Freddie Wong simple skit

While this video is simply a short comedy skit, it does feature some hints of motion graphics that I thought were good enough to post on this blog. Some examples of graphics added to this particular video are the lasers on the guns, the drone in the sky and the masks that each of the characters take off. The masks, while only being a short segment of the entire scene were interesting to me as they had to map the persons face to the mask mesh that was to be taken off. There is evidence of tracking in this video as well, the laser on the sniper rifle clearly was added during post production. They must have tracked the gun footage and then added that laser to the bottom of it. And obviously the end gunshots and city scape were both computer generated as the wizard city titles came into view. Overall a funny video, this shows that effects like gunshots and such don't need to be over the top to add to the existing footage and make a simple story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHQr0HCIN2w

Chromatte

     After our work in class on green screen I thought that I would do some research on a new technology in the keying world.  The base of the new technology is a new fabric that is made up of thousands of small glass balls, that are coated in aluminum, called Chromatte.  This creates a retro-reflective material that reflects light in the same plane that it receives light.  The second part of the technology is an LED ring that goes around the lens of a camera.  This green or blue light ring hits the fabric with colored light that is then reflected back into the lens, creating green screen effect.   The LED's do not cast colored light onto the subject however because they are not strong enough.  This technology allows for a really clean key with no spill or issues with reflected light and shadows, and the subject can be close to the wall.  Another benefit is that you can light the subject  in any way without needing to worry about getting the background light even and flat.  The fabric is expensive, but it creates a lot of opportunities for creativity that were previously impossible.
 

Film Riot - Helicopter!

Although this effect itself isn’t all that complicated (or at least seemingly not too complicated), I find it to be very impressive.  The way the production team put this piece together is pretty spectacular!  I love the fact that they didn’t only show you what their (final) product was, but also how to do it.  This group, “filmriot” appear to have countless videos for how to add things to your production.  What makes this even nicer is that they show people who are ‘amateur’ film makers, aka low budget productions or the at home movie maker type of person.  On a side note, their intro sequence is phenomenal as well!  I love everything that they have going on.  I feel that they found a very good balance of too much vs too little, making it just right!  I really like this filmriot page!