Preview Time for the Third Time

Root Hill 2011 was my sixth year attending the camp, and my third time as official videographer.  As per last year, I documented events with my Sony camera, and edited the footage in Sony Vegas.  Yes, there's a bit of a Sony theme going on there, despite the fact that Dad works for arch-rivals Samsung.  And as per both of the previous years I videoed (2008 and 2010), I have made a little trailer.

It's a bit different to my last two Root Hill on Camera trailers, this time using a pared-down "less is more" approach.  But I think that's a good thing, as it wouldn't do to just keep repeating the same old ideas and let them go stale.  Those of you who weren't there will probably be hopelessly confused, but for those who were: I hope you'll enjoy it.

Two things to watch out for in the trailer:

1. Josh's reduced afro.
2. The Mistake.  There's at least one 'error' that I'm aware of, but I decided I liked it so I let it stay.  I'll be interested to see if any of you can work out what I'm on about.

Just a bit of DVD menu authoring and disc burning to go, and then it's on to the post & packaging!

Okay, there wasn't much text in this post.  But then again, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Vegas tells me there are 2376 frames in this video, which - at least in theory - means it's worth approximately 2.4 million words.  And I think there should be bonus points awarded for Root-Hill-relatedness, maybe...


Statisticables, again:

• First 12 for '12 status: 4 down, 8 to go - still at the back, but closing the gap
• Latest book read: still A Brit Different
• Latest film/TV watched: still Sherlock
• Latest music listened to: Ode to Jim by Phil & Has, as featured in the Root Hill on Camera 2011 trailer
• Latest edible item eaten: still that hot chocolate
• Predominant colour of clothes: same stuff as earlier today
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

Not Having That One Come True

I don't usually act on the content of my dreams.  I usually disregard them within minutes of waking up, and proceed with my day as if the night's imagined shenanigans had never happened - which, of course, they actually never have (except as an illusion inside my dozy head).

But today, I made an exception to this generally-hard-and-fast rule.

I had a dream last night where I found myself unexpectedly in the middle of the next Root Hill camp (this might have been brought on by the fact that a booking form for said camp turned up in the post yesterday morning).  For reasons nobody bothered to explain, the 'Root Hill' camp wasn't at Root Hill at all, but in some sprawling, very badly designed conference centre.  But the main weight on my mind was that, what with it only being the end of November at the moment, this meant the event was taking place some nine months early, and I ended up trying (somewhat awkwardly) to explain to people that I was still working on the camp video from last time.  I remember wondering what happened to all that editing time I should have had.  All those months...

And then, after briefly catching sight of someone in my peripheral vision who may or may not have been Ellie off Countryfile, I woke up.  And having woken up, I thought: no way to I want to let that happen.

So I fired up Sony Vegas after breakfast, and did some more work on the video.  I've confronted the huge blob of football footage which I'd been dreading for weeks and I've beaten it into shape (I don't know why, but it always seems to be very easy to just stand there and let the camera roll and roll and roll when there's football going on, but it's never so much fun to watch the stuff back), and I've chosen a couple of little snippets from the concert to feature in the main highlights reel (not too much of it though, as the whole concert is included on the DVD as a separate video track), and I've tidied up most if not all of the odd loose-end clips that were scattered through my raw footage bin.  Today has felt like a very definite slice of progress.

Whether or not you (the Root Hill-ers who ordered a DVD off me, that is) get to see the fruits of my labour this side of Christmas is still up in the air, but if you don't, then it'll hopefully not be too far into the new year.


- The Colclough

Two down, one to go... and then, redrafting

Finished a couple of things today.

One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation.  At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words.  Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper.  (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)

So now, I can get started on Episode 6.  And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts.  And so on, and so forth...

My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism.  In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem.  But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.

I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing.  The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.

The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'.  If you've never read it, don't bother.  If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful.  It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback.  It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.

The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein).  So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise.  Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'.  I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
 
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...

Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable.  The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written.  But it's been great fun reading the comic.  I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?

Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction?  Has your grey matter survived so far?

And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime.  So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised!  The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly.  Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things.  If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!


- The Colclough

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

Root Hill meets the Digital Scissors

If you've never done any serious film/video editing, then you're missing out on something which can sometimes be gripping, fascinating, and even downright addictive, yet at other times can bore a mere mortal out of its little skull.

Well, I've been doing it for years.  I've tried out... *takes a moment to count* between 6 and 11 different editing programs, depending how you count them, of which my current favourite (if you want the detail) is Sony Vegas.

And right now, I've got five or six hours' worth of footage from Root Hill 2010 under my virtual scalpel, and I'm trying to reduce this rambling mass of frequently-disjointed material into a half-hour compilation of all the best stuff, that will (I hope) flow nicely and have some sense of internal logic, if not actual narrative.  Compared to the scripted-drama editing I was doing earlier in the year, it's a lot harder cutting verite footage, because there's no script to tell you what you're doing.  You just have to take whatever you've got, and try to trim and reshuffle it all into a form that makes some sort of sense.

Last time I did the RH video was in 2008 - I took a break from it last year because of my dissertation work, and left it in the hands of Josh Watson, better known for his short and zany YouTube sketches (see http://www.youtube.com/teabagnose).  In the 2008 video, I took a strictly chronological approach to the editing, which saved some decision-making, but in retrospect I think it might have let the finished product down a bit.  This time, I'm taking a more thematic approach, grouping footage together by place and activity, instead of laboriously chewing through one day at a time.

Sometimes, if you've got the right footage, some bits can be really easy.  E.g. the clip where Sam B claims that he's getting his shoes cleaned during the evening talk, but doesn't have a clue why - which then feeds in very conveniently to the footage of (guess what) Sam B getting his shoes cleaned during the evening talk, with an explanation by the talker.  (BTW, if you weren't there at RH, then you'll have to remain ignorant as to what was wrong with Sam B's shoes, as it'd take ages to explain, and I really can't be bothered to type it all up.  Sorry about that.)

Other times, it's just a mess, and the editing experience starts to resemble what it must feel like trying to disentangle a vast cauldron full of extra-long spaghetti.  With tomato sauce on it.

Of course, the fun bits are the ones where I get to play around with video FX filters, and that sort of thing.  There's a distinct lack of said bits in this project, as it's supposed to be fairly realistic, and I'm not allowed to go off on one and produce some massively arty-farty piece of surrealist film.  Un Chien Surreyou this project is not.  But there is the odd little piece, e.g. the glow-in-the-dark passball footage.  Yes, I filmed the glow-in-the-dark passball game.  And you know what?  It worked.  I've run a little filter on the footage to emphasise the glowy bits, but it basically worked, and so for the first time in its 4-year history, the RH glow-ball game gets featured on the official video.

There will also (hopefully) be some graphical intertitles to announce the beginning of each new thematic section, and designing and making these is a nice little something which I'm saving for later on.  It'll serve as Workflow Pudding, after the endless brussels sprouts of the main editing process.

*Pause*

After typing the previous paragraph, I briefly considered removing the phrase Workflow Pudding, and trademarking it before typing it anywhere again.  But then I decided that this would be churlish, so I'll release it to the public domain instead.  The public domain has given me many wonderful things (the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Audacity, OpenSong, etc...), so it can have my little phrase in return.

*Returns to the main point*

Anyway... for those of you who were at RH, the following should make sense to you: so far I've cut together all my footage from Glowball, LaserQuest (all 1 clip of it), Dorking Leisure Centre, the fire, and Littlehampton, plus some from Crawley (not all of it though).  Haven't got any Box Hill or Concert clips in yet.  If you weren't at RH, then you'll just have to take it on trust that that lot makes some sense.

I may or may not get round to editing a little preview and posting it on YouTube - if anyone has requests ("please can I be in the trailer?", "please can I not be in the trailer?", "I want to see some glowball footage", whatever) then I'm open to considering them.

So... ramblings over.  Back to Vegas 8]


- The Colclough

The monster is nearly here!

I mentioned in my last post that I was about to put the finishing touches to Megastropulodon Attacks!

Well, I ended up going to bed a little later than I had intended, but I achieved the prime objective, i.e. completing the film.  From the start of serious pre-production work through to the end of the re-edit, it ended up taking around 7 or 8 months to make.  That's not including the earliest faffing-about stages of story development.  If you included that, the figure would go up to 9 or maybe even 10 months.

A large part of today has gone into engineering the DVD, burning copies, and designing and printing the disc labels and box sleeves.  It only took one dud test disc before I got the codecs and menu structure right, which is relatively good going for me.  Need to get the things in the post tomorrow.

I ended up with an oddly minimalist cover design, mainly because my so-called colour printer is currently only working in black-and-white mode.  Last time I bought a colour cartridge, it didn't seem to last very long at all.  Anyway, I decided to just put the top billing, the title graphic, and a stylised greyscale image of the titular mutant on the front cover, and here's what it looked like:

Mega is essentially just a gorilla suit with a home-made alternative head (cobbled together from old cardboard boxes and some jacket-making leftovers, apparently), with Jonny Wells stuck inside.  The weird thing is, though, when I was on the bluescreen stage directing the VFX shots, it didn't take me very long to get used to addressing the mutant as an entity in its own right.  I must admit that for maybe half of the FX shoot on that eventful Tuesday morning, I almost forgot that Jonny was inside there at all, and I found myself talking to Megastropulodon as though it really existed.  I'm not too sure what that says about the state of my head.

But anyway, historical notes aside, the monster has now found its way onto the front cover of the DVD, which seems appropriate enough considering that its name makes up around three quarters of the film's title.

Having said the cover is a bit minimalist, I suppose the disc menu is too (in a less bloggable way), but it came out nicely enough in the end, after two or three rounds of metaphorical punches were exchanged between myself and the computer.

In case you're the sort of person who enjoys nerdy statistics:

• The finished film runs for 15 minutes 48.48 seconds (or 48 seconds and 12 frames, if you prefer it in those terms).  That's 23712 individual frames.
• At 720p resolution (1280 x 720 pixels per frame), that works out at 21841920000 pixels across the whole film.  That is, of course, rather a lot of pixels.
• I think about three-quarters of the shots have some sort of colour grading and/or VFX.
• I haven't got round to counting the VFX shots yet, but at a very rough guess I might say there are 20 or 30.
• The MPEG-2 master takes up about 2.17 GiB of disk space.
• The total budget was £181.95.
• This works out at £11.51 per minute of runtime, or 19.18 pence per second.

So, uh... there you go.  Keep watching this space, and hopefully in a week or so I'll be posting another blog with a link to (um... make that an embed of) the finished film, so you can all see what I've been up to and what I've been on about 8)


- The Colclough