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The making of Remote Control
Meet ... Mike Shaw
his Remote Control won the Minute Movie Contest and a Motcombe-Relf Music Sponsored prize at BIAFF 2007
and represented the British Isles at UNICA 2007
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One of the features that required checking out and testing whilst Beta
testing an earlier version of Liquid Edition (now known as Avid
Liquid) was a new and sophisticated Colour Correction capability. Amongst
other things it has the ability to select and change up to 15 individual
colours to new colours. Wanting to put this to the test, and wearing a blue
shirt at the time, I had the idea to change the colour of that.
But how? A remote control seemed the answer, so I quickly set the scene, set up the camera, and began pointing the remote control. Remote controls don't click. I needed some reference points for facial reaction and colour changes, so at the appropriate moments I made clicks with my mouth - a kind of 'tut' sound without moving the lips. |
| I also felt - before shooting - that a good 'wheeze' would be to have
the shirt vanish altogether as an end to the colour changing sequence.
That simply required the 'empty scene' be shot first, using that shot as an underlay and chroma-keying out the shirt at the right moment. In the edit, making the shirt totally vanish didn't quite look right, so I reduced the gain of the alpha channel so that shadows of the shirt are still visible - making it more realistic and 'glass' like.
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The colour changes were OK - but if I were to make this into a viewable
movie, it needed an 'end'. At the time, the simplest (?) thing that came
to mind was to actually end up in the TV myself. That element of the movie
of course was created using a controlled 2D picture-in-picture filter, with
a slight edge softening, over a zoom out video of the TV.
I grabbed my wife to record "Is there anything good on TV - Oh! It's you! …." And dubbed her voice over me apparently beating the TV screen from the inside. A 'real' clicking sound replaced my 'tuts', and the film was made - total filming and editing time, about 3-4 hours. It was really just a 'test' video, but after showing it at the club (and hearing the response), I entered for a competition. One of the judges suggested that it would be funnier if, realising who was on the TV, 'the lady' switched the TV off. |
| A great improvement which appealed to my own sense of humour! So, a quick
video of her hand holding the remote against a chroma-green cloth was soon
layered over the original edit, with the picture-in-picture over the TV screen
image now dissolving back to reveal the original screen. It felt a bit empty
at the end, so I created the 'Help' handwriting (using a very inexpensive
and powerful program called BluffTitler and its plug-in,
BixelAngelo), and superimposed that onto the screen.
Job done. Happily, it has won a number of trophies and, hopefully, has brought 60 seconds of amusement to all who watch.
- Mike Shaw |
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Editor's notes:
| BluffTitler | website (£29.74) |
| BixelAngelo | website (£14.85 - 20% off if ordered with BluffTitler) |
| Avid Liquid | website (prices start about £320) |
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