What’s in it?

Dog party in a bakery

From Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, 2010. One of the baby chihuahuas had to sneak under the german shepherd. 32 hours of roto.

Completed in Nuke.

Near Collision

From Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, 2010. Straightforward split screen.

Completed in Nuke.

Landscape

From Hell on Wheels, Pilot. This is an advanced split screen with town enlargement, horse, people and smoke additions.

Completed in Nuke.

Jester STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. The puppeteer’s arm was visible frame right and some gaffer tape in the mouth needed to be removed. Roto, background tracked, resized and graded before being comped in.

Completed in Nuke in stereo.

Heroic Sailor

From a commercial. Pretty straight forward green screen with added wave elements.

Completed in Nuke.

Reel cut in After Effects.

What’s in it?

Dog party in a bakery

From Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, 2010. One of the baby chihuahuas had to sneak under the german shepherd. 32 hours of roto.

Completed in Nuke.

Near Collision

From Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, 2010. Straightforward split screen.

Completed in Nuke.

Belt Dropping STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. Luma key for the background replacement. I also added some wiggle to the belt as it fell with internal mesh warp.

Completed in Nuke.

Jester STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. The puppeteer’s arm was visible frame right and some gaffer tape in the mouth needed to be removed. Roto, background tracked, resized and graded before being comped in.

Completed in Nuke in stereo.

Faceoff  STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. Tracking markers removed. Couple different mattes produced for the core and troublesome hair. The CG smokey volume and debris were added with the background for the multi-pass composite. Grade and camera shake added.

Completed in Nuke.

Reel cut in After Effects.

What’s in it?

Jester 1 STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. The puppeteer’s arm was visible frame right and some gaffer tape in the mouth needed to be removed. Roto, background tracked and graded before being comped in.

Aerial

From Flicka 2 2009. Helicopter shot was stabilized more effectively in Shake. The lens flair was pretty crazy.

Completed in Shake.

Belt Dropping STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. Luma key for the background replacement. I also added some wiggle to the belt as it fell with internal mesh warp.

Completed in Nuke.

Jester 2 STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. The puppeteer’s arm was visible frame right and some gaffer tape in the mouth needed to be removed. Roto, background tracked, resized and graded before being comped in.

Completed in Nuke in stereo.

Faceoff  STEREO

From The Hole 3D 2009. Tracking markers removed. Couple different mattes produced for the core and troublesome hair. The CG smokey volume and debris were added with the background for the multi-pass composite. Grade and camera shake added.

Completed in Nuke.

Reel cut in After Effects.

Concept

While I was lying on my bed staring at the wall (as all of us tend to do sometimes during moments of reflection), I noticed how much the blue carpet and the white wall seemed like a horizon over the ocean. Could I represent this in film?

Planning

The planning for this project was pretty negligible. After the realisation described above, I started filming immediately.

Production

Phase 1: First shoot

I tried to cover as many obvious angles as possible. Shot, reverse shot, close, medium and wide within a simple spontaneous narrative of daydreaming and imagination.

Phase 2: AE Tests

After a number of cloud overlay tests in After Effects, I put together a rough cut and realised that the cloud sequence needed some stronger grounding in the room: I tried quickly to paste in digitally a sneaker.

Phase 3: Re-shoot

In a re-shoot, the slippers replaced the sneaker. I finalized a rough cut which included some looped stock traffic and rain noise gathered from the internet.

Phase 4: Whitechapel Open Film Forum Screening

I submitted this film to Whitechapel�s monthly open screening free filmmakers forum. There were three others exhibiting, one undergraduate from Goldsmiths and two beginning amateur filmmakers. I felt that the intended effect was well received. It was pointed out by Ian, the organizer, that Leonard Da Vinci commented on how the texture and swirls in plaster on walls was reminiscent of clouds and other vistas.

Evaluation

The previous title for this piece, Day Dream, seemed trite and lacking imagination. The name change to The Carpet Coast embraced a more appealing whimsical convention that avoided both these criticisms.

Subjective States

This piece could have taken more advantage of established editing techniques to better solidify the transition between the main character�s subjective dream state and the converse objective real state. The established editing techniques that can be used with purposeful intention to visually inform the viewer of changes in internal states include subjective camera placement, shifts in pace, changes in the use of art direction, narrative absurdity, differing grading and alterations in sound.

The Carpet Coast illustrates the transition from the everyday to the extraordinary by means of sound, visual effects and subjective camera placement. In detail, as the background traffic noise decreases in volume, the sound of rolling ocean waves increase during the transition. The superimposition of the clouds on the wall illustrates how visual compositing effects can illustrate changes in subjective states effectively. Lastly, while the character lies on an angle, the audience also sees the wall on an angle.

Amateur Video

There is an added difficulty to video making when the Director, DP (Director of Photography), DIT (Digital Imaging Technician), CCO (Camera Control Operator), EIC (Engineer in Charge), Grip/Gaffer/PA, Sound Man, Script Supervisor and actor are the same person. Of course, I am exaggerating the number of roles that are required but the point is the same: being behind and in front of the camera can lead to poor video acquisition. The more professional my practice grows, the less this set up should occur.

Example of bowout 3 , Example of blowout 1

For example, with the auto exposure on (it never should be) we can see how easily the white wall blows out all detail as I walk in frame

Secondly, notice how the bright backlight from the windows creates a small lens flare over my leg in the next image. Interestingly, the internal reflection and scattering illustrated by the bright back lighting in this shot can also occur in the human eye.
Example of Lense Flare

Figure 3: Intense backlight manifests as a small lens flare over my left leg

There is a professional effects plugin for nonlinear video editors created by Red Giant Software called Magic Bullet. It does a fantastic job of upgrading NTSC video to “prosumer” (above consumer grade but below professional) quality. It also creates film simulations and adds movie-inspired looks. This piece would have been a perfect candidate for the plugin; however, there still seem to be a host of problems involving the new Intel Macs (my current editing platform). Apple was so quick to launch the new processor on the market that software companies like Adobe and, in this case, Red Giant have not had time to catch up.

Concept

This project has carried on throughout the year. The merging of night and day into moving image is an idea that stemmed from a quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita that reads “In that which is night to all beings, the sage is awake; and in that which all beings stay awake is night for the seer.” (Chapter 2, verse 69). I have made several attempts at the integration of night and day. Two of the attempts are included in this final submission, That Which is Night and Halo. Previous reports have extensively discussed the planning for this piece.

Production

There are two HD standards, each adopted for different reasons. I describe in detail the difference between them in the technological contextualisation section a little later on. In order to get a feel for both standards, I decided to test out each. That Which is Night uses one of the standards. The entire sequence was animated in Adobe After Effects using a Fractal Noise effect as a luma matte for the nighttime photograph. Animating a slow zoom in with the active camera in 3D space provided everything for the first 1:30 min. I reversed the footage for the second half.

Evaluation

Humorously, there were minor mishaps during the shoot. They are discrepancies in set up as in the example below. Most people do not notice it unless pointed out.

Figure 4: Left over right

Figure 5: Right over left

The whole feel of this work puts into perspective the expectations placed on the viewer. The video has a painterly feel – like some animated chiaroscuro tableau vivant. Outside of the stage and photography, tableau vivant is a technique that has found positive use in films by D. W. Griffiths such as A Corner in Wheat and Peter Greenaway in his The Tulse Luper Suitcases. The salient point is that audiences know how to view popular films. They also know how to view paintings. Confronted with experimental films that embrace the sensibility of both can be challenging without the proper open mindset or historical introduction. This is the nature of the expectation that this piece places on the viewer.

Lastly, it is important to point out that the slow meditative sensibility that this piece embraces is stylistically consistent with my own tastes.

Concept

The project is a reaction to the endless stream of thoughts that bombard our awareness on a daily basis. The textual layers that replace the objects of the room and inherit the objects shading graphically represent this endless stream of thoughts – how we classify reality be means of language.

The main character is also made of words. He enters frame and sits down to begin a silent mantra based meditation. In this case, the mantra is Soham, which in Sanskrit means, I am He. All of the shifting textual layers soon begin to unify as the character’s focus begins to crystallize and alter his outward awareness. From the heart centre outwards, each word that makes up the main characters form changes to Soham. Eventually the divine word spreads to all objects in the room.

Production

Adobe After Effects played the major role in this piece. Live action footage only plays a minor role – it is used to give the text colour, light and shade. The animation uses masked text layers over top of each other and animates them in 3D space.

Evaluation

The time it takes to finish work always expands to fill the time you have to complete it. This piece is no exception. Having had no chance to preview the piece, an evaluation of its effect is unavailable.

Concept

This piece hopes to achieve a combination of the idea of a concomitant vision of night and day conceptualized in the Night & Day piece and the idea of an extended single cut with a long duration conceptualized in the piece Out Of. Both these cited works can be reviewed in previous reports.

In detail, three minutes of this time-lapse lasts two hours of real-time. Using software tools in postproduction, I selected one item from the static frame and slowed down the rate at which it decreases in luminance. In essence, an object is separated from its surrounding time.

Planning

Unfortunately, the university’s insurance policy will not cover Commercial Road’s recently acquired HDV camera until next year. After sorting through the security requirements for one external insurance plan, the price of another and the minimum term on another, I eventually sorted our cover for the camera. After the first trial, it was clear that my current NTSC miniDV camera does not compare.

Production

Morning Shoot

Figure 1: horizon looks level

Figure 2: Horizon is not level in actuality.

Shooting before sunrise proved more difficult than originally anticipated. As the above figures show, no light meant an inability to frame the shot, level the shot, level the tripod and correct the exposure. The resulting shot ended up titled unintentionally. I was shooting at F 1.2, with a shutter speed of 50 fps and manually creating the time-lapse effect by recording five seconds every minute.

Evening Shoot

Both morning and evening shoots emphasised the challenge of filming outside. The first time, a football match prevented the use of the correct location and the second time, the rain prevented a longer capture. Shooting this time at F8 60fps, the scene was darker sooner anyways.

Evaluation

The morning shoot used a time-lapse technique that provided breaks that were too abrupt. All clips required dissolve transitions in and out. Despite being a tedious affair, the technique had the advantage of saving capture time. Before the first early birds had eaten their breakfast, an empty Victoria Park was filled with the beeps of my timer stopping and restarting and the beeps of the camera beginning and ending its recording.

The second time-lapse production method posed its own difficulties. Often the miniDV tapes used to capture HDV footage cannot hold all the colour space information that the camera feeds. To get around this problem, filmmakers will record straight to their hard drive via a serial out port on the camera, using the on board recording system for backup and syncing purposes. Using the Firewire out, I tried this in real-time using iMovie�s time-lapse feature. Although it would appear to capture the footage, saving the document after a two-hour capture would always crash the software. The HDV standard is still new enough that technical difficulties appear frequently. In addition to the example, Final Cut Pro 5.0.1 on Intel Macs refused to capture HDV footage off the university�s Sony HVR X1R. The solution is to capture with iMovie, using the Apple Intermediary Codec to import into FCP or After Effects. Using the same codec, you can import the final sequence to iMovie for printing back to tape.

As weather and people tend to provide an exceptional amount of the unexpected, it occurred to me how much filming involves a process of imposing an excruciating exactitude on all controllable factors of a shoot. I am currently at the stage where my ideas require a growing knowledge of how to do just that.

Shot Breakdown

The demo reel is comprised of six works from 2003 to 2006 and showcases a variety of skills. I play bass on the audio track too.

Cathedral Mirror / 2003 / 3:20 / DV NTSC

One man project here – behind and in front of the camera before editing and grading in FCP: Super stylized dark but calm sensibility. Shot in Victoria, BC.

Watch this one

Halo / 2006 / 3:10 / HDV 1080i

My first major time lapse piece shot on Sony’s Z1 with about an hour compressed into 3 minutes during sunset. In After Effects, I masked out the shimmering tree and slowed its rate of luminosity decrease to achieve a glowing effect. With the single shot, we have another meditative piece. Shot in Victoria Park, London UK – pre- to post by me.

Watch this one

Split / 2003 / 2:30 / DV NTSC

Grading and simple compositing here in FCP – another one man show. Victoria BC – all credits are mine.

Watch this one

That Which is Night / 2006 / 2:33 / HDV 1080i

The most logistically complex of my London shoots: it involved piecing together multiple photographs in Photoshop, to produce two final images that were animated together. The photos had to match exactly with the only difference being one was at day and the other was at night. In AE, I animated a smoky dissolve between the two with some complex animated masks and multiple filters. Slow meditative feel. Shot in London. I covered all aspects of this production except the acting.

Watch this one

Soham / 2006 / 1:35 / HDV 1080i

Almost completely animated in AE, this piece used very little live action. I used many layers of text masked to match the 2d dimensions of the objects in the scene. London. Again, I’m in front and behind the camera. Longest render yet.

Watch this one

The Carpet Coast / 2006 / 2:05 / DV PAL

Lastly, this simple and effective piece showcases some composting of clouds over the artificial horizon of the wall and floor in AE and FCP. Shot in London. All facets of the production were created by me.

Watch this one