  With so many people involved it was a one time shot and a juggling act.  I ran into all sorts of problems with people getting in the way, to a GM sending me a tell not to obstruct other players, to the video quality having "noise" I wasn't able to see until after the "shooting".  Since I could not re-shoot a lot of the segments without getting everyone to return and try it again (fat chance), I had to let the poor video quality remain.

All in all, it was very enjoyable creating the series.  With the better graphics and animation emotes of EverQuest 2, I will expect that an even more movie-like presentation will be possible.

Razor