NewSpring Ghost sighting
- At November 3, 2009
- By ken
- In video
No doubt you’ve probably all seen or heard about our recent ghost sighting, but in case you missed it:
For the fun technical debrief. The footage is really from our security cameras. The export feature doesn’t play well with Macs so we ended up literally shooting the computer monitor with a camera (thanks to Will and Justin for running the footage down). This process also added some of the hazy brownish glare.
I added in the crosshairs, REC button, and timecode directly in After Effect. None of those are in the original footage. Why did I include the timecode? It’s there so when I sat in the service I would know when he jumped out (it’s 38:22 in case you wondered).
For the “ghoul,” I started with still image. After some Photoshop extraction and a bit of color grading to get him to fit into the scene it hit me… if he’s jumping in front of the camera he should be blurry. So add in a bit of Gaussian Blur.
My favorite part. I used the mesh warp tool to distort his mouth just a bit, to make him react to the scream.
For audio there’s a slight room noise I pulled from a stock collection just to make you think you hear something.
In the end I think it was pretty effective and got the proper reaction. What did you think? Did you jump.
charles
Great job. Adding little things like the recording light, time code and cross hairs truly added subtle yet unconsciously noticeable realism. Those all served well in building the suspense. But I think the addition of ambient noise was the key to the entire effect. In all four services I heard at least one or two gasping screams from somewhere behind my camera position.
It takes a lot of work to scare 2500 people. You did it well.
Aaron
yup. got me.
I pretty much hate you now.
And it actually made my son cry
neil greathouse
I need new slacks. (love that word)
Tim Lemons
I was expecting it. did u guys actually play that in ur service?
Jeremy McCullough
At Greenville it got quite a reaction.
The band and production guys knew it was coming, so we all started running behind the stage curtains to crouch get a look at the crowd’s reaction (they couldn’t see us). We were like ninjas preparing for a silent attack on everybody.
There are police officers who sit back there, and they were probably freaking out as we all crept up behind the stage, because they weren’t in on the joke.
Vaughn
Ken,
2 Questions:
1.) How much did NS wind up spending on upholstry cleaning?
2.) Were there any seats beyond repair?
Nice work!