Holy Boners

So we’ve pre-released the sfx reel and shared a little history. Now what?

There are 4 sheets of newsprint in the backroom covered with to dos, here’s the jist. Two archival and non trivial projects are in the queue for closure. They’ll require a good chunk of the summer if not the whole shebang. An earlier strategy was to submit a short project to festivals while wrapping up the longer ones. The magic momentum generated by getting into festivals would help sustain energy through the long slog to completion. Some Almonds are Harder to Skin than Others is still a candidate for this approach. Patrick and I talked about the possibility of another super short interstitial, perhaps based on my sunset scenario. Anastasia is already on her way back to NYC as I write this, so the chance for her to star is gone.

The problem with diverting resources to a kick ass super short is that meanwhile the bigger projects languish. One thing leads to another and then 6 months go by. Faisal may still be available and willing to guide DOG to a finish, but I’ve got to get cracking or he’ll get so famous that he won’t take my calls.

I think DOG is the priority over ALM, if I can wrap DOG then there MIGHT still be a chance to get Hello World on the water in the fall, tho that’s really reaching. I also have an idea for a tighter focus on ALM, and that should be developed before I push hulls into the water again.

DOG certainly needs plenty of After Effects intervention to get airborne, and that’s where the reel SFX overlaps. I’m clear that motion graphics and SFX figure prominently in both archival and future projects and what exactly does that look like? What are the critical skills to master? What’s the guiding aesthetic?

Critical skills! Rotoscoping and tracking. Plugin fluency, especially the complete Sapphire set I’ve compiled. Color correction theory and practice with Colorista. Expressions. Keys and bluescreen. Workflow. Archiving. A comprehensive list would emerge by working through books like Creating Motion Graphics by the Meyers. Combing through project posts might be the first step.

The lads and I recently watched Monsters on the recommendation of JWS. We were struck by the SFX approach, which was elegantly subtle and aligned with our efforts on DOG. With the exception of the climactic monster courtship scene at the end, most of the effects did not draw attention to themselves. Overgrown buildings on a distant shore, flipped over rail cars glimpsed from a window, a missile truck passing on a bustling street…

Keep it Simple and Subtle has been a cornerstone of the Trickster Pictures SFX architecture. That’s both a pragmatic and an aesthetic choice. Pragmatic because we don’t (yet) have the chops or resources to pull off an effects tour de force.  Aesthetic because so many mainstream films are effect heavy and content light. Where’s the story?! Perhaps Simple and Subtle should be replaced with Serving Story. That’s what we want our SFX/VFX to do.

On a metaview, it’s a choice between awareness and delusion, we can either enhance or blunt perception. Engaging stories expand consciousness, right? On the other hand, prolonged exposure to mediocrity tends to narrow and limit understanding. Schlock art can be either unintentional or deliberate. The paranoid set (myself included) see most mainstream movies as mediocre by design, they are ignorance machines. Filmmakers in the studio system apparently are trained to make shitty choices. Whoops, talk about cliche -  here I am boiling everything down to an epic struggle between the powers of light and darkness!

It’s convenient to point to something and say, “no!” and maybe that’s a starting point for defining what’s worthy. Suffice to say I’d like to make art that awakens. It’s not enough to just flip what’s served up by oppressor culture, I don’t want to define myself in contrast but by discovery. There’s great hunks of the human experience missing, and my aim’s to reclaim ‘em.

Nuff with the bluster, let get down to cases. God only takes the stage in disguise. The projector in Avenues is a lovely example. The changing colors of the slides spill onto the face of the executive. This creates a connection between the synthetic slide and the live action talent, they are in the same room. It is a relationship that is perfectly obvious once established, it’s not even recognized as an effect. To merge elements into a coherent unity, that’s a primary principle.

It’s hardly worth stating that less is more, a slight intervention is less work than a major intervention and creates fewer complications. Adding variables decreases predictability, slows digital processing and clogs human cognition. There’s a step beyond less is more though, let’s call it elegance. An elegant solution does much with little in a way that’s thrilling and even profound. It’s evidence of humans in tune, encouraging to anyone paying attention. Elegance reminds us of our higher natures, the wonder that we could be. Another principle – we practice less is more and aspire to elegance.

Perfection rejection is yet another principle which stated proactively would be the Quest for Good Enough! Constant application keeps the project moving forward.

An honest assessment of our current level of development isn’t influenced by either self consciousness or confidence. We’ve got to know not only what’s achievable but sustainable.

The primo principle is identifying what experiences and techniques intrigue. What kind of projects would be fun? The energy generated by following bliss is infinite, but in the past I’ve gotten confused and lost track of what really matters. The price of freedom is constant vigilance.

The trio convened and hammered out a summer collaboration plan. A slew of short scripts and treatments by June 7, concentrated creation for the next 3 months and then compilation into a feature length train wreck, with props to Kenneth Koch’s 1000 Avant-Garde plays.

This is for my extended inner circle of creatives, both producers that might have a micro budget and/or good things to trade and artists that might have a wild idea or fancy getting hired to help.

x

Am I prepared to take on motion graphics challenges professionally? Do I have the knowledge, workflow, hardware support and storage to pull off something really complicated? Not quite yet. Perhaps clients are on their way, but I’m aspiring to professional performance to realize my own outstanding projects, DOG and ALM.  I see SFX as the three way love child of editing, painting and code, a natural extension of what I’ve been doing for awhile. You may or may not see an opportunity for yourself here, my job is only to keep the cosmic channels open.

To finish my projects, I’ve got to set my expectations at 80% max. That means that if I want to wrap them this year, I’ve got to accept that I’m only  going to achieve 80% of my vision. That’s reality, see behind the scenes for my rationale.

Premise

“Up on the canyon edge, there’s a ship that sails the sky. They say it carries a thousand ghosts who once ate black gold and lived as gods. Big waters brought it here before my grandmother was born. We climbed up there once when we were kids, but there’s great flakes of sharp iron everywhere like as not to slice you wide. It’s bad vibes close up, but pretty from down on the river here, far away and safe. She’s the Princess of the Canyon. Like the bones of big birds you see frozen in the rock, a remembrance of long, long ago.”

Canyon Princess and Uturnpike are scenes from the opening montage for Daughter of God. Just two elements, a massive derelict cruise ship and the lovely canyons of the San Juan river demonstrate the efficacy of the KISS aesthetic, (Keep it Simple and Subtle). Just a couple of changes got her ready for the reel.

Weston and Gibbs observed that the ship looked ancient yet the sky was crisscrossed with jet contrails, clear evidence of a extant technological civilization. I replaced the sky by doing a roto of the canyon rim.

Before removal of jet contrails, the sky bespoke human presence

After color correction, a certain yellow rock looked human made and quite distracting, so I had to power mask that away.

The distracting yellow rock prior to power mask.

There’s actually some wobble with the motion tracking on the ship, but that’s a revision for the future. Currently the ship has a simple procedural texture, but I’d like to give the boat a hand painted texture, as illustrated in the brick impetus of 2008. My brother Steve keeps insisting that a big boat couldn’t balance on rocks like that, it would break in half. If the Twin Towers can free fall without demolition charges, then the ass of a freakin’ cruise ship can hang in empty space. Hollywood physics has colonized reality!

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”. That’s a quote from one of those Crowleys, Dave or Aleister, I forget.

Premise

Mysterious rows of snow covered cars snake into the distance. What happened here? Was a neutron bomb exploded nearby? Were the drivers raptured away by the returning Messiah? Why are the cars bumper to bumper in both directions?

Unturnpike and Canyon Princess are scenes from my narrative short Daughter of God, (in progress). DOG is a dystopian, universe next door, ribald, surreal romantic comedy. Most of the action takes place aboard a big boat between three quirky refugees. Strangely beautiful and eerie scenes of nature reclaiming the earth provide context for their post apocalyptic hijinks.

I was just cutting my After Effects and Mocha teeth when I first gnawed this scene.

It all started when DOG’s B unit (Patrick and I) traveled to the abandoned stretch of Pennsylvania Turnpike in April of 2007. I’m confident our work inspired at least one other project to shoot at the pike – The Road with Viggo Mortensen.

On the Pike – Uncle Joe drifts down the asphalt river

Approach to an undisclosed location

Deep underground, the spooks bide their time

B unit grunt with expensive camera and an attitude – Patrick Kelly

Anyway, we spent a week filling P2 cards. One of my favs was cloud shadows moving over long stretches of empty pavement. Since there was slight camera shake, a solid track would be needed if I wanted to insert 3D cars. The original Mocha tracking solution was far from perfect. I thought the reel was the chance to get it right. I spent the better part of a week trying various approaches to no avail, much of that time repeating past strategies. We want to avoid re-climbing old curves, that’s why this blog is now dedicated to low level documentation. So standby for technical details…

The camera shake is slight, so theoretically there’s no motion parallax. According to Steve Wright’s tutorial, I can treat the entire shot as one coplanar surface. That means I don’t have to identify / track specific planes like the road, the distant mountains etc. However, the moving cloud shadows change the brightness of the features and that makes the track drift. When a feature is darker, the track becomes erratic. At least that’s what seems to be happening. I tried shifting between features with consistent brightness, extensive explorations with adjust track, even brightening the footage before tracking. The problem with Mocha is that I can’t find definitive text based documentation about how the tracker actually works under the hood, so there’s a lot of guesswork involved when trying different approaches. I pissed away too much time watching tutorials for hints about what’s actually going on.

The new track is really not much better, the cars just drift off the road at different times than they used to. I am prepared to admit defeat and pay for outside help to get a solid track. For now tho, there’s enough drifting snow and rousing soundtrack to distract attention from this glaring issue, but just barely.

Jonathan tinkered with the car renderings to try and amp up the reflections while retaining rich color, but he didn’t implement the 50 pixel expansion doohicky in time to make V 0.9. Again, another argument for keeping detailed notes.  It was three years ago, after all.

There are some improvements. By implementing a combination of garbage mattes and keys I extended the blanket of snow into the forest without having to hassle with the vagaries of tracking. I also made some adjustments to the fog and snow, refining my understanding of how z based effects work.

Uturnpike was Jeff’s favorite, and he can be a tough audience. I do like this scene too, but it’s definitely not up to snuff, yet.

Premise

CK is a black ops super warrior run amok. His self determined mission is to bring down technical civilization by crashing key elements of infrastructure. He’s forever skulking around power stations and military installations, tossing precise sabots with economy and cool detachment. In this scene he is leaving a little too late – the catastrophe is already well underway. He laconically descends a cargo lift and exits stage right as the smoke thickens.

Patrick’s been thinking about CK for years. In April of 2009 the coincident availability of a Penske box truck with hydraulic rear lift and a brand new Vixia HF-S100 camera sent him and his brothers into a pre-dawn production fugue.  When the smoke cleared (literally) he had several takes of CK, one of which was pretty good. Unfortunately he used the less than optimal default settings of the camera so the file is both slightly overexposed and resolution deficient. He later assembled some foley for the shot.

The original Penske box truck shot before roto

The resulting sketch was the starting point for the current iteration. The main issue was removing the box truck background and fixing the obviously plastic gun. An appropriately industrial background had to either be made or found. Finally some ambient mayhem (smoke, explosions) would be needed.

As director Patrick had pretty clear ideas about what should be in the scene. Both Jonathan and I acted as motion graphic artists. Jonathan handled most of the roto on CK and designed the smoke while I tackled the tracking and repair of the gun. I also shot some industrial backgrounds, researched and designed a chinese/english “no smoking” sign and finished the compositing.

For the background Patrick had ambitions of building something in 3D based on a parking structure he’d seen visiting Brad Kinnan at MSU. When we decided to finish CK as a team, I promoted the idea of finding a suitable live action background that could be quickly adapted. The background would have to have nearly horizontal light to match the dawn shot on the box truck and have an industrial feel that would make sense with an elevator. We searched the internet for nearby locations in Michigan. Someone suggested the cargo area on the S.S. City of Milwaukee which is berthed in Manistee. I drove down a few days before Halloween and guided by volunteers , passed through the haunted ship maze and into the vast open interior. After grabbing several shots, I took an impromptu tour of the engine room before hopping back in the van and returning to Bear Lake.

An alternate location I’d been thinking about was Ron Brown and Sons Concrete, located on Us31 just past the turn off for the dorm. The timing was perfect – the sun was nearly level with the treetops, splashing the tall tanks and towers of the concrete plant with golden light. I pulled in and found Kurt working under a truck. I asked him if I could take some video of the tanks. He was amiable and gave me the phone number for Greg or Lisa so I could get releases later. After I’d been there for about 20 minutes he came out and asked if I was from the EPA. I explained my mission in greater detail and we talked for a bit. I thanked him and headed out with a camera full of potential.

Ron Brown and Sons Cement tanks showing sluice. Most of the original sky was removed with
sky key and masks so that plumes of smoke could pass behind, someday.

The shot of the red and white tanks could have been anything – storage for rocket fuel, coolant, chemical processing – except for the concrete stained sluice at the bottom of the white tank. That needed to be obscured somehow, CK should be blowing up something more exotic than a concrete plant, maybe a missile base? We discussed putting a rocket and launch gantry in the far background, but decided against adding yet another element.

I tried sliding CK to the left so that he’d obscure the tanks, but that meant he’d be exiting the original frame in the middle of the composited shot – and we’d need a lot of smoke to obscure that abrupt edge. Perhaps a billboard could cover the sluice.

Patrick had imagined CK at a Korean or Arabian location, and wanted signage to illustrate. We agreed on Chinese and I started looking for examples of industrial Chinese signage. I found a “no smoking” sign in both English and Chinese characters and realized that this would not only solve the sluice problem, it also suggested a flammable hazardous environment… and since CK was puffing a cigar, gave us a visual joke.

The image I found was pretty low resolution and I also wondered, did those characters really mean “no smoking” in Chinese? Always verify! I could have emailed some Mandarin speaking friends, but I needed to find vector files for the characters anyway. I found a translation site and a site that helped identify characters by the character strokes. Through trial and error I got exact matches to each of the characters that I could copy and paste into AE as vector text. It translates to, “not allowed inhale smoke”, but I also like “forbid suck in soot”.

不准 not allow, forbid, prohibit
吸 inhale, suck in, absorb, attract
煙 smoke, soot; opium; tobacco, cigarettes

forbid suck in soot!

With the sluice obscured by signage, I still wanted to move CK slightly left to get him off dead center. CK and the elevator platform were separated into distinct elements so that the elevator could remain in it’s original position. A little smoke was still needed to hide the edge of his exit and also to obscure the gun, because the gun would have had to be hand tracked after the elevator bottomed out.

CK approaches the edge of his live action frame. I rounded the edge to blur it better with the smoke.
Note the lack of gun enhancements here, the smoke also helps provide a shortcut.

Patrick had wanted smoke and possibly fire to be part of the scene, and had experimented with burning cinders in early takes. We discussed whether we’d use 2D fractal effects, buy a fancy particle plugin like Particulate or learn the current unstable release of Blender with it’s implementation of true 3D particles. Blender will have the most compelling possibilities once there’s a stable release with reliable results. For this shot we chose AE’s internal fractals and varied the layers’ rotation, opacity and position over time.

We changed our minds about some choices. We had flipped the horizontal axis of the live action to match the movement of the smoke. This was visually disconcerting to me, and I worried that it might create complications later. I had also added lots of smoke to hide CKs edge and Jonathan opined that it was too much, so I cut back on the final version until there was just enough.

Future changes could include adding “crush hazard” signage to the bottom of the elevator platform. Other hazard signage in various stages of decay could be added to the tanks too, maybe indicating the chemical or gas they contain. The possibility of putting a rocket and gantry in the far back is still intriguing and certainly a large plume of slow moving smoke behind the tanks would be fantastic. Patrick would like to have more glowing cinders on CK’s clothing and hair. There’s also the possibility of shooting the live action again – phew!

Lastly, here’s a list of all the things we let slide. CK’s cigar smoke disappears at the brim of his hat – that’s the border of the roto.  The tanks are not completely masked and bits of the original sky are still visible. The rifle still has it’s crossman BB gun logo on the stock and a casting seam just above. With all the work that goes into a project, knowing what enhancements are trivial and when to stop is key. Having the confidence to allow some things to slide is progress, I think.

Premise

Climbing high above a menacing mega-weather system, the VIP passengers aboard the Execu-jet attempt an escape to gentler climes, anticipating warm backrubs and frosty cocktails. Hubris! Even the mighty kerosene sucking turbo engines cannot forever loft such a heavy burden of sin! The weighty karma of their own greedy excess, their wanton spilling of carbon into the atmosphere and flippant sabotage of the global life support system drags them down. As if judged by the ancient gods, a bolt of rogue lightning strikes! Down, down into the swirling siphon perhaps to ditch in the flood waters or be smashed into jelly upon a mountain side. Fin.

Climate Change is a spin off of my Power Down PSA.

When my pals James and Jamaica were invited to document a travel boondoggle disguised as right livelihood, I felt compelled to whip up an editorial video. This didn’t stop the travel or even jam the hype, but I’m glad I spoke up. I’ve since been contacted by others who were also annoyed by the project’s premise, so at least I’m not the lone curmudgeon.

<digression>

Is it possible to carve out a profitable niche in “green” industries and services? Can we convert our environmental debts into the comfortable currency of convenience and excess? How can we repair the global life support system if we’re not ready to abandon some familiar habits? Clearly, what we’ve been conditioned to think of as good and proper just isn’t. Hamlet, you have drunk your death.

I hear coffee enemas are good for you, but sucking the stuff down daily ain’t, period. Shipping beans or any other commodity around the world certainly isn’t healthy for the planet – check this container ship presentation. Riding your bike to work every morning will never make up for your vacation jet flight. If you’re going to process organic food, pay local growers more than California growers. Be on guard against activist arrogance – we can’t trade our good works for privilege. Beware of environmental leaders with large families, they need to hustle to feed all those kids. We’ve got real work to do and willful ignorance isn’t helping. I’m willing to be somewhat diplomatic and gentle in explaining the situation, but to those who assert their personal agenda over global survival, watch out.

</digression>

I shot the jet footage at Cherry Capital Airport and wanted to wipe out the plane’s registration numbers so I wouldn’t need a release. It was unlikely that the owners of the jet would gang up with the boondogglers and retaliate, but better safe than sorry. Another job for After Effects! I mucked my way through and the results were… good enough!

Unmarked plane, ready for a rendition run

When I was stabilizing the footage for the registration erasure, I wondered how the jet would look without it’s background. Weeks later, I was refreshing my roto chops with Pete O’Connell’s tutorials and needed some footage to practice with. The jet seemed ideal. After a rough roto extraction of the jet from the airport, I played with new backgrounds, including a trippy swirl that seemed to suck the stabilized jet in. That sketch became the basis for Climate Change.

Rough roto and the original vortex

The difference between a rough and a refined roto turned out to be about 3 days more work. The new roto tightened up the edges and wiped out the landing gear.

I also added a strobe flash, based on strobe from the original footage.

Lightning strikes are a bit of cliche, but so are apocalyptic images generally. Never mind that the plane is flying above the weather system, gimme some of that Hollywood special sauce! Extensive experimentation with various plugins eventually led to Sapphire’s S_ Zapto for the lightning and S_Glownoise for the dancing glow of rain on an electrically charged fuselage.

Jonathan and Patrick (experienced 3D modelers) both suggested that the plane’s movement was unrealistic, while James Weston (airplane pilot and flight instructor) was fine with the movement. Jeff wanted me to loose the rain streaks, he thought that broke the shot. The feedback was all over the place, so I decided to not make any changes. Maybe it is a little over the top. Jonathan thought the scene would work if it were pushed to be either totally over the top or totally realistic. I’ll ponder that when we plan the next release.

Documentation protocols under consideration, for collaborator review. The next step in getting the lads to blog.

1. Technical terms are bolded and either briefly defined on the first use or linked to a definition on our other project sites, wikipedia, etc.

2. To promote long term link integrity, don’t link to ephemeral sites.

3. References to external resources can include a relevant excerpt AND a link to the external resource. Links should be the name of the resource eg <link>resource name by author</link>.

4. ONE clear and concise idea per sentence, no run-on sentences

5. Clearly explain the development process including triumphs and pitfalls so that…

5.1 collaborators can understand now
5.2 future selves can understand in 3 months or 7 years
5.3 we can extract any insights that might guide us moving forward

6. Posts should have ONE coherent theme. Break multiple themes into separate stand alone posts which can then be linked to over and over. Think about posts as documentation components that can be re-purposed.

7. If you chuckle when you read your writing, then you’re likely having fun. Having fun means we’re more likely to document consistently. Though writing coherently can be a challenge, it should never feel like a drudge.

That’s how long it took to develop the (preview) of the motion graphics and special effects reel, from inception to launch. Let’s see… that’s 170 days per minute, 3 days per second or 2 hours and 15 minutes per frame. Of course, all that wasn’t working time. Other projects stopped and started, priorities ebbed and flowed. Did I mention I’ve got two movies in process? Perhaps we spent 60 days total, not including time required to create the archival scenes that predate the reel – Uturnpike and Canyon Princess are both legacies of Daughter of God (2006-2008) and Commando Kill was shot in April of 2009. Just for fun then… 60 days from inception to launch or 20 days per minute or 8 hours per second or 16 minutes per frame.

These figures just seem whacky! That’s probably a fairly reasonable estimate though, and it gives one pause. Of course we’re finessing learning curves and flailing a bit. Mastering the fundamentals includes identifying and implementing efficient workflows from the get go. Certainly we’ll get faster… slowly.

We decided to open the reel with the sync sound of iCar. This plodding and awkward scene provides a counterpoint to contemporary SFX reels that are all about speed, zing and blitz… zzz.

Back in the 80s when I was hitting Siggraph pretty regularly, the early exhibition reels were chock full of awful plastic and chrome flying logos. Nowadays flying logos seem to be making a comeback, but you won’t be bored by that synthetic jive in the Trickster reel, heck no. Get ready for authentic boredom, full on!

Premise

An auto exec proposes a ‘new’ car concept a day before the Mayan calendar ends. This is old school Detroit to the bitter end, an exemplar of unsustainable civilizations. The archaic 35 mm slide projector and it’s incompetent operator, the cliche ad campaign, the canned patter of the executive and the murmur of the distracted fidgety audience coalesce to a delicious ennui that begs to be shattered by the imminent end of days.

From: Jonathan Kelly
Subject: Re: If this were for real…
Date: February 28, 2009 9:45:44 PM EST
To: Dan Kelly

Avenues of Future Development Based on Emerging Market Trends

Summary:
Bloodied and broken by a decades-long decay of market share and recent economic turmoil, General Motors Corporation decides to launch a re-envisioned product portfolio based on the latest market research. As the R&D projects mature into new and revised car model designs, a small internal product demonstration briefing of them is given before the marketing personnel, to layout the path for their advertising campaigns. This film centers on the that briefing, held within a dark, vague, windowless room in the bowels of the GMC headquarters. The Director of the Marketing, Research and Development Division gives the briefing, with a dry, monotonous voice and an archaic projector showing demo diagrams and animations, systematically going through each sector of the market and the corresponding new or improved car model that the company plans to use to enter or better compete within it. But through the actual content of the summaries of the cars, their features and limitations, and the proposed advertising campaigns for each of them, the formulaic and backwards thinking of the company and its customers is revealed, in a highly satirical and somewhat over-the-top fashion.

Jonathan’s original script featured several new car concepts – iCar, Excellus and Spark. He directed the live action in early 2010.  The iCar sequence was revived for the reel because we liked the implied smarmy infringement / collaboration with Apple Computer, and the staleness of the iconic ad campaign from the future perspective of 2012.

Rather than trying to find a conference room or build a 3D model and do bluescreen, we opted for the subtle/simple aesthetic, shooting the talent in a dark room. An exit sign would be the only other element needed to sell the scene. The projected graphics could be a cutaway and the whole thing carried off with two shots.

Jonathan’s EXIT

From: Dan Kelly
Subject: test
Date: March 8, 2009 4:07:00 PM EDT
To: Jonathan Kelly
Cc: Dan Kelly

Here’s a very quick test of the work we did last night. Following KISS * two visual elements tell the story. Add some echo of the talent’s amplified voice, some throat clearing and coughing from the audience and i think this will work. It would be very cool to pull it off with just talent and the exit sign I think.

You can always add more room elements later. I comped this in photoshop but I think we should comp in CS4 from now on.

* KISS = Keep it Simple and Subtle. Redefined for this post, and soon to expanded on in the Trickster Pictures Aesthetic.

Later we experimented with adding louvered blinds and a door outline to the live action. The door was later dropped. Showing a corner of the projection screen created stronger linkage when cutting between live action and graphics and also enabled us to suggest Apple by including a false hint of the famous logo.

James Weston gave us feedback that the our initial visual arrangement created an unlikely composition – a real camera operator wouldn’t include the EXIT sign in shot if they could get tighter on the talent. In the revised arrangement, the EXIT sign becomes an unavoidable element.

original composition

revised composition

Development is a discovery. Subtle enhancements suggested themselves as we progressed.

Jonathan was the director of this project. I assumed the role of foley and motion graphic artist working to realize his vision. Sound design established the context – a conference room with audience. By syncing the exec’s color correction with the changing slides, light appears to bounce from the projection screen to his face, creating a strong connection between live action and synthetic elements. iCar explored how effects can enhance and alter without being obvious. How to do more with less – simplicity, understated… magic.

Jeff Gibbs found iCar to be completely pointless, “You could do that with clip art and Flash!” Guess we gotta keep churning that aesthetic.

Here’s Version 0.9 of the Trickster Pictures SFX and Motion Graphics Reel.

Excerpt from Kellys’ secret blog, December 2009.

This is an outreach to potential clients, based on bliss projects. The theory is that if we do the work we really like, there will be clients out there who will “get it” and hire us. This means we don’t have to do flying logos or commercial crap, we just have to do what we are into with gusto and crazy enthusiasm and the clients will show up.

The following is a list of scenes for projects that we have either already done or really want to do. They should not be too complicated, rather we want to select doable excerpts of 3-7 seconds and execute…

10 months later, the idea escapes…

The lads and I are assembling a motion graphics and fx reel. Making a range of support services available to other Michigan film makers could be a lucrative niche. The idea is to repurpose elements from past and current projects and then add new material as we develop it. It’s also an exercise to focus our diverse talents on a common goal, to get better at working together, more organized.

Version 0.9 of the Trickster Pictures motion graphics and special effects reel launched on May 8, 2011. Five lightly documented legacy scenes required seventeen months to incubate, decrypt, redesign and assemble. Dan shepherded two generations of Kelly brothers through the process.

We’re not asserting that this special effects reel is awesome – it’s rife with aesthetic compromises and technical glitches. Rather than strive for perfection and release nothing, we’re getting out there. Version 0.9 is inherently incomplete, but it achieves pragmatic objectives.

Certainly we want to introduce the possibilities of motion graphics to indy producers and recruit new artists, but evaluating our collective competency and identifying our potential are the most significant outcomes. The reel is also the most complex After Effects project I’ve handled – but not nearly as complex as other projects I’m scheming on. Version 0.9 has provided essential lessons on workflow and mindset.

Perfection is the enemy of the (pretty) good

Let’s say project X has the potential of being 100% awesome. A novice motion graphic artist might spend an infinite amount of time on X and only achieve 60% of it’s potential. An experienced artist could achieve 80% percent of X’s potential working for a reasonable amount of time, but the final 20% would require a crazy investment. A master artist would achieve 99% of X’s potential in a reasonable amount of time.

I am becoming an experienced motion graphics artist, so I have to watch out for the 20% trap. Getting projects to 100% amazing is presently cost prohibitive. When a project has a zillion components each with potentially infinite iterations of polish, striving for perfection is folly. An aspiring master must cultivate a sense for ‘good enough’. Only then will she be able to negotiate the narrow and treacherous trail that bisects schlock and glorious obsession, the middle path between delivering a steaming heap of crap and laboring on an eternal opus.

That’s what I’m talking about

Speaking of art, I’ve had an epiphany – editing is not enough. Though subtle and startling expression is possible just by changing from one image to another, I yearn to touch the images themselves. That’s probably because I originally incarnated as a painter. Painting is about making images by hand, establishing a direct circuit from imagination to hand and back again. Movies are heavy on photography which kinda depends on a pre-existing photon friendly physical reality. Cameras can’t coax images right out of gray matter… yet. Obviously my camera technique has been influenced by my painting past, as has my approach to montage, but… control over cinematography and editorial isn’t analogous to the painter’s freedom or the direct expression possible with painting, sculpting, writing, acting or dance. So movie making can be a bit of a dry hump. Widening the channel from my interior universe to production could tickle the kink, start to satisfy.

Fluency with motion graphics might be the very thing. Now I can potentially build a moving image up from scratch. That gurgling sound? The percolation of spontaneous joy. In 2004 I set aside painting to give my visions motion, and at last the dream begins to manifest. I’ve asked this question before – Why did I wait so long to learn After Effects?

Whoa Bessie!

Back to the dangers. The risk of getting mired in myriad details is compounded by a slew of steep learning curves that the artiste de virtualité must ascend simultaneously. Copious notes are required, coherent observations to both facilitate working memory and provide the breadcrumb trail that guides my future selves. Let’s not even go into hardware and software bugs. It’s daunting, plenty of precious life gets soaked up by all that screen staring. It’s truly tempting to just toss it all and go lay on the beach.

The demo reel is an After Effects composition or comp that contains about 15 other comps, including the 5 primary scenes with 5 deconstructions.  My first approach was to render comps and import movies into the main comp, as opposed to importing the scene comps themselves. This makes for a less complicated main comp, but restricts the sync of visual rhythms to music and (probably) means that the movies get re-compressed and degraded when the whole project is rendered. I later reconstructed the entire project with only comps, but that resulted in rendering glitches! Finally, I was forced to hybridize and mix up movies and comps. Research is required, the all comp approach HAS to be viable, because comps within comps is fundamental functionality.

Getting a little punchy on the home stretch, I switched the bit depth from 8 to 32 before rendering, running under the assumption that this would provide the best color fidelity. Atmospheric effects created with fractal layers looked balloon-like and protoplasmic as opposed to cloudy/steamy. I haven’t checked, but likely this is because  the fractal effect is 16 bit max. What was more alarming (and yet to be investigated) is that the “power mask” of my 32 bit color correction plug in (Colorista II) also seemed to fail at 32 bit on Canyon Princess. Bumping down to 16 bit cleared up the issues.

These examples illustrate that there’s a foundation of arcane knowledge required to support major projects… and I’m still discovering what bricks belong there! Aside from scouring the forums, the only answer is to watch where the walls are sagging.

Launch

The reel rendered as animation is about 20 gigabytes – uploading to trickster’s youtube channel took about a day using the advanced java utility. Several attempts with Firefox failed and a successful attempt with Safari ended up with bad audio sync. Re-rendering with tighter adherence to youtube’s recommendations (H.264, duh) and then a 4 hour upload using Safari worked. I also brought Ganesha over to the studio to supervise the operation.

From now on, the discussion will devolve into tex talk. If you wanna see me myelinate, then by all means peruse a detailed analysis for each scene.

Avenues of Exploration, Our dystopian Detroit
Climate Change featuring the epic execu-jet
Commando Kill, he’s kind to animals
Uturnpike, no exit on the highway to hell!
Canyon Princess, she sails the azure skies

In the past I’ve been insecure about my work. A nice way to say it would be that I had high standards, I didn’t want to be a party to schlock. I’ve seen some exhibits and shows and felt embarrassed for the artists, thinking, “That really is awful and don’t they know it? Glad it’s not me making an ass of myself.”

I am highly perceptive and expressive. I could live this by acknowledging that fear (and shame) has kept me back.  It takes time to be able to achieve high standards so in the meantime, what? Do I hide in a cave and show nothing until I’ve become ‘a master’? I’ve stifled my growth by being so flinty and judgmental about my own expression. The tag for Holy Boners is the Creative Power of Audacious Mistakes. That’s a hard earned lesson. I’ve been afraid of making mistakes and missed out on a lot of fun. Courageous blunders get us where we need to go. It’s the juice.

I can strive to be fully alive. That’s what this art thing is all about, the art of life. Art isn’t an end, it’s a being and a practice. Paintings and plays are stigmata and signatures of an experience outside of time and place, a metabolism, maybe even spiritual spore. It’s shit! The artist can’t help it, they’ve got to toss it off or die. It’s natural and obvious. A masterful shit is enlivening in a cosmic context we might not understand, probably because we flush our own shit down the toilet and try not to think about it. Shit matters tho, take it from a guy with a composting toilet. The lessons I’ve learned…

So the point here is, perfecting the product is backwards and stifling. Waking up / deepening perception is the only worthy objective. Everything else follows.