Make some color happen…

I’m taking a breather from the next installment of eCommerce talk.  Not that discussing the glories of PunchOut catalogs and on line supplier services isn’t hoot – but I needed to add a little color so I

grabbed a bit of video I had lying around and I did just that.  If you take a gander at the clip here ther’s a couple tricks that are pretty easy to create some very dramatic and colorful footage out of well, kind of drab footage. 

The clip here has the original footage, first – just a simple few seconds of the back yard around the house here on a typical Seattlish late afternoon.  Meaning – it’s overcast and dark.   And that’s not a bad thing – in fact the nice thing about it always being overcast here is that it’s easy to light a video shot, and you seldom ever have to worry about over exposing the shot.  But life isn’t always about various shades of grey.  Now, the original footage isn’t all that bad – there is some color there.  But as you can see its a bit washed out.  So one of the first fun things you can do to boost the color is to replace the sky entirely.  So I did – I spent a few minutes out there on Flickr and got a very nice flaming red sunset. 

¹Fun tip for Video and Design:

Which … btw – is under a creative commons license that allows it to be used.  Flickr has a very nice feature that allows you to do a search for works that are under the Creative Commons – so keep that in mind.  It’s under the Advanced Search settings – scroll to the bottom of the search options and check the boxes for Creative Commons reuse policies.  You can even have it search for stuff that you can use commercially – which – is pretty cool.  (Be even cooler if you could download actual video instead of flash videos – but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.)

Anyway, like I said, I got on on Flickr and looked around for a very very dramatic flaming red sky since I really wanted to give the shot a vibrant dramatic boost.  Now the trick to doing this with a shot that’s very effective and very quick is not to roto-scope all the frames but to do a color matte.  What’s a color matte? It’s really simple to do in After Effects and it’s very useful.  First things first – is to duplicate the shot, and then desaturate it completely.  Then hit the levels and totally boost the sky so it’s got a really almost black and white look.  Then, last but not least bring in a good luma key.  Drop the photo in behind it so it shows through the key – and wallah – you have a very dramatic sunset.  Now, you may have noticed that it’s ALL black where it’s not colored sunset… so drop a mask across the area you want to show at the bottom and pin to that the original footage.  Do a little color correction on it and you have the very dramatic scene you see here.  (A little more work and we could get the little color spots out of the edging – but this was done very quickly  - even still its very dramatic.  Got a nice vibe to it and the colors' literally scream at you. 

What it is not however … is particularly realistic.  And the downside of this technique is that you really make the fine details get blocky and pixelated. So its really good for less than photo realistic effects but you need to use it wisely or it really will drown out any moments that need to be done subtley.  So … how do you color it up without losing detail and without making it… blah?   Color correction gel.  What’s that?

Simple – the way you’d get a similar effect is to use Andrew Kramer’s free AE plugin – the Colored Gel Effect.  It takes a bit of getting used to and tweaking to get just the look you want – but the results are awesome.  If you look at the detail of the trees – they keep that very soft pine needle blur, and when they move in their own way they’re very … cabin on the lake.  I was tempted to play around with a mask or two on the barn down there – but decided to leave it be – basking in the golden sun.    You know they say that Lighting sets the mood for a shot quicker than anything – faster than sounds, faster than anything in the shot.  So play around with some color, have some fun with it.  I will.

Boredom leads to adventures…

So I’ve been pretty bored of late.  Over at work I’m working on eCommerce issues – mostly dealing with the various choices vendors have in linking to our network and they all involve XML based products.  You’d be surprised how many top notch IT departments have grown so reliant on tools by Oracle and others for their procurement solutions they literally click buttons and fill in forms without knowing how their tool really works. 

Not that I’m an expert on procurement (well actually I suppose technically I am) but it seems to me that any time you’ve sufficiently automated yourself to the point that you don’t know what kind of XML you’re pumping out, how it gets to the other guy and what kind of an output you need to put out… your over adapted to your technology and now dependant on it.  Which is never a good thing.

So naturally – since I handle a lot of post-production troubleshooting these days… I automated things with a few tools.  I’ll detail these out in a future blog since I’m pretty sure most people have never had to deal with cXML or understand the difference between it and standard XML, and I’ve encountered several “Oracle Gurus” who keep insisting that what Oracle pumps out is “XML”… it is – but not in the classical sense anyone else would expect.

So I’ve started a couple projects there to make it easier for people and those are forth coming…

I also… decided to do a bit of video fun and that… is how I fought off boredom this weekend.  Did two bits you can find here

 

and here…

 

Some great shorts…

In keeping with the last post I thought I’d share a few keepers of films I ran across while doing some research.

 

First up is a fun little flick called “The Seance”  by Arun Vaidyanathan, which is a nice little work.  Two people – very compacted dialog, good delivery and very simple but effective camera and lighting work. 

Its not a film that relies on trickery or abusive visuals – it’s got a very simple story and that’s what it tells.

All in all it’s worth the 6 minutes of your life required to watch it.  The only downside is that quite frankly they had such nice characters and such a good story they never finish it. 

It’s really hard to pace a film down to 5 minutes and keep the quality even.  This is a nice even film – which sadly is just cut 30 seconds short of the blow off for the tale.  Over all this is a great little film and I can see why it was an award winner.  Which… compared to my next choice makes this oscar winning material.  Our next entry was a Sony Award winner.  Why – I have no clue.

Burning Life… is first of all – not a film.  It’s not really a documentary and it’s not really a narrative and it’s not really anything more than a guy and his girlfriend burning a small pile of his crap – sorry his life – in his backyard as some kind of protest. 

He then starts to strip and there is a gratuitous use of bad filters and bad video effects for color channels and he breaks most if not all the cardinal rules of even amatuer camera work and … it’s really amazing this won an award of any kind and it just goes to show you that if you toss enough “I’m clueless” around people can, and will assume you’re some kind of artist.  Hate to say it but … it is largely true.

Which… leaves us to … the gem of the post.  A short film that is done soooo well you almost can see this getting the Oscar it’s been nominated for.  Our Time Is Up… is funny – it’s actually way past funny.  And at the same time there’s so much more going on with this film. 

This film … sheesh – great – just… shut up and go watch it.  All I can say is … this is what people who do short films need to set as a bar to shoot for – and let’s face it… how does that make you feel? 

the stories the thing…

And may Shakespeare forgive me for that unbridled paraphrasing of the immortal Hamlet in a blog title, but like so many things in life, it had to be done.

See I just got back from a weekend of rummaging through youtube, hulu and several other video outlets for amateur videos out there and I was amazed, amused and befuddled by how many really talented people there are out there making videos.  I was also feeling a bit like Simon Cowell after a bender with Paula Abdul at how many talented people there were making videos that really didn’t need to be made.  Kind of reminded me of my mothers sage advice that “Just because you can do something… doesn’t mean you should.”.

I began this quest because for some time now, I’ve said I wanted to get back into doing at least some small projects with film.  Nothing fancy but some good stories.  So … I stated out by seeing what others had done.  I won’t slam anyone out there for making an amateur film.  Anyone who does get to the point of where they’re actually shot something deserves props. 

But I will say that before I even shoot a frame – I’m going to have a good story. 

Not a good script… because there are a lot of really great scripted videos out there that, well let’s be honest here, they are not going to win any awards.  Actually I’ll take that a step farther there are a lot of great videos out there that have won awards that really are almost painful to watch – and all the awards on the planet won’t change that.

What every great script / bad film out there seems to be missing is a good story.  I don’t mean they aren’t well written or clever or artistic.  I mean to say they have no story.  A 3 minute film can have a great story.  A epic length movie may have no story at all. 

The story is the key.  It’s what it’s about and it doesn’t matter the genre or or the words.  It’s what is happening.  Does it grip you?  Does it make you care about the character (no matter how bad the acting is)?  I mean, look at “The Happening”.  Really its not bad acting on the part of Wahlberg and company and the script … well the script is horrid but where the real horror started was with the story itself.  There isn’t one.

See most people will say the story is about Wahlberg and the world having to survive mother nature’s culling of the evil humans on the planet.  No… that is the plot of the movie.  The story – would have been about the relationship between Wahlberg and Zoe Deschanell, or the story would have been about some other character.  But to say that any of that existed beyond even the most anemic form is to give credit where there is none.

A plot, and the dialogue support the story.  But the story needs to stand on it’s own or everything is just window dressing.  To make a great little film or a great epic film… one needs a good story or you’re just wasting video.  So… before I start this little project of mine… I need a good story.

 

Here’s my story short list of what I need to keep in mind while I work on it.

• I have a really limited budget.
  (Not gonna be able to rent equipment, locations, or people.)
• I have a really limited shooting schedule that is impacted by environmental conditions. 
  (Rains here a lot, I work a 40 hour week, and I can’t guarantee who I’ll have available.)
• I have a very limited cast.
  (Depending on the story – it may even only be me).
• I have a very limited amount of quality equipment.
  (One – two cameras, lights are very limited, going to be hand held or limited amount of boom and stationary shots.)

Now that I have that list … I can file it under “NOT IMPORTANT”.  Because none of that will affect a good story.  A good story … doesn’t need a budget.  It doesn’t need to worry about schedules.  (See: American Graffiti – for decades it held the record of dollar for dollar being the highest grossing film ever made. Lucas shot it for next to nothing, on a schedule that no one would have considered.)

And cast frankly – doesn’t matter.  A great story makes up for bad acting.  In fact, a great story often covers up bad acting.  Limited equipment and a lack of shot choices… pfffaw.  Look up the Seventh Seal some time.  Look up anything by Hitchcock or Howard Hawks.  Look up Treasure of the Serria Madre or the Maltese Falcon or Casa Blanca. 

And then … go hit Yutube… and Hulu… and Atom… then sit down with a big cup of coffee and a empty note book, and a clear head… and think of great stories. 

Reuse and recycling work

I just did a short bit on color correction in video in the previous blog, I demo’d a couple of different things you can do with the same clip to get different color corrections and other basic work with some filters that you can do quickly to get some cool effects with one very badly shot grainy clip.

Probably what I should have mentioned is … never delete your clips when you’re done.  Catalog them and save them.  Even the bad stuff can be often reused on other projects.

A good example is that grainy bad clip.   Since I had the time this morning while waiting on a phone call – I came up with a couple new effects for that same clip.  I saved them because I thought they might be useful.  Each time I do that I save myself some time.  I may not necessarilly use the clip again, but by adding tags to it in my catalog – the next time some one asks me if I can do a cosmic face effect – I can pull that up. 

Here’s the clip….

Making it look like it should…

I’ve had a few emails about getting video to look right.  Shelly and a few others out there know I don’t have the best of cameras – I do almost everything on a old Sony DCR TRV280, which is just barely considered a digital camera.  So – why do my quickies look different than the stuff that Shelly’s getting with her brand spankin new HD camera?  Which isn’t to say her stuff isn’t good – she’s got a great eye, and chooses her shots wisely.  But it does bug you when your visuals aren’t 10 times better than a 8 year old $500 camcorder. 

I also generally don’t take more than 10 minutes to shoot a quickie clip and I also don’t use a lighting kit.  It’s a worst case scenario – but when Shelly and I compared footage recently – mine looked better.  So how did I do it?  Simple.  I retouch my video.  It’s something I’ve always had do to – and just assumed everyone did it these days.   It’s believe it or not the most common and best money maker for anyone who has a budding small video business like our friend Shelly.

With video blogs, video resumes and even local tv commercials for anyone who does video work it’s probably going to be your most common work even though it’s something that most people never think to charge for when they bid a video project.  Cleaning up bad camera skills will take up most of your time.

Whether it’s removing camera shake, or getting the colors back in a face, or removing an over exposure, or just (believe it or not) removing acne - - if people know you can do that, they’ll want it and you can charge for it.

Lets face it – people prefer to have colors that don’t make them look like they’re in a zombie movie… unless they’re in… a zombie movie.  In some cases, you may have people ask you to do that as well, but they’ll never ask if they don’t know that you can do it.  So you’ll need a good demo of color correction and adjustment techniques that you can do.  The practice of this kind of work on a variety of clips will help you get a good idea how how long it takes to do this work, and what you should be charging for it.  I’m not going to go into details on how to do color correction because it will depend on the software and the hardware you have. 

If you’ve got Ulead or some lower end semi-pro software the techniques will be completely different than say Adobe or Pinnacle or others.  So – do a bit of searching on the web for color correction for your software.  Keep in mind you’ll need to know that the colors you’re producing may be different so – practice, view the footage on different monitors, practice, practice.  The steps may seem similar but there’s nothing worse than a blog that tells you to use a $5,000 piece of software that you don’t have so I won’t do that to you.  But a bit of research and you’ll get what you need.  I’ve seen great tutorials on everything from Movie Maker to AE, and even some very high end stuff like Lyric and others.  All free – all very good.

A good example of this is that I did two versions of the demo for this blog – one in an un-named very expensive program I’m currently demoing to see if I want to buy it (I probably will) and another in the freebie Microsoft Movie Maker.  I know MM inside and out – took me 10 minutes and I had a clip ready to publish that the end result is the one you see in the link below.  The $5,000 program… spent 20 minutes, and the results were… less than satisfying because I really don’t know it well yet.  It decided to do a number of things for me I didn’t ask it to – and the footage quality from it is … well blurry, soft, and worse than the Movie Maker stuff or if I’d just rendered it directly from another program.  So – practice.  Learn, practice.  When you’re ready to use the big boy toys … use’em.  But never show off your stuff unless it’s of a quality you want people to see.

In some cases – it’s nothing more than just loading up the footage and adjusting some color curves to get the values right for the shot.  In others you’ll need to do some masking.  For example the color corrected shot above – the face is color corrected with one set of curves, the background received another.  Similarly in the day-for-night shot shown here I had to pull out the face and go with an almost pitch black.  (I might also want to add some shadows from a 3D layer … it depends on how far you want to take it.) You get the idea.

Each of these requires a different level of color correction and adjustment.  So – make sure who you’re doing this for knows that there is a big difference in price between the kind of work needed for a wedding and the kind of work needed for a network TV commercial shot.  That price is how hard you have to work to make it look good.  Never show someone a “miracle” shot that took you 40 hours of work, and allow them to think this is nothing more than clicking a few buttons… Miracles=expensive, basic band aids = cheap.

And if you’re looking a highly advanced techniques for color correction – you may be looking as spending as much time as you would to animate something in a full video composite. It’s a big part of your cost, and even if it is just your time when you’re running a business it’s something you have to be willing to cost out for – which we tend to forget when we’ve taken a hobby or something we enjoy and turn it into a business.

I recommend that you learn all you can about color correction, often the most subtle color corrections on a clip are the most difficult to pull off. There are a whole slew of things you need to consider – the main character of the shot will require a different lighting than anyone else (masking and overlay), the background may need to be softened or sharpened and color corrected as well (another set of masks and overlays as well as curves), will you be needed to track the masks in the shot using motion tracking – and do they need to have some shots that will be rotoscoped? 

Sure – you can make it look like a million bucks, and for a good customer, client or friend – it may well be worth it.  But most will not expect you to create a miracle shot.  Just a good simple clean image that looks nice, gives a good flesh tone and definition. 

And… It also helps if the person you’re shooting… doesn’t look like they haven’t slept since they got off a flight from Chicago two days ago because they’ve been doing all nighters writing a video camera application on the side for kids… but that’s another project, and will require I shave, eat, and maybe get some sleep.  :-)  Over all – your cheapest solution is of course to consider your lighting, take a white balance and shoot it so it doesn’t require correction if possible.