THE TEEN GRID --Thirty students from all over the world became filmmakers recently as they participated in a virtual film camp in Teen Second Life. Over the past few weeks, Global Kids has been running its first ever machinima camp for TSL Residents.

Barry Joseph, Online Leadership Director, known as BarryGkid in Second Life, said, “Global Kids decided to get a group of teens together for them all to film short movies to raise awareness of the 18th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” The program is supported by Unicef.

The teens learned a wide range of new skills including story-boarding, filming and editing. Everyone who took part in the event made their own movie. Each teen took about two weeks to build their sets and write the scripts, and two weeks to film and edit their movies. Every teen that completed the five-week camp received a $50.00 stipend. One of the groups was short of some actors so I took part in the event and was asked to be an actor. I was a dad in one of the first scenes with Mercury Metropolitan and I also played the role of a student in the classroom scene with about six other teens. All of the students videos are available on Blip.Tv .

Daniel Voyager, a 16-year-old from the United Kingdom who has been a Second Life teen grid resident for almost a year, said he signed up for the Global Kids machinima camp when he saw it on the Global Kids monthly newsletter . He said he enjoyed the experience. "I recommend it. It's a great camp program to take part in," Voyager said.
Learning the tools of the trade was a challenge, he admitted. "We tried to use the FP tool and SL built-in editing software but many campers had problems so instead the GK staff filmed it for us and we had to just direct them and edit the movies."

Rafi Santo, known in Second Life as Rafi Gkid, Joseph's associate in the Online Leadership Program, was happy with the results. "It went over great...I was there for the final weeks, and the campers did a great job.”