This is my dog, Keiler. He’s almost 9 years old – which is pretty old for a large breed like his. He’s a hovawart – an old breed of German guard dog that comes in blond, black, or what I call “Rottweiler” (black and brown).
Keiler is a remarkable dog. He’s got an artificial hip he got a couple of years ago, as a result of hip dysplasia which had degenerated to the point that he could barely walk. Yet he never misses a chance to go out for a jaunt – sometimes, when I’m not watching, without his owner. He knows the route.
Like many pedigreed dogs, Keiler comes from a so-called “puppy mill.” The name sounds odious, but basically it’s just a commercial dog breeder that specializes in certain breeds, and often contributes to preserving or improving certain breeds, all for a profit. But there’s a loophole in the oversight of so-called puppy mills. And we’ve all heard the stories – not all dogs are as lucky as Keiler has been.
You may not like “big government” but there are some basic oversight issues that are being looked at by the Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety (PUPS) Act that require implementation. If you love dogs, consider taking a look at what you can do to help convince your representatives in Congress to support it. Check out this link to find out more about the PUPS Act. Although it has a cute acronym, an additional nudge from you won’t hurt…
A recent phenomenon (and an unfortunate one, in my opinion) to hit the music industry is the use of Auto-Tuning software to correct pitch. For just a few hundred bucks, you can get a plug-in for your audio editing software that will insure every slightly off-pitch note is automatically brought into perfect tune (corrected to the nearest note). Apparently many more professional musicians than you’d expect – even those who rarely have “tuning” issues, have jumped on the autotune bandwagon.
Where it gets interesting is where you can use the software to make radical shifts in pitch. While this has been used within certain genres to create a certain “sound” (think Kanye West), the YouTube community has been having a great deal of fun with it. One of the best-known (as far as I know) is YouTube user schmoyoho AKA the Gregory Brothers AKA “Autotune the News”, whose manipulation of news footage became the “Bed Intruder” video and R&B hit. And now we’re even seeing ruthless dictators as targets of autotune musicians, such as Moammar Gadhafi in this song/video by Israeli musician Noy Alooshe, called “Zenga Zenga”:
I think the possibilities for creativity and just plain mischievous fun are endless. I’d like to give this a try myself, but can’t bring myself to shell out $300 for the plug-in, plus the cash for the editing software, knowing that I might be overwhelmed by all the whistles and bells that need to be manipulated. I’d be curious if anyone out there has worked with it and can share their experiences for this novice.
My cat is forever trying to figure out how to break into the fishtank. I always wondered if it somehow terrorizes the fish. One day, remembering we have a waterproof case for the Flip Camera, I thought it might be fun to drop it in the tank and film the situation from the perspective of the fish. Now THAT’s a fisheye lens!
OK I admit, I probably should have known better. But just in case there are folks out there getting ready to make the same mistake, you may want to read on. Call it an effort of video vigilantism if you want – I just want to get this out there to help keep down the number of $600 iPods.
An iPod is a magical device for most 12-year-olds. Highly coveted – and highly fragile. I got my daughter one of those 4th Generation iPods for Christmas – she had been pining away for it for months, and our family had resisted the temptation thus far (we have been using Creative Zens, in conjunction with Napster’s subscription system. It’s much cheaper in the long run if you’re just looking for a music player). But the slippery little devil wriggled out of her hands and dropped a foot onto the pavement a couple weeks after Christmas and BAM! No more iPod.
As I think of myself as a handy guy…and $249 isn’t exactly chump change, I wanted to fix everything. I thought, “There must be a way to replace the screen on these things.” And YouTube answered my cry for help. Enter the right search term and you can find any number of companies who will sell you a replacement screen for an i-justaboutanything. You can mail the thing off to them, but they also post little videos that make the job look so EASY. Here’s one:
Easy, right? That’s what I thought. So I got on the ‘net with one of these marketers and ordered me a new screen. I was gonna be a hero! Or so I thought.
It turns out that an actual iPod is much trickier. There are all sorts of devilish little details that don’t get addressed in any of the videos – most obviously – but not only, how to get the thing back together. But I was still in blissful ignorance. The order arrived only a few days later (I am overseas) and I got myself some reading glasses, an eyeglass repair kit (you need a really tiny Philips screwdriver), a bright light, and steadied my nerves. I managed to deal adequately with all the unforeseen challenges and got the screen installed, somehow, and smiled proudly as the screen sprang to life. But that’s where things started to go downhill.
This kind of thing is best explained in video. I obviously discourage you from doing this, but if you should decide to do so, I recommend checking this out so you can avoid some of the pitfalls I discovered by accident:
On the plus side, the company I dealt with had rapid service, a friendly, helpful customer service chat, and they packed everything nicely. Small consolation as I’m paying for another iPod. Good luck!
When you love animals as much as we do in our family, it’s hard to get upset with folks sponsoring a video contest to support the ASPCA. And I didn’t really need the half of the prize that would have gone to me – an iPad (the other half was a $500 donation to our local ASPCA). But I am still really surprised, given the other entries, that we didn’t manage to pull off a win in this one. My dog and I, that is. Check out the 5 video winners here. This is our entry:
I think the folks at GoodNewsforPets.com ran a good contest, despite the odd combination of photo+essay and videos into a single contest; and the 50/50 prize split between the contestant and the ASPCA is a great idea. I’m just mystified by the judges’ choice, and am starting to feel jinxed after a long string of contest losses.
And then there’s the contest we DIDN’T enter. I remember this one a while back – I suggested my daughters think about possible music video ideas for the acoustic version of Coldplay’s “Lost”. Good thing we decided to pass on that one – apparently there were a THOUSAND entries! Check out the winner, a pretty cool combination of animation types:
And then the runner up:
What’s amazing about these videos is not only the lengths to which the filmmakers went to produce an entry which ultimately had to hold its own among over one thousand competitors. Both took an immense amount of work – in completely different ways – and were completely different takes on the lyrics of the song. I’d love to browse through the other entries, but I don’t quite have the, er “resources” available to do that, which Coldplay did. Do you suppose, after the first hundred or so, they turned the volume down?
I submitted a quick entry to GoodNewsforPets.com’s 10th Anniversary Holiday video/photo contest. They ask for a minute / 5 MB (max) describing a holiday moment with a pet, with emphasis on the human-animal bond. The interesting twist in this contest is that you can submit either a video, or a photo with a 100-400 words “story.” It will be interesting to see how they judge the mixed bag of entries, but they are giving away 10 iPads, each with a matching $500 donation to a local pet shelter. Winners are to be announced 1 Jan.
Seems like the big thing these days is home videography is to put cameras on inanimate – or animate objects where they don’t usually go. I’ve come across a number of interesting examples recently. The first I’ll share uses one of those new “Go Pro HD” cameras you see advertised everywhere these days (I want one) mounted on a surfboard. Filming a sport I didn’t even know existed – surfing in a canal, using a rope to fix the board in place:
Then there was this one, using the same camera, but also with the aid of an iPhone (to aid retrieval) and a balloon, a DIY film-from-space:
Vimeo recently held one of their “weekend projects” – No Tripod, No Cameraman – where they emphasized the same theme of challenging members to mount a camera someplace unconventional. You can see the results of the “No Tripod, No Cameraman” weekend project here.
Which gets me thinking. What would be some good places to mount a camera? To see things we normally can’t see, or in ways we don’t normally see them?
Just outside the town of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, Germany, there is a small cave or niche carved into the cliffside overlooking the road. In this niche stands a statue of Jesus, oh, I’d say about 12 to 15 feet tall. On the other side of the road is a small alpine creek with a walking trail and some marshy ground. Further in the distance, evergreen trees and a snaking valley stretch into the distance, with snow-covered Alps in the background.
So I was driving back from Garmisch one day in late autumn and I looked up at the niche, and then in the other direction I saw an amazing view as the sun was dropping toward the Alps, and clouds rushed in from both sides in preparation for the snow that would follow the remaining week. So naturally I rushed to my hotel room to grab my camera – thinking a stop motion from the perspective of the statue/niche would be an interesting quick project.
But as I returned, it was quickly getting darker, so I opted instead for the creekside path. And from there, my view was blocked by trees, so I wandered off the path into the marshy ground, about 30 feet from the path. Wearing crocs of course. So that was fun. And I didn’t have a tripod (forgot to pack one) so I took about 5 minutes to precariously balance my camera on a small knoll of grass surrounded by water, and then found a place for the Flip HD in a small tree. Then I squatted in my wet socks to keep an eye on the camera screen.
My plan was to combine stop-motion footage of the swirling clouds with the ambient sounds of the creek and nature – in between cars speeding down the road. But an older German couple – the kind who wear the stylish ethnically-tinged walking clothes and carry those funny ski poles in order to walk properly, became concerned at the presence of “some guy” squatting 30 feet off the path in the marsh, staring at something they couldn’t see on the ground. “Hey there! Everything OK?” yelled the man.
“Yes, I’m fine thanks” I yelled back. OK, just edit that out. Car whizzes by. German couple mutters to each other.
“Are you sure you’re OK??”
“I assure you, I am fine! Thank you!” I get up and wave to reassure them, and squat behind the camera again.
“What’s going on? Dead animal or something??”
“No, I’m filming”
“What?”
“Film”
“What are you doing?”
“Video. Film!!”
“Ah, okay.” They walk beyond a small copse of trees. I see them standing there, muttering, concerned about this person who doesn’t seem to be complying with the normal rules of tourist behavior. I’m sure the rules are published somewhere, but I obviously haven’t read them.
By that time, the sun was almost out of sight. I salvaged the video footage I had managed to capture and slopped my way through the freezing slush and water and headed back to start editing. I sped some of the footage up, slowed some of it down, added some sounds. This is how it turned out. Minus the undesired dialogue, of course.
Via Kickstarter.com, which could be a blog post in and of itself, I had the opportunity to take part in a film project. An old friend of mind from college who decided to pursue a (successful) career in film (unlike me, who neither recognized my calling nor realized any success) was looking for support to put together a series of documentaries showcasing innovation in the California Bay Area school lunch scene. It’s part of what they are calling an “open space documentary” project. The first six have been completed and are now available on the snazzy new Lunch Love Community website. One of my favorites is this one:
To get started, take a look at this short video clip and take note of all the different elements:
How was it done? Let’s take it one element at a time. Starting from the farthest back (or the bottom video clip in your NLE timeline), the video contains:
– a still photograph of a blank page from a book. After all, this is a parody of a book!
– two additional, separate video clips (Washington, D. C. and Afghanistan). These simply become the next higher video clips in your timeline. In Adobe Premiere Elements and most others, you can resize these clips by dragging their corners so they look like they have been projected onto the page. Add a couple of transitions and synch their appearance and disappearance to the rest of the action.
– the two live action characters are next. These were filmed in front of a blue screen using the techniques described in earlier posts. Make sure you know your script so you know where, and when, to point at the blank cloth behind you!
– Later, the computer mouse appears. This was simply a photograph against the blue backdrop (we suspended it by a piece of fishing line. If you use a still, you can simply “cut out” the object using Photoshop – but if you want the object to rotate in mid-air, you can also use video and chroma-key. Resize the object just like the video clips. Now you have to do the hardest part – synch it to the moving hands in the clip. This employs a tool called “keyframes.” You indicate where you want the object to start – in this case it was off-screen – and you establish a “keyframe” which tells your software that, at a particular frame, this is the location you want the item to appear. Then you move forward a few frames at a time and move the object to its new location, and add another keyframe, until the action is complete. Your software should “fill in the blanks” between keyframes. Not only can location be adjusted this way, but also size – like when the distance between our hands changed. This can take some time and experimentation to get right. In addition, my NLE software has a “16-point matte” tool which allows you to establish a kind of “matte” around the object to screen out additional areas as needed. This was done to hide small parts of the mouse in the area of our hands, to suggest that our fingers were covering small parts of the mouse.
– Finally, I added the house. I chose to “re-draw” the house from the Dr. Seuss book, with two windows instead of one. You can also use a scanner, and then work with Photoshop. The key element is that you must create a kind of “virtual” green (or blue) screen. Choose a color that is farthest from the other colors in the drawing, and color everything you do NOT want showing that color. So for the mouse, you might use red or orange; while for the house, you could use blue or lime green, for example. This includes the windows of the house, to make them transparent. Now I simply made the house enter the scene using keyframes (see above) and then added a transition at the right place to make it “explode.”
Below is a screen shot showing how everything is laid out on the timeline:
Now, granted – there are probably more sophisticated ways of doing something like this; but I hope you’ve enjoyed the extremely easy and inexpensive way I did it – and you can do it too. Actually filming and editing this video took one full day. Well, except the Afghanistan part – that took 6 months!
If you know of ways to improve on this approach, I’d be happy to hear about it.
The previous post talked about how to use chroma keying (blue-screen/green-screen) techniques in home video, relatively inexpensively. The question is, so now what can you do with that? Really, it’s up to you and your imagination. The most obvious use is to put yourself in front of a background which, for practical reasons, is difficult to film. Here’s one example in which filming the scene for real would have caused a number of problems. So instead, I filmed the background while driving, and filmed myself running in place and cycling on a stand, both in front of a screen. You can tell it doesn’t completely work, because the scenery moves much quicker than I appear to pedal! But what about placing yourself in an exotic location? Or in the scene of a favorite movie? Or even on the set of the Simpsons? You can even create a video in which you are talking to yourself. Or multiple versions of yourself.
Once you start playing around with ideas like these, you realize that it’s almost always necessary to resize one or more of the clips in order to make it work. And then it gets more interesting – now you realize you can create a video in which you are being chased by (your) giant dog. Or tower above buildings.
The example below, from a video contest entry centered around Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” uses multiple chroma-keyed video clips to recreate a version of the book’s cover. To give you some ideas, I’ll dissect it and explain how it was done.
The clip consists of a background – the solid orange with the letters and the white part at top right (created using photoshop and a graphic tablet/pen). In addition, there are two chroma-keyed elements: the person standing on the edge of the plate, and the child waving in the corner. The plate with eggs was supposed to be chroma keyed, but it didn’t work. Can you guess why?
I used a tripod to film myself in fron of a blue screen, and did the same with my daughter (top right). Notice neither of us are wearing any clothing that approaches blue or green. There’s still a bit of a blue edge along my back because the lights were off to the side. Be sure and use proper lighting as described in my previous post. For the plate, I simply stretched the blue screen on the floor, and placed the plate as you see it (yes, the eggs really are green) on the blue screen material. I used a small tripod to photograph the plate at the right angle (you might try a few different angles so you have a few options). But then I ran into a snag – the green in the eggs is too similar to blue, and no matter how I adjusted the chroma key properties, I either picked up nuances of the blue screen, or the green eggs had transparent spots or altered areas of green.
Luckily, however, the eggs were a still photo – and that’s what photoshop is for. I used the magic lasso tool to cut out the plate, and simply pasted it on a background of the exact same shade of orange. You can then either add the eggs to the background still, or run it as a separate video element, which allows you to adjust the size later on.
The first 8 seconds of this video show what everything looks like together:
In my next post, I’ll take this a step further, and we’ll combine a few additional chroma-keyed elements with additional “photoshopped” still items. I’ll show you how to make a “virtual” blue screen, and cause the items to move on screen using keyframes.
Most people who dabble in home video editing know about “blue-screening” or “green-screening.” What they may not realize is that it doesn’t take a whole lot of money – or a great deal of know-how – to apply the technique in their own videos. Technically called “chroma keying,” the technique actually allows you to filter out any color of your choosing from one video clip, and superimpose what’s left behind over another, thus giving the illusion that a person or object has a different background than as originally filmed. You’ve seen it on the evening news – the weather person in front of a huge video – which is actually a blank screen. With a little creativity, you can do a whole lot of interesting things with your home video projects by combining chroma keying with other features of your video editing program. We will explore the basics in this post, and follow up with some of the other tricks and techniques in later posts.
First of all, why use a blue or a green screen? Why not red? Or purple? Or a white wall? The answer is that most chroma keying involves “keying” out everything but a human being, and our skin typically contains reds and yellows – but no blue or green. Of course, if you were somehow applying the technique to a blue jay, you would want to use a red or orange screen. But why would you want to do that?
To do this, first you’re going to need a green screen or blue screen. Now, you could spend a hundred bucks buying a fancy screen that folds away neatly, but what I did is to visit a local market where they sell material on huge rolls. If you do that, you’re going to want to find the widest roll possible, and you’ll want smooth material, but not shiny. Look for the minimum amount of “texture”, but still as “flat” – non-glossy – as possible. Get yourself a good 3 or 4 meters of it. And try to avoid wrinkling it on the way home – ideally, roll it up, as the wrinkles will cause problems later.
So assuming you want to place yourself in front of a different background, you want to think about what you’re going to wear. Since you’re going to use a blue or green screen, wear clothing that is as far away from your background color as possible. If you wear a blue shirt and key out blue, your shirt will become transparent like the screen.
Find a flat wall somewhere where you can fully stretch your material on the wall, without any bumps. Outdoors is best, because it simplifies the lighting problem I’ll discuss in a moment. Depending on your wall, use thumbtacks or tape – anything that will hold the material firmly, and allow you to stretch it so it is taut, removing all wrinkles, without damaging the wall or surface. Set up your tripod and make sure you can capture your subject completely, without exposing the wall itself. A bit around the edges is OK, you can fix this later. You want to stand at least a meter away from the wall, without your head poking up beyond the blue screen, for example.
Now let’s talk about lighting. It’s important to get this right. Again, you can go spend hundreds on a fancy lighting kit, but if you’re only going to use this rarely, you can just pick up a few 150-watt and 500-watt halogen work lights for about 10 or 15 bucks apiece. Two of each are enough. They get hot, so you’ll need to figure out a way to mount them at the right height. I bought some inexpensive pieces of 1-inch square wooden poles, made some stands to hold them up, and put nails in at various heights to hang the lights as needed. You are going to use a couple of lights to illuminate yourself for the camera – 150-watt lights are OK for that – but this will throw shadows on the screen. You’ll want to use your bright lights out to the side to illuminate the screen evenly. The idea is to ensure that the blue screen is exactly the same shade of blue all over – not brighter on one side, and no shadows. Also, lighting everything well ensures your editing software can clearly “see” where the blue begins and ends. The following screen shot shows what happens if your blue screen is not illuminated evenly, and your subject is not illuminated enough:
Now check your camera again, and you’re ready to film! Before you tear down your equipment, it’s advisable to test your clip using your software, to ensure you didn’t miss anything. If you have a bit of non-blue wall showing around the edges, you can either increase the size of your clip, or use a cropping tool (depending on your software and your needs) to remove that.
Finally, when you put away your blue or green screen, you don’t want to fold it – or else you’ll have to iron it again before you use it next time. Any wrinkles will have the same effect as a shadow, changing the shade of blue just enough to ruin the chroma key function later. I taped one edge of my screen to a long broomstick and rolled it up. This allows me to unroll it later and hang it, so that the weight of the broomstick helps keep the screen taut.
In a later post, we’ll explore how to combine one or more pieces of chroma-keyed footage with a new background. Good luck!
Check out loads of cool videos from over 6,500 submissions in Vimeo’s short film festival. The winners are posted here and the community choice awards are here. Plenty of great viewing from filmmakers you never heard of.
November 7 was this year’s “World Run Day”. For those who haven’t heard of World Run Day, the organization’s web site states, “It is a day for runners worldwide to join each other, wherever their location, in a celebration of running and charitable giving.” You can sign up, get a T-shirt and a bib number, and wherever you are in the world, run a course and distance of your own choice sometime during the day. To fully participate, the idea is you also contribute to a charity of your choice. So I figured, why not? And my 8-year-old hovawart, Keiler and I headed out.
My dog loves to run. We have been running buddies since, well – since he was able to run. We’ve run all over Europe and in the US – both east and west coast. He worked for a few years as a Therapy Dog in Fort Bragg, but he’s retired now, and he lives to run…and to sneak out of the yard on a jaunt when no one is paying attention. Unfortunately, about a year and a half ago, his hip dysplasia became an issue. So we got him an artificial hip. And some docs say not to run, but he doesn’t have to work very hard to keep up with me. We’ve continued to run ever since.
So anyway, we headed off. But things didn’t turn out so well. You see, in the Netherlands, they have traffic cameras, freeing the police to fight REAL crime. Like when people let their dogs off-leash in the woods. So I was cited (60 euros!) for that. Then I got back to the van and realized that somewhere along the 5 mile route, I had lost my car key. So I asked some passersby if I could use their phone to call for a ride. While I was on the phone, Keiler found a noxious mud pit (he likes those too). Fortunately I had my Flip camera with me all along, and I decided to put everything together in a kind of MasterCard “priceless” spoof. Our tribute to World Run Day 2010. Hope you enjoy it.
The other day I was working on a home video of a recent vacation to Egypt, and I invited my 12-year-old to a pre-screening of my near-final draft (a shorter version here), and she told me it was all wrong. “Why?” I asked, horrified. “Your horizons are all crooked.” And she was right. I had captured scores of amazing ocean sunsets and Nile River shots, and virtually every horizon was crooked.
A decent photographer probably would have known better than to photograph crookedly in the first place. I use a hybrid camcorder for stills that I hold in my right hand – so virtually all of them had a slight tilt to one side – and some worse. But what surprised me was that I was so focused on the colors and edges and transitions, that I had failed to correct the angles in the video editing process.
It’s very easy to fix – in most programs, the same place you adjust settings for size and x/y orientation, you can also nudge the photo (or video) by degrees or fractions of degrees – minus for counterclockwise, normal for clockwise. If you move the camera during a video, you can even designate keyframes to get the video to turn as needed.
So that’s a major lesson learned for me – I fixed them all in about 15 minutes and we were back in business. What’s another one? Watch this video carefully and see if you can spot the other major pitfall (in addition to the crooked horizon):
Did you catch it? If you watched carefully, you should have trouble reading this. Stop-motion videos of sunrises and sunsets over the ocean are fun to do, but it’s not really about the sun – it’s about the lightshow in the clouds or on the water. By staring at this video for the full 90 seconds of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” you ended up partly blind (don’t worry, it’ll pass). So that’s something else to bear in mind.
Having said all that, however, World Run Day is on Sunday, 7 October. Raise some money for your favorite charity and get some exercise at the same time – check out www.runday.com for the details. When you get your vision back, that is.
That’s right, on a Sony Playstation Portable. Killing time at various airports, trains, on the beach, and during the kids’ sports practices, and using the game Beaterator, I’ve composed and recorded a full-length album. I’ve stopped short of designing cover art until the Grammy nomination arrives in the mail. You can try this out for yourself on their website’s flash application.
Use this music as you like – Creative Commons (attribution-sharealike). Where I borrowed snippets of known melodies, I’m not the expert on copyright – I’m claiming “fair use” in that I created a new work.
1 – Prologue – short flute bit that was originally part of track 2. Theme repeats elsewhere.
2 – Parabolic – slow beat with guitar flourishes that gradually becomes more electronic. I like how it builds in the end.
3 – Ring Of Fear – 120bpm, a bit techno, incorporates “Ring of Fire” and other tunes.
4 – Steppe It Up – Started out a bit central Asian but ended up a bit silly. Incorporates various melodies.
5 – Flying To Kandahar – Kind of funky, actually wrote this while flying to Kandahar. Try that on a C130.
6 – The Matador – Tried to make this a bit Spanish sounding. But with a techno beat.
7 – Funky Bricks – Yes, the riffs from “Brick House” and “Play that Funky Music” do fit together, in case anyone was wondering. With a few others thrown in.
8 – Coastal Wind – Starts out reminding me of the “Prince of Bel-Air” theme. Mellow, but builds.
9 – Ulf Attack – A bit of a Middle-Eastern sound. Average speed.
10 – Fiddler On Crack – What happens when you mix “Fiddler on the Roof” with Beaterator?
11 – Desert Attack – Reminds me a bit of the music for an action film set in one of those “Indiana Jones” settings. Alternates between mellow and intense.
12 – Nomad – Again, a bit of a Middle Eastern flute-techno thing. I like this one. I think it would sound good with proper instruments.
13 – Scuba Steve Blues – Started out with some sounds and a basic beat, and ended up with blues. Don’t know what Scuba Steve has to do with it, except I like Adam Sandler movies.
14 – Dubai – This picks up the prologue again to round everything out. Strong beat, and kinds of mixes together elements from all the pieces above. Written during a flight delay in – guess where?
Scott Bourne made some interesting points on the blog Photofocus. He pointed out something many of us overlook in today’s world of social media marketing and sharing – that posting a photo via Twitter (which will apparently soon be possible) or Twitpic, or even on sites like Facebook means you have basically given up control of your content. He shares some points from Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS):
“By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”
“You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.”
He further goes on to point out that any photo previously shared online can no longer be sold as an “exclusive” and asks whether the exposure you gain from sharing on a service like Twitter is worth what you lose.
Basically he says everything that needs to be said, I’m just repeating it here because it can’t be overemphasized. READ your terms of service – no matter what online resource you use. Yes, it’s pesky and long, and dry, but before you check that little box that says you agree, READ. Every site is different – and my observation has been that generally, the more “free” a site is, the less likely you are to maintain exclusive rights to your content, whether photo, video, music, whatever. Both Facebook and Twitter – the biggest and both free – are explicit about the fact that they can do whatever they want with whatever you post. I caution my kids on what they post – “maybe one day a college application may depend on it” – and am told about privacy filters. That’s the case TODAY. In five years, the TOS make it clear that if they WANT to, they can do pretty much anything with your content.
So what’s the alternative? Not to post anything online so that no one can “steal” it? Actually there are a number of alternatives. The easiest way to ensure your content is not re-used in ways you don’t intend is to downgrade the resolution of what you post. A picture or video can look great on a computer screen but be pretty much worthless in print. Then you can let it be re-tweeted all day long. If you want to go the extra step, most likely if you’re actually in the position of earning money from your content, you may want to add some sort of watermark. I find the watermarks on iStockphoto and other sites to be a bit irritating, but they won’t be stolen. Maybe something more subtle would be enough. You can do similar things with audio content.
But the most important point is already made by Bourne. Read the TOS. There are photo sharing sites out there that allow you to maintain ownership of your content, and others that don’t. You may have to spend a little dough, but hey, you’re receiving a service, right?
For our latest video contest entry, my daughter and I teamed up. My daughter has become a video editing enthusiast in her own right and checks several online web sites about once a week for contests she wants to enter. She found the Green Eggs and Ham “Ham it Up” Contest being run to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the book and immediately saw the potential.
So as the creative director, my 12-year-old designed the costumes, cutting and sewing her outfit from a fuzzy blanket, and we made her hat from an old bathrobe and chicken wire. She insisted I wear a suit and a fake mustache to appear stuffy. She wanted to go with a musical book theme so I “re-designed” the original cover with live action, composed and recorded a 2-minute piece of music that would work with the text, and then she choreographed the routine. We recorded and edited the whole thing in a single day – 10/10/10.
So what’s at stake if we win? Well, we need your votes to get in the top 11. From there, the Dr. Seuss people will choose a grand prize winner who will be awarded $2,000 in cash, a collector’s print, a year’s supply of ham, and the full Dr. Seuss collection. The ten runners-up get prints, a grocery gift certificate, and the books.
If we are fortunate enough to win, the ham will be donated to the needy – likely a facility serving veterans. As for the rest, we’re not going to count our chickens before our (green) eggs hatch.
I will likely blog about how we made some parts of the video in the coming days. Had to get a little tricky with our consumer software to accomplish what my daughter wanted. Thanks for your support!
Going around the services, Jon R. Anderson writes:
Marine Corps leaders say no problem. Navy leaders say no way. Top Air Force leaders have cleared them for takeoff, even while some base commanders have grounded them for being too faddish.
Given my experience with the military I was surprised at the number of positive statements from Army officials. I guess it’s like the Navy doctor they quoted: “Once Navy SEALs start wearing them, everybody in Virginia Beach wants to wear them.”
The article points out a number of arguments in favor of the shoes:
– They are running shoes
– You can wear them with socks (socks are required in Army PT formations)
– They improve proprioception (something I could definitely use)
– Faster run times (good news for me, but I’m still waiting)
– Longer hauls, better conditioning
– They improve balance
– Eliminates heel lift and motion control
The article says I won’t be allowed to wear them for my next physical fitness test, though. Apparently they worry of an “unfair advantage.” No worries, I’ve already taken my final physical fitness test.
Want to make a video of the earth from miles above it (17 to be exact)? This family figured out how to do it, using items you probably have lying around the house. And in the end it didn’t end up costing a dime, because they recovered (nearly) everything they used. This is amazing – watch the whole video!
I just received my periodic newsletter from American University’s Center for Social Media, and was reminded of an excellent talk I heard last year by its director, Pat Aufderheide. She started off by explaining that the purpose of copyright was to support creativity. She showed a brief video giving snapshots of YouTube favorites and asked us to evaluate whether they violated copyright. At that point, I was convinced all of them did so. By the end of her talk – something like 25 minutes – I was convinced they were all “legal” under “fair use.”
What’s Fair Use? It’s basically the only legal way to use copyrighted material in the creation of new material. Ever load anything up on YouTube and get dinged for copyright music? Depending on the copyright owner’s wishes, you either get the music deleted, or maybe you’re told it will be unavailable in certain countries…or maybe nothing happens except your video is accompanied with irritating ads next to, or along the bottom of your video. If you try and dispute it, you will have to click through a series of screens that feel like they are warning you that you will be sued if you make a frivolous claim. You think, “hey, I’m not a lawyer, maybe I should just let it go…”
The thing is, you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand Fair Use. Spend less than an hour browsing the Center for Social Media’s articles and videos, and it will become pretty clear what is Fair Use, so you can dispute that YouTube copyright claim with confidence. Because the CSM also reminds us that if we don’t exercise our rights under Fair Use, we can easily lose these rights. It’s not a body of detailed laws, but only a kind of a “common understanding” – a set of “best practices” that determine what’s OK and what’s not.
On YouTube, you can dispute a copyright claim one of three ways. You can claim that (1) the material is not under copyright; (2) that it is under copyright, but you have permission to use it; or (3) that it is under copyright, but is permissible under Fair Use. Click the appropriate button, then type a phrase promising not to sue YouTube for having called you a copyright thief by mistake, and wait a week or two. If you’ve done your homework, the copyright claim will be removed and your video will once again become ad-free. More importantly, you’ll have exercised your legal right to use other content in certain ways to create new content.
I highly recommend checking out the Center for Social Media web site, and signing up for their newsletter if this stuff interests you. Check out their most recent “Fair Use Question of the Month” in their blog and you’ll see that there are a number of issues to consider when you’re uploading videos to YouTube – but you don’t need to hire a lawyer to help you sort it out, either.
American Idol winner Kris Allen came to town. Kinda cool – he’s supporting the USO, and he gave a performance in our small community in the Netherlands – for free – to support servicemen and women and their families. I have 3 things to say about that.
Part 1: Lesson learned – I should have realized this – when you’re recording LOUD live music, a better microphone isn’t necessarily…well, better. Thinking (correctly) that Mr. Allen would be OK with me recording some of his show, I brought along my Rode Videomic, which can catch a whisper from 20 feet away. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Probably not your ideal equipment to record a stack of speakers blaring music. I’m not sure if using earbuds to monitor from the headphone jack would have caught the extreme distortion that occurred throughout the louder parts. It probably depends on how my camera is set up. But needless to say, some experimentation will occur in the near future. So as a result, I hate to disappoint the Kris Allen fans I was talking to on Twitter – I had no problem recording video, but most of it is a mess. Because I know there are fans out there who may appreciate it regardless, I ended up making a kind of “sampler” which gives an idea of his performance. I hope you find it worthwhile; apologies in advance.
Part 2: I learned a little bit about the communities that inhabit the Twitter world. Just on a lark, I tweeted that I was going to see Chris (misspelled) Allen, and within the hour I was exchanging tweets with folks who were intensely interested in what Mr. Allen was up to at my kids’ school. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s nice to see how folks with similar interests can use technology and twitter to keep up with the latest happenings on their, uh, Idol (sorry for the pun). They were able to vicariously share in the event, as by the end they had gotten to see photos, hear updates, and even see the setlist. And I found myself on a Twitter list with others at the (small) show, all talking about the same thing. Thanks to @krinjalists and others for teaching me a thing or two about social media today!
Part 3: Truly impressed by the effort Kris Allen made to share with our community. He probably doesn’t realize that it was not only American military personnel for whom he performed; the US community is actually a support community for the NATO base where many of us work. And a lot of their kids attend the school where he performed. So he had a truly international community there who was able to see the kinds of things our USO does for us. And not only did he perform music, he spent the afternoon at the school – my daughter says he was spotted singing with the choir, and he hung around for quite awhile after the show signing autographs and shaking hands with his adoring – mostly younger – fans. A real class act!
And to finish it up, here’s the video:
As well as a few photos I managed to snap in between:
Update: A Kris Allen fan from Japan sent a link for a YouTube video showing a soundcheck earlier in the day – posted by a schoolmate of my kids. Again, always surprised how social media makes distance irrelevant!
This morning I woke up with every muscle below my knee screaming in pain. Apparently there are lots of tiny muscles I didn’t know I had.
Why? I’ve been hearing about this barefoot running trend, and wanted to give it a shot. Obviously it’s not a great idea to simply launch on a three- or four-mile run barefoot if you haven’t done it before – I wore these odd shoes called Vibram FiveFingers – essentially a layer of rubber countoured to your foot, with a thin upper to hold things in place. And a separate compartment for each little toe.
So my first thought was, “surely it’s completely nuts to go running without the cushioning and support of a good pair of ($100) running shoes.” But running shoes have been around for what, 30 years? And people have been running for at LEAST, oh, 50. Or two million – give or take. Before that we were mainly climbing trees. So the human foot should logically be an engineering marvel, perfectly designed for running long distance.
So why do my legs hurt? Well, we have been wrapping our feet in these protective boxes for so long we have become WEAK. The brochure that comes with the Vibram FiveFingers warns to start slow. So I figure, 3 miles should be OK to start, right?
The thing is, your body learns really quickly not to land on the heel when that inch of foam rubber is suddenly missing. And that extra inch of padding in the back, compared to the half inch in front, means that your achilles tendon must suddenly adjust to an extra half inch of play. And now that your feet are not crammed in that box, you land on the ball of your foot, which spreads a bit to absorb the impact, and your heel comes down and you spring back up. And a whole bunch of tiny little muscles spring into action absorbing the impact, maintaining stability, and springing back off again. So now they are all sore.
But the experience, being in contact with the ground, using all your senses to avoid uneven spots (I didn’t manage to avoid every pebble), and smoothly gliding rather than bouncing on your heels, was something unique. So I’m thinking the next challenge is to run my 17th marathon barefoot.
I’m not quite convinced of the claims that this reduces injury. The thickened rubber under the ball of the foot is a bit unnatural, and it didn’t manage to protect me from things like pebbles, pine cones, acorns… And the separate toes tend to pull my own toes apart a bit, which takes some getting used to. Apparently 25 years of cramming them together in shoes have caused them all to turn inward a bit. But if our ancestors could do it for 2 million years, I should be able to manage. Try not to stare at my shoes when I run by.
You could go out and spend a wad of cash on all the latest high-tech sound recording equipment money can buy. Or you can do some easy things that will go a long way toward improving the sound quality of your videos:
– invest in an external microphone – it doesn’t have to be a fancy one. You don’t want to get the $7.95 model, but for 20 or 30 bucks you can get something that will improve the sound quality of your recordings dramatically. You can get a handheld one and move it close to your subject – using a broomstick and some duct tape to hold it overhead – or you can just have them hold it just offscreen. Or, for the same money, you can get a lapel – or Lavalier – microphone. The wired one will be cheaper than the wireless one. Of course all this assumes your camera has an input for a microphone. Most do.
– Listen. You know how easy it is to snap photos of people without realizing what’s in the background, right? The same can happen with sound. You record that video and only afterward, when you’re editing, you realize there is a humming generator or air conditioner that you had tuned out when you were recording.
– Pay attention to your space. Depending on where you’re recording, whether it’s inside or outside, the shape of your space will affect the sound. If you’re in a small room without a lot on the walls, the sound will be different than a large room with drapes and carpeting. If you’re simply capturing someone in their environment this is not that important – but if you’re narrating something, make sure you do all the narration in the same place, and that it sounds natural for the rest of your video.
– Get close. This is related to some of the other tips. But like the automatic lighting feature, your camera also changes in sensitivity based on the amount of sound. It’s sort of like automatic audio recording levels. So if the microphone is far from the source of sound, your camera will strain to hear better, bringing in a lot of unwanted sound and making it more difficult to hear your subject in relation.
– Capture ambient sound. Sometimes when I record different scenes, and add in “b-roll” to fill in gaps or demonstrate what the subject is talking about, I wind up leaving gaps in the recorded audio. They suddenly become noticeable when the volume goes from a quiet hiss, or ambient sound, or background noise – to absolute silence. Record a few minutes of “nothing” to fill in those gaps later on.
– Be aware of the wind. Everything will seem fine when you’re recording, but when you go back to edit, even the slightest breeze will cause unpleasant spikes in your audio. If you don’t have a way to monitor using headphones, and there is a chance of a breeze, you can simply make a wind screen (much cheaper than the store bought kind) just by using some foam rubber and cutting/taping it to the microphone.
– Avoid popping P’s. Sometimes P’s, S’s, and T’s will wreak havoc on your recording. Experiment with the microphone, doing a few dry runs to make sure you get it right. I often talk sideways across a mic rather than straight into it. But when that doesn’t work, you can do something as simple (and cheap) as bending a wire coat hanger into a loop and handle. Then take a nylon stocking and pull it over the loop. Trim the excess. You’ll be amazed – it actually works to eliminate popping p’s!
I was pretty excited about the opportunity to do a little more “wildlife photography” in my back yard. The blackbird pair that I featured in the video “Learning to Fly” came back for another brood. I saw one of them fly into the ivy that climbs one side of our house and grabbed a closer look using a ladder. There I saw a clutch of 5 blue eggs.
So I hung a lavalier mic and a round webcam – with a $10 USB extension cord – from a nail in the eaves and waited. Eventually a couple of the eggs hatched and the show began. While blackbirds typically have multiple broods per season, August is quite late. Then again it has been pretty warm.
The only problem with my setup was that the power switch for the microphone was up high, so I needed a ladder to switch it on – which scared away the adult birds. So I ended up doing most of the video captures without sound. I did manage to get a pretty long piece when they were feeding – that was cool. But in the end I managed to get a little every day, and capture how the little birds gradually start trying to get out of the nest. Blackbirds typically spend a week or so on the ground before they can fly, and the adults (typically the male) continue to feed them until they can fly properly. I got good shots of both adults feeding the young, as well as some nest-cleaning activity.
In the end, what would I do differently? Besides getting a better webcam, that is (some of the shots were blurry due to frame rate and auto-focus not reacting quickly enough).
– Clear away enough leaves so that the camera gets a clear shot. I fixed this partway through.
– Find a place for the camera so that you (a) get enough light but (b) don’t have a lot of backlight. Had I chosen a better angle, there would have been better detail on the nest itself.
The trick with this kind of photo/videography is patience. I was lucky to have a place where the camera could be out of the elements, but hanging up there on a ladder screwing a hook into hard wood, you have to be willing to try the shot and then move the camera if it doesn’t work. Oh well, there’s always next season. The result?
