Dishonest Pixels

Warning: here follows a minor philosophical rambling on the use of video filters, following on from one paragraph of what I wrote on Tuesday.

The issue is this: sometimes, you point your camera at something, and the footage ends up looking quite different to what the human eye perceives, simply by nature of the camera.  If you're seeking a verite presentation, then which is the more 'honest' approach in these situations: to leave the footage as is, and claim the moral high ground on the basis that you've left the footage exactly as the camera recorded it, or on the other hand to apply filters to make the video look more like what the human eye would have seen?

An example from my own work: about four years ago, I was making a little promotional video for the art department at my sixth form college, and I ended up filming inside the darkroom, using my camera's night-vision setting.  Of course, if you're in a darkroom, the only light available is a dull red, but the camera's night-vision mode rendered the image in that familiar dodgy shade of green.  The problem was easily fixed in post by applying a colour filter to turn the image from black-and-green to black-and-red again, successfully emulating the way the darkroom looks to the human eye, and rendering the camera's presence somewhat more transparent.

More recently, in the aforementioned Root Hill 2010 footage, I've adjusted the colour curves for all my glow-in-the-dark passball footage, so that the players and ball stand out better from the black background, and once again I think the altered media looks closer to what I was seeing on the field.

But can I still make the same claims to authenticity if I've tampered with the footage in post-production?

I don't pretend to have a definitive answer to this question.  To be entirely honest, I'm not even sure that it matters that much.  It's not as if the darkroom or RH footage will ever be used as evidence in a court of law.  But Vegas just crashed (I need a RAM upgrade), and I thought I'd come on here and have a little ramble while I wait for it to start up again and reload my project.  If I hadn't told you, you'd probably never have known I'd used any filters anyway.

Quick update on the general status of the RH edit (leaving aside the issues of glowball filter ethics): I've now added all of the Box Hill and Concert bits, and made some more progress on the Crawley bowling section.  Which leaves me staring down the wrong end of the Pizza Hut footage.  Those of you who were there will know what I mean by that (remember the Yorkshire Pizza of Death?).  The rest of you should probably... um... yeah.  Let's just say some of the Pizza Hut footage is a bit scary... 8p


- The Colclough

Things and Stuff

No, I haven't made a conscious decision to blog only on Thursdays from now on.  It's purely coincidental.  I'm afraid the following is a rather disparate collection of mini-rants on totally unrelated subjects 8p

I've decided never to waste money on Recorded Delivery postage again.  Royal Mail have had 9 working days to get the Megastropulodon DVDs to the cast, and one of them still hasn't turned up.  Well, it hadn't last time I heard from the would-be recipient, which was on Tuesday evening.  Considering that I paid £1.70 for first-class recorded delivery, I'm getting very cheesed off with RM.

I gave up the hair experiment on Monday.  I got fed up with it being permenantly dirty, knotty and getting in my face, so I made use of some scissors.  Other people have said they like the result, but I don't like it at all.  I'm not showing you a photo.  I've been considering wearing a hat for the next six months so I don't have to see the mess every time I walk past a mirror.  I hate mirrors sometimes.  I suspect there's a happy (ish) medium somewhere between what I had on Sunday and what I've got now, so I shall be avoiding scissors for quite a while now.

On a slightly more positive note, I've finally got round to booking my funny hat and my superhero cape for my graduation ceremony at the end of August.

Which leads me straight back to the negative side of things... now that I've finished college, I don't know what I want to do with my existence for the next few decades.  It really feels like I've dropped off the end of something, and I'm sort of freefalling.  I can't even knuckle down and work on a new animation, as my various script concepts are stubbornly remaining just that - concepts, and not much more.  Anybody else got any ideas about what a super-powered granny might get up to?

The uncertainty is very depressing.

Um... what else to rant about...

Well, they say great artists steal, maybe that applies to bloggers too?  I shall go and raid someone else's blog for inspiration... *goes and raids*

Hannah (whose fault it is that I started writing this blog in the first place... at least in part) has been complaining about finding it hard to express important things verbally, about the tendency to bottle things up, about unasked and unanswered questions (http://hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com/2010/09/id-wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve-but-its.html, http://hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com/2010/09/me-and-my-heart-we-have-issues.html), and I'd have to say, some of it reads like a transcript of my own brain, because I don't talk about stuff either.  I've been trying to think of something encouraging to say in reply, but nothing has come to mind yet, except to say you're not alone.  There are aspects of me that nobody else knows about.  Apart from God, of course - I guess that's omniscience for you.  I suppose the first step towards being honest with other people is that we have to be honest with God first; after all there's no point trying to hide the truth from someone who already knows the truth anyway.  Once we've got to grips with talking to God, then maybe it might start getting easier to talk to other humans.  Or maybe I'm just barking up the wrong tree again.  I don't know.

Anyway, I've probably ranted enough for the time being, so I'm going to hit the 'publish' button and get on with something else.

- The Colclough