VoiceOfEmerika

I was doing some image processing for another project when I noticed some interesting operations — charcoal and paint. I read a little more and was intrigued. The way I build these movies — frame-by-frame, using a standard image processing program for most operations, I can take advantage of any operation.

So, I decided to run some of my old movies back though the system, but using some of these new operator.

Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear what you think–

I never really liked this beach scene until now… it could use some music though.

A new look at the Trains at Izaak Walton Inn. (I wish I had more footage — I need to go back.)

And last the Queen Mary and the fireboat.

Clearly these clips I am collecting are just that… clips. I am starting to wrap my mind around creating something more. Karen seems to have a better handle on this than I do, but I will come around.

Last night the sunset was great. I had an idea to build a movie of it using three different crops of the same source. Originally I was going to get closer and closer, but I think the killer shot was the widest angle so I switched it around. Later, I spent a few minutes on ccMixter where I found some lovely music by Gianmaria Di Flumeri. I mixed it down a little (It was a brutal hack — I hope you can’t hear it. –cringe–) and threw the whole thing into a blender — sunset a la mode.

note: I am the monster in my movie. :)

In Southern California we had a pretty good rain storm on Sept 21^st. I was lucky enough to catch the precursor at sunset. I had a couple of cameras out hoping to maximize the chance for a good exposer. You know, I was really hoping that the sun would peek through the clouds near the end and light them up, but it never materialize. Still, I think you’ll like these.

This one’s pointed towards the sunset and Long Beach.

And this is pointed toward Catalina Island. Part way through a ship starts up and heads for the docks.

The last few stills I worked on inspired me to retry a movie from those source images. The whole thing is a little mysterious to me right now. When I first tried this the movie it seemed to stand still. I tried speeding it up and was never happy with the results. This time I tried things a little differently and the first results are promising. I added the ability to skip over frames and I am using that with blending.

First results –

Thar be monsters in my movie…

I really need some kind kind of monster removal code. There are times when people (and birds, etc.) are a cool part of a movie. Then there are times like this one where it kind of breaks my heart. –sigh– I’ve been thinking about how to do this and it seems really hard. Occasionally, I’ll get out the Gimp and paint them out by hand, but arggg that’s a lot of work.

I’m going through some old stuff and looking for interesting blended stills. I will most likely just add them to this post as I get them done.

This is from a movie I was never able to finish. It’s the only scene that never moved fast enough to be interesting. I wrote some code to skip over frames in order to speed things up, but it’s not working yet. In the meantime, I love this.

I’ve been using the blending in movies sparingly, but I really love the effect in stills. This took about six hours on my laptop and I think it’s pretty nice. Notes: The sunlight across the ocean was never so strong in any single image. The cranes, ships and whatnot really benefited from the blending as well. I think the ocean takes on a nice quality, though not spectacular.

Enjoy-