Dirt Conference promo

Dirt Conference in coming soon, Nov 10-11, 2009, to be specific. I’ll be there. Anyone else making it out to Little Rock?

Omino, glitch experiments

I recently grabbed the After Effects plugin suite from Omino have begun experimenting with some techno-glitch. Fun times. View my experiment here.

Hypnotic

I really love this piece. It’s quite hypnotic. (via Collide)

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

Square Pixel

I was asked the question the other day about square pixel format and my motion graphics workflow. Here’s the 4-1-1 on my file format workflow, and why I’ve chosen it. There may be other opinions, but over the past few years (at least in the world of SD), this is my preferred method.

Square Pixel widescreen. When creating a comp in After Effects, I choose the “Square Pixel Widescreen” preset. It gives you a frame size of 864 pixels wide by 486 pixels tall.

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Every computer monitor I use is a square pixel monitor. Video output, however, is not square. For wide screen (16:9), the pixels are actually wider than they are tall. The aspect ratio is 1.2. A computer monitor cannot resolve the non square ratios. When the final image is rendered it looks fine, but when you’re crafting the piece you have to deal with what is referred to as aliasing.

Example of aliasing

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See those jagged edges, especially along the angles of the A? That is aliasing. When rendered and shown on a TV monitor the edges will go away. But when you’re working on it, you have to contend with that visual nastiness.

After Effects does include this little switch (let the arrow direct you) that corrects for the working pixel aspect ratio by squashing everything. See, the aliasing is gone. However our text (in this case) is squished. Now this isn’t a permanent effect, it just makes the aliasing go away while you’re working on the piece. But again the image is distorted, and I just don’t work that way.

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By beginning the project in square pixel you get the best of both worlds. The lines are not aliased in your working space and you don’t have to work with distorted images.

The second step to my workflow is to render out my video from After Effects. Typically I’ll render either a high quality H.264 or a lossless uncompressed clip. Then I run it through Final Cut Pro. Even if the clip is “as-is” from After Effects I pass it through this step so that every piece I prepare has seen the same workflow.

Upon export from Final Cut I force the square pixel video (864 pixels wide by 486 pixels tall) into a non-square pixel format, which is the preferred format for video systems.

I choose the File > Export As Quicktime option:
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Make sure to use the following settings:
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Most importantly changing this option to force my square pixel composition into a non-square, video friendly format:
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That’s it. Render, and done. If you want to read further, this wiki article explains it well.

Makoto Yabuki, As One

I’m a huge fan of well timed, ambient works. I love this Makoto Yabuki piece. The synth is very nice, the images pleasing. And they lock so well to the audio it feels like neither element dominates for attention, they are one and the same. Maybe this is why I’ve had YouWorkForThem’s The Interpretation on play off and on over the past few weeks in my office.

AS ONE from makoto yabuki on Vimeo.

Amon Tobin, visually wonderful

I love this pieces, especially when it gets drum and bass heavy about halfway through. Nicely treated 3D elements that fit into the environment tightly.

Visual Music – Amon Tobin music video from 12FRAMES on Vimeo.

Moby interview

From last week’s Moby post Adam’s comment lead me to this CNN video interview with Moby. Yep, love him even more.

Little Red Riding Hood via infographics

Very well done, spotless execution.

Groschel and Maxwell parodies

Love this. We did our own version of it a few weeks back, but this was the inspiration and definitely worth a watch.

Kenya video

The standout piece from this past Sunday in my mind is this video, built by Will Rodes, that tells the story of our most recent mission trip to Kenya. Nicely shot by Will half way around the world.

Star Wars vs Star Trek

Put aside your Star **** geek bias and enjoy this.

Starwars V Startrek from LICHTFAKTOR on Vimeo.

(via @Bowlz)

Ben Thomas story

This week I had the privilege to work on a story that was both personal and a technical challenge. Ben Thomas is a close friend and one of the Godliest men I know. I enjoyed the opportunity to edit and composite his story.

As for the technical challenge, we chose to shoot this piece green screen. B-roll, stock footage (bet you didn’t know the train at the 0:43 mark was really a toy), and real photos and articles from the accident were layered in to add a second time line of backdrop. Stylistically I’m really happy with how it turned out. To make it extra personal I created the soundtrack myself with Reason. It’s nothing flashy, but I wanted something pretty specific and I think it fits well.

Ben Thomas interview from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

You can watch the final version here.

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Thanks Adam for providing brainstorm and camera support.

They say the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. I’m not so good at that… give credit where credit is due. This piece was inspired both in vision and tone by the PC3 “One Word” series. Great work, guys, and great inspiration.

Clayton King Q&A

Here’s a little Q&A we ran before having Clayton King to speak here at NewSpring. I think Adam did a great job with this one.

To give credit where credit is due, this is the piece that inspired us. Great job, guys.

Rokkaboy reel 2009

The Rokkaboy Reality 2009 reel. It’s hot.

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God is… series open

Series open for God is…

White Rabbits – Percussion Gun

I’m really digging the set of this new White Rabbits video, “Percussion Gun.” Simple, elegant, photogenic.

White Rabbits “Percussion Gun” Music Video from White Rabbits on Vimeo.

Wax Stag – And How

This is rad (via Ben Coleman)

Wax Stag – And How from Clem Stamation on Vimeo.

Now What behind the scenes

We armed Michael and Amanda with a Flip Mino to catch some behind the scenes clips of the making of our current series opener. Personally, I love the part halfway through the video when the driving shots start up. In case you missed the resulting pieces, you can watch the counter and opener.

Now What – “The making of…” from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Now What counter

Enjoy this sampling of the Now What counter. Personally, I like it even better than the opener. In case you were wondering, the type is a black video / white type projected directly on the road. The image you see is a direct recording from the camera with some color grading. The comping was done in camera, and it was shot in a 5:00.00 continuous run. No cameramen fell out of the truck while shooting.

Now What counter from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

And as promised, here are a few behind the scenes shots of our high end mobile rig.

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Now What? series open

Now What series open from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

For this piece our goal was to communicate the idea that we as a church have been on a journey over the past several months. Through the past four series Perry (and others) have been teaching through the Sermon on the Mount. As this teaching arc ends, this next series asks the question “Now What?”

Where do we go from here? We’re still on the journey, but we’re stalled.

We wanted to convey the journey, and represent that the journey has been through our previous teaching series.

Technical notes:
To achieve the desires effect of speed, travel, and images projected on the road we first looked at motion tracking and After Effects. It took about 2 minutes to realize that our time would be better served strapping a 5,000 lumen projector to the back of Dad’s truck with a gas powered generator, wait for dark, and have some fun driving around.

I’ll have some pictures up later this week so you can see just how insane my team really is.