Okay, okay, so it's juvenile. What's your point?
As I write this, my PC is rendering (for the second time) a segment from the latest DirecSource spot, this one about 4 minutes or so, for a trade show booth. It's in the form of a newscast with the anchorman wearing a globe on his head. We tried Ray first, but he got claustrophobic in that globe, so we went with me, which was fine
except I noticed on the shot later that I seem to slouch a good deal in the chair. Never really noticed that before. I always thought I had good posture. Huh. Anyway, we shot the entire thing against a little green screen, and the company gave me a copy of their virtual set program, that seems to have a really good keyer. Anyway, I'm cuttin' away in this program, building my shots and roll-ins, and come time to save the scene as an AVI or MOV file, it wouldn't do it. I finally realized that the version I'm using needs to be activated (so the software company can verify ownership) in order to save films. Knowing I couldn't do that, as I don't own the program, I thought for a few minutes, then found I could bring their sets into After Effects and Photoshop as PNG files, so Viola' I was able to build the sets in AE, and even do 3D moves on them. So the edit is proceeding along. I'm currently re-doing a shot that took forever to render last night, because of one small but distracting flaw in the reflections on the top of the anchor desk. I had accidentally superimposed a reflection from another scene onto the reflection for this scene, and it looked weird, so I wanted to clean that up and render it again. The scene is 530 frames long.So, in this video, the globe-headed anchorman, "D.S.," is getting live reports from around the world about how great DirecSource is for businesses that outsource to Asia. I named the reporters Justin Case, John W. Burns (after Kirk Douglas' character in LONELY ARE THE BRAVE), and Carol Shevis (after the late, great journalist and writer Carol Shevis, who mentored me as I was getting my start in journalism) as a personal homage to Carol.
We were all shot against a green screen, and I'm using Ultimatte to key it. The backgrounds for Carol and Burns are live video plates with 3D matte elements, like cargo containers and signage, added in. The background for Justin is a still from the virtual set program.
The images below are, respectively: me being helped by Ray, the greenscreen clearly visible; Carol's report composited; Wayne's report composited.
This is Burns' report.
Here's how the set looks when the computer finishes it's work.
Pretty cool, huh?
Well, it's back to work for now.
Aloha!
2 comments:
Mr. Horton - I Googled my mothers name today, and was pleasantly surprised to see her name on your site. My mother was Carol Shevis, I have to assume the same Carol Shevis that you named your reporter after. No a popular name after all. I think that she would have gotten a kick out of your choice of names. Thank you.- Holly, Daughter of the late, great Carol Shevis.
Holly,
There could only be one journalist named Carol Shevis, and I'm thrilled you found my blog.
For any other readers out there who don't know who we're referring to, Carol Shevis was a newspaper journalist (she would've called herself a writer, and rightly so) and she worked at The Times Community Newspapers in Northern Virginia. She was a legend in Fairfax County, and very well-loved. She was, also, quite crazy! Trust me, I'm crazy myself, and she used to drive us to the Meetings!
But what I most remember about Carol was her youthfulness of spirit. She claimed Christianity, but I believe she was much deeper than that. She had a great sense of humor, and we had a lot of fun together covering feature stories around the D.C. suburbs.
She once said something to me that I'll never forget, and which has made a positive difference in my work and attitude about my art. I was griping once about some cuts the edidor, Marcia McAllister, had made in a story I had just written for the paper. In an almost glib fashion, she breezed by and said to me, "Don't worry about it. Words can always be recycled!"
Carol was a good friend, and a great inspiration. I had the pleasure of knowing her in the last 2 years of her life, before cancer took her.
I look forward to seeing her again, someday.
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