No, really: I’m semi-serious in this post’s introduction video.
Has anyone got any free or blue dye, some old, preferable clean, spare bedsheets, and some sort of upright frame I and nail seem bright blue or bright green bedsheets, to?
The reason I ask … ?
Whilst I was job-hunting, earlier, I had YouTube on: when this video came up.
Explaining how to use a free app to give your videos a twist: by using compositing.
A technique that’s occasionally called Green Screen, or Colour Separation Overlay, or CSO, or Chromakey.
Basically? You film something in front of a green or blue screen.
Then, in post-production, the green — or blue — parts of the video, are replaced with something else: usually an image, but occasionally, moving backgrounds.
That tutorial interested me: it’s a technique that was used on Dr Who back in the 1970s, on Star Wars, Max Headroom, your average news studio, and Star Trek.
And it’s something I felt I could use for some of the videos on Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar.
While Photo Booth’s nice, its background effects aren’t perfect.
You’ll have probably noticed the bleed over effect in the intro? That’s from Photo Booth.
So hearing about a piece of software apparently powerful enough to let me improve on that?
That caught my attention.
Then, of course, inspiration hit me.
I could download something would only take up the limited room on my hard drive …
Or I could maybe poke around through the user manual on the various bits of software on my Mac.
It seems I can — given a green or blue screen — do basic compositing with my current version of iMovie.
It has to be said, thirty years ago? I’d’ve needed a TV studio to make composite video.
Now all I need is some bedsheets.
~≈§≈~
Right now?
That possibly matters a lot less than … several other things.
Frankly, I started planning this post earlier tonight.
I’d seen Brainstorm, many years ago: and associated it with both WarGames and the original Tron.
At least … going by that introductory video, there.
You don’t think I’m over-doing the pseudo-Max-Headroom scratch video thing, there, do you … ?
I hope not.
But … ?
Well, look at it this way, I hope not!
At any rate, I think I have something of a confession to make.
I’m out of work, right now: as you possibly know.
And struggling to keep occupied.
It helps that TV box Sets, and movies are relatively easily got.
As is my media collections.
There’s always something in there that’s worth watching.
Some time back … ?
One of those films was the last film to ever star Natalie Wood: called Brainstorm.
I’d suggest seeing Brainstorm: it’s possibly the only film I know of that predicted the future.
To cut a long story short, I’d watched Brainstorm not long after publishing a Teaser about CompuServe, the first commercial internet: so it showed an unfamiliar public how a networked computer could be used to talk to others, damage computer controller factories and watch porn on a computer.
Years ahead of when people started to do so.
I thoroughly enjoyed that night.
But remember comparing Brainstorm to a couple of other films of the time: Tron and WarGames.
With the amount of free time on my hands?
I thought watching one of the two seemed the right thing to do.
