Learfield Videographer (and part-time chief operating officer) Roger Gardner took his little Flip video camera to Saturday’s football game between Mizzou and Bowling Green and brought back some nice clips, including this one of the big new scoreboard.
We live in a YouTube world. Well, a video world. On our desk tops, on our phones… and we sure as heck want it during our football games. Even with the flip video, you get a sense of how good the new scoreboard video is. And that black area above the video panels, with the Tiger logo? Speakers. Big…ass…speakers.
And I did enjoy the stylin’ and attitude of the players during the video introductions. Sheeeeiiit.
This short video is the best green screen effort yet. In fact, I can stop experimenting because this is good enough. I bought a gallon of paint that’s mixed for just this task and rolled it on my concrete basement wall. You can judge for yourself but it looks nearly perfect too these amateur eyes.
I also used a few more of the wonderful iMovie 09 tools and they are really good and easy to use.
The video is parked on my Mobile Me account. The more I compare with YouTube, the more I like it.
My friend Wendy came through with some NYC street video for my green screen hijinx. I've been sitting on it for a week or two, desperate to come up with something imaginative to do with it. I did not. But I will. Thanks, Wendy. Better version on Mobile Me. If you have ideas for how I might use these backgrounds, leave us a comment.
My pal Jamie Nelson came through with some nice background video (with blimp!) so I lit up the green screen to play around. While I did not get great results with my older Casio point-and-shoot, the new one (see previous post) seemed to work fine. I didn’t put this on YouTube because I hate how shitty my stuff always look there. This one runs about 3 min and is parked on Mobile Me.
My final experiment with the chroma key or green screen effect proved the most fruitful. This 2 minute video clip was recorded straight into iMovie 09 using the built-in iSight camera on the MacBook Pro. I used an external USB mic that deliver excellent sound.
As I said in the test video, moving video from the cameras to the Mac… fire wire cables… a big hassle. Going straight into the Mac is a hell of a lot easier and the resulting video effect is superior to my previous efforts. I posted this clip to my Mobile Me account so you can see the video without the YouTube compression. Thanks for your patience while I farted around with this. The flag and sunrise (set?) bkg video has lots of potential.
I spent most of Sunday trying to achieve a credible chroma key effect from my little basement set. When my early efforts –using the Casio Exilim– showed promise, I switched to the Sony Camcorder (Hi8) to take advantage of the external mic. The audio was great but I was unable to produce a usable green screen effect. After hours of trial-and-error, trying to figure out what was different, it hit me: the camera. So I switched back to the Casio and immediately got better results. Not perfect, but better. But now the audio sucks a little. (5 min Order of the Fez update)
I’ll keep at this until I get it. Next experiment will be recording with the built-in iSight camera on the MacBook Pro. In three…two…
This is my low-rent, quick-and-dirty green screen set in a corner of our basement. Annotated flicker image is here. Lighting and video pros can probably offer a dozen ways to improve on this but –like so much in life– I stop as soon as I hit good enough. I probably have no more than $50 bucks in this set-up. Next project is a graffiti mural on one wall.
A very quick and dirty experiment with the green screen effect in iMovie 09. I did just about everything wrong: too close to the green screen; insufficient lighting; wrong color clothing… and that's just for starters. But we'll address those problems in future efforts. For all that, iMovie did a good job of trying to compensate for my errors. Watch this space for future efforts.
Background videos wanted. As I look around for background video I find that what I'm after is difficult to find or very expensive. But perhaps, like Blance, I can depend on the kindness of strangers. If you have a digital camera that shoots video, and don't mind busting your hump on my behalf, I'd love to have some street scenes.
For example, Planet Nelson could set up his tripod and shoot the San Francisco skyline at night, or the Golden Gate Bridge on a sunny day. Keith might capture a busy London intersection. Bob could record the hippies on Madison's State Street. If you're in a band, you could record a song at rehearsal or performance. Be creative.
But don't forget, I'm not looking for pans and zooms. I need stationary shots with the action moviing past in the background.
