Today in the bay

I spent all day editing a video for kid city.  Now if you know anything about HCC then you would know Kid City is the focus for the church.  HCC philosophy is if you win the kids, you will get their parents.  Like a lot of churches with very laser focused philosophy HCC does it REALLY WELL.  This coming weekend is all about family ministries so they get a video for the weekend.  Luckily Brett our college pastor did an AWESOME job of all the pre-production, he had a shot list, script, and talent all organized.  Which of course means it was easy for me to stay ahead of the shooting schedule. We shot all day yesterday and I spent all day today in FCP.  The video is pretty much done, but I still got some polish to put on it

New years resolution- 3840x720 edgeblended

Christmas program 2010 at Hope Community Church was a redo on an oldie but a goody.  We did Willow Creeks Imagine, the original version.  If you have never seen it, it's a great show.  The script is good, and it's pretty much all around awesome.  However, we have done this one before 2 Christmases ago, so the challenge was to take a production we had done and make it new again.  Our answer to this problem was to steal a page out of the Camron Ware's playbook.  For those of you that don't know Cameron he is an awesome, passionate guy who knows what he is talking about when it comes to his craft.  Thus enterth environmental projection, now we had never really tried anything like this, and sadly we had to pull down all the parts to put them back in use literally hours after the production, so I didn't get any good pics, but you get the idea.

I know this looks a little underwhelming, but all the work lights are on... trust me in the dark it ROCKS!  As you can see we pretty much ignored that corner all together.  We couldn't make it line up and extend the distance that we wanted horizontally at the same time.... this was the compromise.  That scene is the backdrop from out stage extend out into the audience all the way around both sides of the room.  We had 7 different scenes we used throughout the production. To pull this off we used propresenter and the edge blending module.  Both of which we purchased just for this production, but we are going to get TONS of miles out of.  Both ProPresenter and the edge blending module are awesome.  Out of the the box it took the TD and I 10 minutes to edge blend this wall to the point we were happy with it... and since 10 minutes earlier neither of us knew what we were doing I would say that is a WIN.

So basically all this means that this year for our production I was responsible for content on 11 projectors... No small amount of work.  Where did the 11 come from let me break it down
3 for the left wall
3 for the right wall
3 on the stage
2 for IMAG
No pressure

This weekend

Just awesome and I have to share. 

My team

I typically try to keep my ego out of this blog, but today that is prolly not going to happen.  This week I was in Atlanta for WFX which is an awesome conference for tech people.  Well our production team was recognized at the conference.

We won the Solomon Award for Best Technical Production Team.  The key word in there is TEAM, I know how good my volunteers are but it good to be able to let them know that other people noticed as well.  For the record my team is AWESOME! They come and serve all the time and they constantly humble me with their commitment.

Sticker Fail!

So I went to buy my son a DVD that we watched in the theater a while back and I find THIS>>>>

 I am not sure which upsets me more: the fact that this was done or the fact someone who isn't ME got paid good money to screw up an easy job.  I mean heck I COULD DO THAT!!!!

live vs. post....oh yeah and graphics too

This post is really just a little more info about me and my role(s) at my church. My main area of focus is the weekend worship experience. Live production is something I have spent a lot of time doing and it's something that I think I am pretty good at. However as with most video people while my focus may be live production, I am also a competent videographer in my own rights. I am capable of shooting and editing footage and I like to think I can hold my own in this area. However, what I have spent the most time lately doing is motion design/animation. This is an aspect of my job that I REALLY enjoy, but unlike my live production experience this is not something I was ever trained for.  I am mostly self taught. I have watched literally hundreds of hours of tutorials, and I am a VERY novice graphic person, and I know even less about motion graphic design.

My problem, is like a lot of video people who work for/with non video people, I am expected to be very competent in this area as well. From live production to shooting and editing in post there are at least SOME correlations.  However, when it comes to graphics they are in no way shape or form related but since it's all video I am suppose to good at it.  What is funny is typically this is not the case.  Most motion graphics guys can't edit their way outta a wet paper bag, and most good editors start sucking their thumb at the thought of opening Motion or AE.  Now this is observation not a law... I know a few guys that can handle both pretty well, but those guys few and far between, and they bill A TON more per hour then me .... and are totally worth every penny.  

My point is I think their is a double standard here... and since it effects me my opinion on is it not biased at all.  There is a double standard of expectations that I don't think exists in other places.  Video and graphics are not the same, if you have one guy doing both... get them some help.  Now!  Seriously GO!

Step 3: making the sails independent

So this last part I decided I really needed after testing the footage at the end of step 2.  While it looked good, it also made each piece of sail look like one piece instead of multiple sails, so back in to motion.
I duplicated the loop 3 times and sized them down to fit just over the masks.  Then I rotated them along axises so they did not mimic the sail below them. I also added the jolly roger to the mail sail, this was displaced the same way the original sail was done, at the request of the TD, what the TD wants the TD gets.

Ok once this file is exported and put back in keynote then I do what most people would never dream.  I stretch it to fit length wise...before you freakout I left this step out earlier that makes this ok.  I did that so I could discuss it more here.  Remember the original mask was made at the resolution 3840x720, the orginal projected size.  Well the orginal sail video size is 1280x720.  Well when I designed this sail layout I shrank the mask length wise to fit the 1280x720 aspect.... I then compressed the sails length wise to fit the compressed mask.  Once it is finalized I will reverse the process in keynote stretching the sails back to the original size.  Why the hoops, well 3840x720 is not a resolution you can work at, or that even most things recognize, so I fake it.  By contorting the mask and making the finals fit that contorted shape once I re-size them they look fine.  I know I am taking a quality hit here by doing this, but honestly aside from me no one should notice, and since the resolution doesn't exist in anything else it is the only way I know how to do it.  

So I put the finalized 1280x720 mov in keynote.... then stretch the sides to fit the 3840 resolution. Then layer the mask goes over it and I use the alpha feature in keynote to get rid of the whites, thus making these squares in the final video look like properly sized rectangle sails.

so here is a copy of the 1280x720 video with out the mask on it.

So you can tell just by looking at is it should be stretched out a little for everything to look right.  If you can image stretching that by 3 times as long that is what the final looks like and trust me it looks fine. 

I will see if I can get some good footage of it this weekend to post here so you can see the final project.

Total time on task for this project was about a day and half, which considering at the start I wasn't even sure I could do it, not a bad time.