NBC yesterday released Season 4 of "The Office" on DVD, including the episode "Local Ad" featuring Clear Ink's Second Life work. New to the DVD are two of the deleted scenes, along with commentary from episode writer BJ Novak and director Jason Reitman.

Reitman says that the Second Life scenes scared him the most, given that you couldn't actually animate the scenes - they had to be acted out by people running the characters. Though what we delivered to Reitman were finished QuickTime files, we had the sense that he thought he was watching the action in real time; I think this is confirmed in his commentary.

He also expressed concern about how to convey the written script - Jim is a guy with a guitar from Philly who is a sportswriter - into Second Life in just a few seconds. I think we got that one.

The deleted scenes include a great paintball fight and a funny reveal in Dwight's apartment.

The whole episode as shot ran quite long and was edited for time, so I'm glad these scenes are now available.

This is actually the third run of "Local Ad": 9PM Thursday, April 3. Its first rerun was after the state of the union speech in January.

The Dunder Mifflin group in Second Life, created for the filming of the episode, has grown to over 1000 members based on word of mouth, and Clear Ink will once again open up its backlot on Channing for fans of "The Office" to gather after tonight's episode airs.

In October, the original airing of "Local Ad" followed by a day the premiere of Second Life as a major component of a story in CBS's "CSI:NY". That episode was the first of a two-part story that was to have concluded in February. Due to the WGA strike, the concluding episode did not air until last night, once again the night before "The Office" episode. However a funny thing seemed to have happened on the road to part to of "CSI:NY". For the most part, the Second Life tie-in went away. There was no mention of Second Life or virtual worlds, and the brief scene of the villain in a virtual world was very un-Second-Life-like. This may have been planned all along, or the conclusion was revised. I won't speculate here, but that story will probably be told (link to follow).

If you missed the "Local Ad" episode of "The Office" on April 3, you can always catch it here on hulu.com.

You can also catch part 1 or part 2 of the CSI:NY episodes at cbs.com.

This blog post will either be way too short or way too long, or both, but I wanted to recap our contribution to NBC's "The Office" episode that aired last Thursday, called "Local Ad" (also seen here).

In short, Clear Ink was engaged by NBC to provide the Second Life consultation and creation for the episode. We were entrusted by the producers to be authentic, and true to Second Life. Although this was not anything of the massive scale of the CSI:NY endeavor so skillfully conceived and executed by our friends at the Electric Sheep Company and their patrons at CBS, it was a heartfelt undertaking on our part.

A secondary story line in the script called for the character Dwight Schrute to explore Second Life. The realities of a 21 minute TV show narrowed the Second Life story from an actual subplot to a fleeting but effective means to continue the development of character and place that is at the heart of any successful series. So in short order, we find that Dwight wants to mirror his perfect life in a second one, and that as his real life becomes less perfect, he seeks solace in the control and power he has in his second life. It's the longest of the Second-Life related scenes that tells the most: not just Dwight's further immersion into a Second Second Life, but Jim Halpert’s jumping in after Dwight - to spy on him? To care for him? To create his own alternate reality? To share with Pam? That last scene plumbed some z-dimension in a short amount of time.

There was a lot of footage shot for the resulting Second Life scenes, and I learned a lot about the medium and its potential. Parts of four of the scenes made the final cut, and the NBC site has glimpses of 2 of the ones that didn't make it. For all these scenes we had the real world equivalent of storyboarding, location scouting, casting, filming, live audience participation, wardrobe, props, set creation, directing, producing, editing and opening night nerves. My main goal here is to shout out as much of those who helped make it happen here at Clear Ink and in Second Life.

A lot has happened since the episode aired, which I’ll cover in a future blog post.

I’d like to take note of those who joined me in the creative process. TROI Timtam was behind avatar creation and wardrobe, set decoration, and extras, but even more important, acted as in-world producer. Keystone Bouchard built sets on the Clear Ink backlot, and also helped propel the actors across the stage. Nicole Brown was the Clear Ink "real-world" producer on the project, and deserves a blog post of her own to describe her day on location at "The Office" with no sleep the previous night and little to come the next night as she delivered and installed all the scenes. Thanks to Rivkah and Robin who edited lots of raw footage into tight scenes.

To ensure authenticity, most of the scenes were shot in true Second Life locations (including the 4 shown on the episode). The wardrobe and props were from SL creators and vendors. The rest of this post calls out to those who gave us a hand:

Dwight and Jim's avatars started with photorealistic templates that transformed photos of Rainn Wilson and John Krasinski processed through CyberExtruder's "Avatar Island" process.

Who were you wearing, Dwight?
Clothing by Blaze
Hair by =BG= Gearhead Hair@Calla
Shoes by Shiny Things
Eyes by RaC
Glasses by Solar Designer Eyewear
Recorder by Bill Havercamp's Guitar Palace

And who were you wearing, Jim?
Clothing and shoes by Made Men
Hair by Naughty and =BG= Gearhead Hair@Calla
Eyes and Watch by RaC
Guitar by Guitars @ Musician's Paradise Musical Instruments

Locations:
Boardman (seen in the much-publicized still photo)
Ginny Business Center (seen on the episode) - Thanks Carly, Deeko & linkin
Amsterdam (seen on the episode)
Mesopotamia (seen on the episode) Thanks, Damien
The Blarney Stone at Dublin - a great scene before a live audience. Seen briefly on the show and in a still here. Thanks, Ham and Sitearm.
Paintball Funhouse/ ONCE
On our backlot we also created a paintball arena, an apartment, and a bar (seen here).

Thanks again to everyone involved.

Crank up the betamax, wake up the kids. NBC's "The Office" is on its way to Second Life tonight (October 25) at 9PM EDT/PDT. (Check your local listings). This was a fairly quick-turn Clear Ink project, and I'll follow up with a post recapping what we did, what made it to the show, and who in the Second Life community made it all possible. (Even at this time, I'm not sure what the final cut will include).

Those of you with Second-Life-on-TV day-after withdrawal get a second chance for another fix.