I posted a few weeks ago about having to “make do” with a still camera to do underwater “video-“graphy – and then using photoshop and effects to make it look less like a slideshow. Well this time I made it work with actual video. Granted, there are a lot sexier underwater videos out there made by guys who have the gear to go down 10 meters, but what if you’re just a reg’lar person with a reg’lar camera? What can you do? Well here’s what I learned:
The importance of using a tripod applies underwater. If you “chase” fish (as I did) the effect is the same as it would be above water.
Lighting is as important underwater – if not more so. Film in shallow water (unless you have a fancy-schmancy underwater spotlight) and when it’s sunny. Keep the sun behind you if possible so it illuminates the fish
Everything will have a blue tint, even though it looked normal underwater. Use a video editing program that allows you to take out some of the blue, and enhance some of the reds and browns – while still making it clear you’re underwater (i.e. leave some of the blue)
Find some kind of music that captures that underwater “feeling”…I found this particularly difficult. See my earlier post on finding legal music.
Here’s what I came up with. Feedback? Ideas on doing it better?
So my kids tell me this is SO last week, but I thought this video was HILARIOUS – somehow genius and somehow disturbing that this is what some people do in their spare time:
Technology has brought the internet to 2 billion people, and a standard of living resulting in about 2-4 hours of spare time per day for most of those same people. There are any number of things they could be doing in that phenomenal amount of human capacity and collaboration that has become available. Some spend their time solving man’s most vexing problems; others simply consume content – this falls somewhere in between. I’m fascinated both by how they managed to manipulate the original file to produce a pretty decent song, and how they are marketing this through a variety of means so that it may ultimately result in….something that may do someone some good.
Last Christmas, I ordered my daughter a last-minute Christmas gift, paying for “guaranteed” delivery by Christmas. It was a waterproof cover for her Flip HD camera – and the timing was important because we were headed to Hurghada, Egypt, for a week of sun and snorkeling – on Christmas day. Thirty bucks for the cover, and a $160 camera, make for probably one of the least expensive ways to get high-definition underwater video – certainly much less than many of the rigs you can buy out there. And I was hoping she’d let me give it a try as well 🙂
Needless to say, it didn’t arrive on time. Then the on-board catalog offered a waterproof digital video camera, which I bought instead, but that turned out to be a non-functioning piece of cr@p (I know, I should have known but I was desperate at this point). By the way, if you ever buy something like this aboard Jet Air, don’t expect to get a refund. They tell you to write the airline and the company, and in this case, neither responded.
DON’T BUY THIS CAMERA!!
Anyway, we had to make do with the standard underwater “single use” still cameras you get at beach resorts. We tried out a couple of different ones and found the best results from this model, which is not a single-use camera like the others, but is instead an inexpensive camera that loads standard 35mm film. If you find yourself looking for an inexpensive way to capture underwater scenes, look for one of these, and buy the fastest speed film you can – 400 or 800 – and make sure it has flash capability. In general, underwater photos seem to always look dingier than than they looked in real life, and the flash makes a big difference. Try and get as close as you can to your subject, and I suggest using the flash for every shot. Even with this camera, I found myself doing a lot of adjusting afterward (increasing the contrast and saturation, and filtering out some of the blue) but I think, given what we spent, still managed to get decent results.
THIS KESTON UNDERWATER CAMERA WITH FLASH PERFORMED BEST!
I strung together our best photos in a video slideshow, which you can check out below. For fun, I added a parallax effect on a few of them (more about that in a previous post)
We hope to try out the Flip and its waterproof cover in a couple of weeks when we head to Crete – stay tuned!
Videomaker has a helpful web site and magazine chock full of video editing tips and new product reviews; they are nice enough to condense all the latest news into a handy weekly email – one of the few “marketing” emails I actually look forward to. Unfortunately they also occasionally send out flyers for training events I can’t attend (I haven’t been near Chico, CA lately). But I guess they are now launching a web training series, or “webinars” on a variety of topics. They are charg $29.95 for an hour-long session and I’d be curious to hear what others think of it. Here’s what they sent me:
Videomaker is proud to announce its first training webinar: Advanced Editing
One of the best parts of editing video is getting to see the pieces of your story come together in a way that enhances the moment you’re trying to capture. This webinar will cover topics that will help you do exactly that. You’ll learn techniques such as time remapping, advanced trimming, multi-camera editing and more.
Length: 1 hour.
Techniques covered:
Correcting Mistakes
Condensing Time
Pacing
Motivated Edits
Stylizing
Polishing the Edit
Video Filters and Color Effects
Compositing
Multi-Camera Editing
Editing Dialogue – Sound Effects – Music
Encoding and Output
Apparently it will a series of rotating / repeating topics. If I give a try, I’ll let you know what I think.
The cool thing about all this technology is that now anyone can create just about anything and share it with everyone else. Most of it goes unnoticed by the vast majority, but that’s not why most of us create. Most of us create out of some intrinsic desire to imagine, to create, to make something – and if it’s enjoyed by others, that’s just a bonus. In addition to simply sharing events in our lives and things we see with others – the modern equivalent of the slideshows many of us suffered through in the 1970s – lots of people are creating short documentaries, experimenting with animation or filming techniques, or simply telling stories. I’m sure nearly everyone has used a camera to document some aspect of their lives. But have you ever thought about using video to tell a story?
So what does every story need? It needs a plot, with a beginning, middle and end. You’ve got to introduce the story in a way that piques interest, by creating an environment, sketching out interesting characters, or describing a situation. Preferably you’ll do all three – providing the setting, one or more characters, and a mood. In video, you’ve got the added benefit of using music, sound and lighting to make up for the pages of text you are prevented from including.
Next, you have to create rising action. The situation gets more complicated, and the first inklings of a problem or conflict begin to develop. Eventually there is a climax, and the problem resolves in some way, and everything gets wrapped up. And then you need some kind of theme to weave into the whole story – what’s the overall message? Is there a teaching point, or something you’d like to communicate with the entire story? A moral?
If you think about every movie you’ve ever watched, you’ll see these elements, and you could probably add a whole lot more detail. There’s a certain formula. There are cultural differences – I think American films all tend to wrap up in a satisfying way – good triumphs over evil – whereas in European films you might be in for a rude surprise. I’ll let you decide why that is. And I’ve noticed Central Asian films all tend to end somewhat abruptly for my taste – i.e. you decide how it ends.
So I thought I’d give it a try myself. It seems easy enough – all the same elements as the story your grade-school teachers taught you to write – only it’s on video. But just like its stubby-pencil equivalent, it’s more difficult than it seems. What made it more tricky was the fact that the story was being filmed as it happened, and I intended to package it into its parts later. But that also meant that depending on how the events unfolded, I would be unable to go back and capture footage that would be more appropriate to my story.
I started filming the story of five fledgling birds that ended up in our courtyard. Though none of them could fly – which we already found odd and of concern, one of the five was much smaller than the others. So the question was, “Do we intervene or not?” It was only after the real-life story played out that I did the research to figure out that these were blackbirds, and they are not supposed to fly for their first week out of the nest.
As the saying goes, “if I had known then what I know now”, the footage would have been different. But this is what I ended up with, in case you’re curious. Like always, suggestions, complaints and gripes always welcome.
In case anyone other than me has cracked the lens of their Flip camera (or one of its close cousins – it would probably work for them as well) here’s how I fixed mine after it had an unfortunate encounter with a curious cat and a stone floor 3 feet below. It turns out the “lens” you see on the outside is just a transparent dust cover, with the actual lens about half an inch down below. But the glass is quite thin, and if you crack it, the whole thing is pretty much unusable.
I had only had it a few weeks, and after verifying that the electronics still worked fine, I contacted Flip, and was told “sorry, we don’t repair that part of the camera”. In retrospect, I should have asked, if not that, then what? It seems like one of the easiest to break – and repair.
So I carefully removed the broken glass (fingernails or a toothpick or maybe a small nail or push pin will get you started – it’s really thin) and simply went down to my local watch repair store. They found a perfect match which lies flat on the 2mm edge. Cost me about ten bucks. But they’ll probably tell you that you have to mount it yourself. And here’s the important part: like me, you’ll probably be tempted to use super glue. DON’T. For any glue that fumes like super glue, the fumes get trapped inside the space between the real lens and the “watch crystal”, leaving a film on all the surfaces, to include the glass. Instead, use a non-fuming epoxy, and try to avoid getting too much glue underthe lens, sticking to the edges if possible. Don’t worry, you have about 3 mm room for error along the edges of the watch glass. Voila! Ten bucks and you’re back in business.
I’m still waiting for a response from @FlipVideoBrand on Twitter. I’m not sure they’ve figured out the Twitter thing yet.
I created some more music. Feel free to download it and use it for stuff (Creative Commons / Share Alike) – all I ask is to see what gets done with it, really. Maybe eventually I’ll put this on a separate page if there’s more, but for now:
Some variations on a theme I’ve had stuck in my head for months, but just cant get to come out right:
wind – long version– kind of a dreamy loop with a clarinet melody and building strings toward the end
wind – short version – a little slower version of previous, with saxophone instead of clarinet, no strings
When I was a kid, often you couldn’t take a camera into a music concert – probably they wanted to make sure they had the market cornered on posters and publicity photos back then. Now, in the days of ubiquitous mobile phones and pocket camcorders people are not only sharing photos, they are sharing music videos. Fortunately, the music industry has by and large recognized that having videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites is actually good for business. Yes, it’s a violation of YouTube’s terms of service – but I personally think this is just YouTube’s way of covering themselves legally for the rare musician who still objects to having their music shared in this way.
Odds are, however, that you’re still not going to be able to set up a tripod and a professional camera and microphones. But you can hopefully capture something better than the shaky, grainy video captured by the guy in front of you, waving his cell phone in front of your lens.
If you have several cameras to choose from, bring the one that has decent optical zoom, first of all – and then think about image and sound quality second. Why zoom? Unfortunately, at a concert, there is such a thing as being too close. If you manage to elbow your way to the front, those speaker towers are going to wreak havoc on your sound quality. The vibration you feel from the bass is also happening in your camera’s microphone and there is no way you’ll get decent sound. So you want to find a balance between being far away from the speakers, yet close enough so you can zoom in. Don’t use the 60X zoom – 12-15X should be plenty. A little shaking helps capture the atmosphere, but if you’re zoomed to 60X your image will be so shaky you might have to include an epilepsy warning.
Most likely your battery will not last the whole concert, so what I like to do is pan around for a little scene-setting and atmosphere to add later, and then keep it ready for that favorite song or those unexpected moments. That way you can also minimize the irritation to the folks behind you from having your camera waving in their face the entire show.
The videos below were taken using a combination of a Sony HD camera with 60X zoom, and a Flip HD. If you watch “when September Ends” it actually switches partway through and you may not even notice the difference in sound quality. I was up way too close, unfortunately. You may also notice that the trick of filming the jumbotron doesn’t always work either – I think the frame rate of the Flip is too slow, so that the flickering you don’t see with your eyes ends up showing up on film. I don’t claim these to be great examples, but maybe you can learn from my mistakes and observations and do better.
For comparison, I was much farther back last year (and didn’t have jumbotron flicker) and I think the result was much better:
I have been asked for the soundtrack-less sounds from the footage used in this video clip, showing the Afghan Air Corps firing Mi-35 helicopters last year. I wasn’t using anything beyond the built-in mic on my camera, and the firing is from some distance away; but if you can use them, here they are:
Videomaker’s free online magazine published a couple of great articles which, in combination with my earlier post on where to get royalty-free (and other low-cost or flat-fee) music to make your videos legal, is a great resource for ensuring (a) your videos don’t get yanked from YouTube and (b) you don’t get sued. Check them out at VideoMaker.Com: Royalty-Free Music Tips and Music Library Buyer’s Guide.
For decades, printed song lyrics lived in relative obscurity, relegated to album sleeves and sheet music. And until now, they provided no significant source of revenue.
Interestingly, only now that creative entrepreneurs have figured out how to make money from song lyrics have the publishers suddenly shown interest. Most people hosting song lyrics sites apparently did so only as a hobby, often relying on contributing members to post lyrics – and only later discovered that by hosting ads could they generate some revenue for their efforts (and offset expenses, arguably).
As much as I support the argument that those who write the lyrics to our music deserve as much credit as those who write the music (and perform), I’d argue that having overlooked the opportunity, the music industry should forfeit the opportunity. Sharing the words to the songs we know and love is in my view something of a public service – especially when done in a Wiki approach.
And I’d argue it actually already supports the artist. Why do I say that? Ever hear a song on the radio and wonder who performed it (presumably so you can buy it)? Jot down a line from the chorus or a unique lyric, place it in quotes, and drop it on Google. Nine times out of 10, those lyrics sites will take you straight to the answer.
In Afghanistan, there’s no beer, and Burger King has gone by the wayside. So bored Soldiers need an outlet – it helps them (us) stay out of trouble. After all, that’s how I got started in this video editing gig!
So a group of guys from the 82nd Airborne got together and parodied “Telephone” by Lady Gaga – and quickly racked up an amazing 2 million views! My first thought: they’ve violated YouTube’s Terms of Service (using copyrighted material) – but then it’s up to Lady Gaga whether the video gets pulled or not. And it appears she’s cool with the whole thing, given that Google (which owns YouTube) is serving ads to buy the song, among other things.
Anyway, before I share the video, one question: Is this the greatest War Zone Music Parody to hit YouTube? Or do you know of one that’s better? Below this one, I share one I came across a few years ago, produced during the Kosovo conflict. What do you think?
Good news and bad news – my entry to the US Army Combat Readiness / Safety Center’s video contest was approved, but so were a load of others! The contest has been running since October, but like most video contests, most of the entries will be rolling in close to the 30 April deadline. So far, I still believe I am in the running for one of the cash prizes – I believe it’s “up to” $2,000, $1250, and $500. If I win, the cash will go into a pot of money I am saving for a much faster and more capable video editing workstation. Oh, and of course, there is the “Safety Emmy”!
You can see my entry here. I have another one planned, but am waiting for watermelons to come in season (they say the commissary will have them next week). Don’t ask.
It may be a bit silly, but I think my animations are pretty snazzy. The reflective belt and the animation toward the end with the helmets is done using simple stop-motion on a blue screen background. With the helmets it was a bit tricky because I hadn’t thought it through – blue and grey biking helmets can’t really be selected out using a blue screen background – the chroma key tool makes ALL the blue transparent. So I had to create a “virtual” red screen – blue’s natural opposite – by clipping the helmets out with photoshop, surrounding them with pure red, and then saving as a jpeg. Then, in Premiere, using the chroma key tool and making the red transparent.
The moving words in the beginning are done with Anime Studio (35 buck program that has lots of potential once I get over the learning curve).
And of course plenty of blue screening throughout the running and biking scenes – I couldn’t figure out how else to keep a steady camera shot while running and biking. I wanted a kind of “morph” effect on the same background. I admit you can tell I’m running in one place…
And finally, the day and night scenes used behind the biking and running shots are exactly the same scene. I tried doing a series of shots at dusk, but if you don’t have a $$$$ camera it ends up looking grainy. So I simply darkened the background.
Regarding some of the other entries – check them out! The one with the speed cop is kind of clever, and the guys in the “Tacos” clip do a pretty good job. I also think the MADVC guys did a good job “thinking outside the box.” Quite frankly, most of the videos are drinking-and-driving videos, which is definitely a challenge in the Army. Not to single out any single video (because you never know) but I know some of the more creative Army Commanders would consider suspending punishment if a DUI offender were to educate his/her peers in a contest like this one. It’s important to highlight the problem from the perspective of those who can speak from personal experience, but wouldn’t it be a hoot if one of them also managed to then win 2 grand? That having been said, one of the very first entries, a music video titled “I’m a PFC now” is a pretty commendable job of doing just that.
For a few months now, Vimeo has been hosting a video contest called “The Story Beyond the Still.” OK it’s hosted by Canon, but on Vimeo. It’s a wonderful mix of user-generated content and crowdsourcing, in that users are challenged to create a two- to four-minute HD clip that tells a story, prompted by a single still shot. The first chapter is provided by Vincent LaForet, and from his final still, the story continues. You can browse the contest rules and finalists at the contest’s group page – it’s fun to look at the different directions the story has been taken by different filmmakers. The only part I find a bit confusing is that each filmmaker, of course, has to use different actors (but I confuse easily).
The quality of the filmmaking, besides making me jealous, reminds me why I spend so little time watching television – here on Vimeo you can find countless 3-4 minute gems – I could sit and watch them for hours.
Take a look at the finalists so far – there will be 7 total:
So I spent a couple of days flying around in a plane for no reason (don’t ask). The not-to-be named airline which ferries Dutch troops back and forth to Kandahar go out of their way to spend pretty much all their time handing out food (2 meals in a 6-hour flight, and 2 each in two 4-hour flights), and they also give out portable digital movie players which are normally reserved only in Comfort Class (for their paying customers). But frankly you come to a point when you’ve had enough food, you’ve seen all the movies, and you’ve read the free newspaper and the in-flight magazine. Now what?
Fortunately, I happened to be carrying a couple of my favorite gadgets (I like gadgets) in my gray-digital-camouflage work clothes, which my Uncle (Sam) graciously equips with lots and lots of pockets for just that sort of thing. And as we began to dip toward the clouds that blanketed the area around Eindhoven, the Netherlands I realized I was in the prime seat for catching a good view of the setting sun. I positioned my Flip Camera as best I could against the window, and as we descended through what must have been five or six separate layers of clouds, each with gaps that allowed various shades of sunlight to spill through in odd patterns, I got the working parts of a pretty cool (I think) video:
It’s pretty wobbly at times, and the scratches and dust on the window are at times distracting, but I still think it’s pretty cool. You don’t see sights like that too often – in the early parts where the top third of the video is dark, that’s actually the top layer of clouds, but it almost looks like it’s filmed from much higher. And I asked the flight crew to PLEEEEEASE make the plane stop shaking – and for Pete’s sake could SOMEone please clean the windown – but no dice.
When I got home I stitched the most interesting parts together, sped up roughly double their original speed, and added a piece of music which, coincidentally, I had also dreamed up and “composed” on my Playstation Portable during the same flight (I told you I was bored). [See my previous post for more about music on the PSP] Actually, I redid the music on the Yamaha after I got home because the sound that is used for melody (it’s supposed to represent a saxophone) gets pretty grating after awhile on the original version. So we end up with something like a mariachi band bumping into Yanni in an elevator and collaborating on location-appropriate music, but I kind of like how it fits with the images. I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, and if you’re really bored, you can compare with the PSP-generated version:
In spite of the lengthy list of online royalty-free music sources I listed in my previous post, finding the right tune for your images can be a challenging and time-consuming process. So I’ve recently acquired some new gadgets to help make music for my videos myself – one conventional, and another quite unexpected. Not that I expect Spielberg to give me a ring anytime soon, but…
The first “gadget” (OK, it’s a two-man lift) is the Yamaha DGX-630 “Portable Grand”, which is a piano, multitrack recorder, keyboard, synthesizer, and music teacher all in one. If you know just a little bit about playing a keyed instrument and have a feel for music, you can use the multitrack recorder and all of the built-in harmony features and sounds to put together something relatively complex and decent-sounding. If you’re looking to capture a certain “feeling” for your video, you can play around with the sounds and rhythms until you come up with something that works. This thing is so “smart” it can even figure out which chord to play with the left hand based on what you’re playing with your right. So I took it for a spin this weekend and this is what I came up with as a first attempt:
If you can come up with something slightly more original to call it, I’m all ears! [And if you like it and want to borrow it, feel free. I’ll call it “Creative Commons – Attribution” but I’m really just curious what it would work well with, whether I get attribution or not.
The second gadget for making music I stumbled across is a little thing I call Playstation Portable. Specifically, a “game” I picked up 50% off (ten bucks) called “Beaterator.” Yes, it actually works. Especially when you compare it to an $80 program (to be unnamed here) I bought to do the same thing (which it doesn’t). You can use the thing to play “live” music composed of pre-loade, samples and sounds – or you can program it using individual sounds on 8 different tracks, record or upload your own sounds, edit individual sounds, and export to wav files or upload them to their sharing site. Just playing around with the thing on a plane, here is what I came up with:
Flying To Kandahar (only so named because that’s what I was doing at the time)
Desert Attack (because that’s what I think it sounds like!)
So there you have it. Now if someone could just get me an iPhone so I can use all the different music apps they offer, well maybe I could start a band like these guys.
Given that the current hot topic in home videography is “home 3-D movies” (both camcorders and screens to view them) I thought it would be appropriate to attempt making some 3-D on the “cheap.” Really cheap.
I got the idea from Ashton Kutcher – actually, a video he posted in the Nikon Festival contest. If you look closely at the stills in his video, you’ll see what’s known as the “parallax effect.” In other words, an object in the foreground moves in relation to the background – simulating the changing position of the viewer / camera, and adding a bit of a 3-D effect. The idea is that if you move your vantage point from right to left, objects nearer to you will shift to the right more quickly than distant objects. Apparently it’s useful in astronomy, as in when you’re measuring distances between stars and galaxies.
I wanted to take a collection of stills I had turned into a slideshow some time ago and see if I could create a parallax effect without having the equipment – and staff – Ashton Kutcher likely has available to him. And here is what I ended up with:
As you can see I did not apply the effect to every still. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes it seems like it should work, but due to operator error (failure to accurately imagine how moving a virtual camera will affect the scene) makes the whole effect kind of cheesy.
But here’s the basic idea. You take a photo that has clearly defined foreground objects, maybe also some mid-range objects, and some far-off background. If it’s difficult to cut out, like bare tree branches, skip it. Ditto if there is a sunburst effect that overlaps your foreground objects – it’s too hard to separate. These silhouettes in the video I did seem to work pretty well.
Using photoshop or photoshop elements, use your magic lasso to “cut out” the foreground objects. Create a new layer from your clipboard, and save it as a GIF file. You’ll lose some color detail by doing this, but as far as I know it’s the only way to allow transparency – which you’ll need in order to see the background.
Now go back to the background and delete what you just cut out. You’ll notice you have some dips and jags where there is white space. You’ll need to fill these in somewhat, because when you move your perfectly fitting foreground in relation to the background, these gaps will show up. So use the clone stamp tool – again, using a sky background makes this easier – and use similarly colored sky areas to gradually close up your gaps as well as you can. Basically you’re looking for an overlap between your foreground and background so you can move things around without opening up white space.
Now you go to your video editor. The background photo will be your first timeline. Now import your foreground photo(s) and put them in the second, third timeline(s) as appropriate. The first thing you’ll need to do is adjust sizes so that the original photo has been recreated. You may want to fudge a little and make your foreground a little bigger – say 105% – to give you more wiggle room.
Now you need to animate the clips. You have to decide how your camera is going to move. Left to right? Simultaneously zooming? You may want to focus on a particular feature of your photo, as if the camera is moving forward alongside that object. And you may want to draw a diagram for yourself. But as a simple example, if you move your camera from right to left, everything in your scene will move left to right. So you’ll want to give yourself room to do that by increasing the size of your photos and letting a little hang out the left side of the frame. If using premiere or premiere elements, you then adjust your “x” coordinate at the beginning and end of the clip (using edit effects and clicking on the little clock icon on the appropriate effect). You want objects close to you to move more than objects farther back. So a bush may move 25 pixels left to right, and the sky in the background may only move 5 pixels. Then you have to check and recheck to make sure (a) it looks natural and (b) there are no gaps created during the movement.
To get the hang of this, you’ll need to experiment. The clip above was my first attempt, and let’s just say it took WAY too much time to create what you see. Try adding zooms along with your pans and the issue becomes much more complicated. But I think it’s a cool effect, and well worth learning, if only it helps you understand how parallax works in order to assist you in framing future shots and projects. Good luck!
Sometimes I find myself caught up in the creative process of editing a video to the point where it competes with other responsibilities (and pleasures) in life, and possibly borders on obsession. Sitting at the computer in the late hours of the night manipulating individual frames and effects doesn’t feel like art – especially when it’s destined for 40 or 50 views on YouTube at best. And I wonder sometimes why we who practice this hobby do what we do.
Sometimes you have an idea, and you want to see if you can transfer that vision to a bit of visual storytelling. There’s no money in it, and sometimes there’s an immense amount of work involved with relatively little payoff. You sit down to make a 3-minute clip,and after 4 hours you take a break and realize you’ve managed to create a 10-second introduction. And then you work days and days and in the end it doesn’t really turn out quite as cool as you imagined, but maybe you’ve added another trick to your video editing repertoire.
Then I look at something like this music video – in some ways a stupid, trivial set of visual tricks and I wonder if others have the same thoughts. Here’s this guy who has a vision for a music video for a techno piece, and he cuts and individually paints a few thousand brightly colored blocks of wood, builds some sort of photography apparatus, and then, photo by painstaking photo (4,085 in all), creates a 2 minute 49 second piece of “art” with questionable value in the big scheme of things. And I kind of know why he did it, but I can’t really articulate it:
Just returned from a grueling,longer-than-expected trip in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t all for naught – though I had to wait until Friday for a series of grueling job interviews that had been scheduled for Monday, it resulted in a job offer. And while I waited, I snagged some video footage of the DC blizzard – which really was a blizzard, as far as I could tell – using a newly-acquired Flip Ultra HD. Of course the sound was a mess because of the wind blowing on the mic, but I think I managed to find some sound that accurately captured the empty, almost desolate mood on the streets of our normally crowded capital:
And then, the next day, life had almost returned to normal, along with some trick skiers in front of the Lincoln Memorial:
There are a lot of misconceptions about the use of music for your videos. Let’s start by addressing those, and move on to a list of options – literally about a million options – that may work for your particular project. (And if you know of other resources, let me know and I’ll update the list!)
Myth #1: “If I only use 30 seconds (or 10 seconds, or 1 minute) then I’m not violating copyright.” This is a common misconception that is even being taught in journalism schools. If I create and perform a piece of music, I automatically own the copyright – down to the last second.
Myth #2: “If I’m not making money off it, it’s OK.” Copyright is copyright, whether someone makes a profit off my creativity or not. For a home video of your vacation that you’re going to burn to DVD and keep at home, no one is going to have an issue with it because they won’t know about it (though it’s still not legal). If you’re planning to do just about anything else with it, you need permission.
Myth #3: “I can use it because it’s in the public domain.” Well…that depends. Any musical work created before 1922 in the United States is public domain. Depending on whom you ask, however, recordings of those songs are not. And considering most recordings were done after 1922, it’s slim pickings anyway. But if you want to give this a go, , check out PublicDomain4u, which also has links to other sites, or the Open Music Archive. Know how to play an instrument? Go crazy – check out this site to determine if something is in the public domain.
Myth #4: “I can use it because I sang (played, whistled, hummed) the song myself.” The tune itself is subject to copyright. A performance of that tune is a separate copyright requiring permission by the composer. And sound recordings by musicians – well, they’re extremely complicated because publishers get involved, rights are bought and sold…it’s a huge headache.
Myth #5: “I can use Creative Commons or ‘royalty free’ music in a video contest.” Typically, video contest organizers require you to hand over your work to enter – or to claim your prize. Check their fine print. A “Creative Commons” license almost always prevents you from doing this. They’re sharing their music to support your creativity – not giving you the right to transfer ownership to a contest sponsor. Same for licensed or “royalty free” music (which is also licensed, but for a one-time flat fee). They’ve licensed you to use the music, but that usually does not include the right to transfer that license to a contest sponsor.
All that having been said, there are a number of options available. For commercial works, fair use is a great loophole – although it is, legally speaking, poorly defined. But there are a number of fair use options. If you happen to catch your kids on video singing “Happy Birthday” or the TV/radio was on in the background and got on your video, that’s OK. Parody is OK. Using a piece for critique is OK. And so are a surprising number of other cases. Check out this web site to determine if you may qualify for a fair use exclusion for your video. It’s well worth the read.
You may also be a musician, or know someone – say, the high school band or a neighbor – who may be interested in collaborating with you. Again, focus on public domain works or original composition. Don’t know anyone? There are lots of folks on the internet who would like to work with you – sometimes for a fee, sometimes just for publicity. Or maybe you want to agree that any money or prizes are split 75-25, or 80-20:
– Undergunned Productions, on MySpace has a browsable ambient / rock collection and supports indie film.
– Settle the Score is for projects that are a bit more ambitious than a YouTube clip (no offense to YouTube), offering to develop music scores, such as for ad agencies or video.
– You could also collaborate with Moby (yes, that Moby) – he has placed a collection of music that is “free to independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short” (there’s a form to fill out). If you want to use it commercially, your licensing fee goes to the Humane Society – how cool is that?
Free Music
If that doesn’t suit you, there are a number of folks out there who put out their music in one or another “Creative Commons” license, which is just fine for noncommercial work. Be sure and check their license to ensure you’ve complied with its requirements – such as republishing under the same license, giving credit to them, whatever they ask:
– CCMixter is an awesome site whose subtitle reads, “Download. Sample. Cut-up. Share.” A community of folks who share and remix samples, they offer both the samples and the resulting works created from them for re-use under a variety of Creative Commons licenses…again, read the fine print to avoid using original works inappropriately. The site is very user-friendly.
– The Freesound Project, unlike CCMixter, focuses on individual sounds, rather than mixes. A bit of work is required to assemble the sounds into soundtracks. Again, check the Creative Commons license.
– Audiofarm is a bit experimental, and some searching is needed to find something useful. You could spend a lot of time just browsing and listening, and if you’re looking for something quick to complete your project, this may not be the best place to start.
– Jimmy Gelhaar is an aspiring musician whose work I have used quite a bit. He has a selection of pretty well-done pieces for different moods, you just have to register to use them. He just wants to be credited in order for you to use his work.
– Derek Audette hosts a couple dozen creative commons tracks on his site, with descriptions, for download.
– Kevin MacLeod has collected a variety of creative interests, including an extensive music collection, on his site, Incompetech.com. Some of his stuff is a bit whimsical, but his detailed search function (search by mood and genre) make his site useful to find something for your video in relative short order. He lets you use his music for just about anything, as long as you give attribution.
– Taylor Hayward is a software designer and pianist who loves to compose and play music, and offers “ambient classical music” tracks, completely free, no strings attached.
– Dan-O at Danosongs has a variety of vocal and instrumental tracks he has made available for free use (with attribution). You can even sign up for a “free download of the week” notification by email.
– Internet Audio Guy has about a dozen tracks for free, as publicity for his main site. It’s not much, but it may be what you need – and you can always check his main site for more (paid) options.
– Mp3Free offers a lot of his/her own songs for free (creative commons) use (attribution). The only weird thing about it is that nowhere on the site is an actual name listed. I guess you just credit mp3free.com. Also links to other free sites.
– Sonnyboo offers 20 tracks for free download, no strings attached. He calls it royalty-free, but in actuality he has donated them to the public domain, in exchange to crediting John Scott Ross for the piece.
– RockProper digitally distribute free music from a number of different artists. The music may be downloaded freely, but be sure and check out the licensing requirements for each musician – most of which is Creative Commons (but there are different types and requirements)
– Dogmazic is a similar service as RockProper. They boast nearly 40,000 pieces of music. Much of their site, however, is in French. They have a variety of search options, though I was unable to browse (listen to) music directly on the site for some reason.
– OpSound is a large collection of music contributed under Creative Commons – share alike (meaning your derivative work must carry the same “copyleft”).
– Free Music Archive is a collection of tens of thousands of quality music pieces, hosted by public radio station WFMU (and joined by a host of other curators). Each song has its own track page that explains how you can use it and how you need to credit the owner. The search function is pretty good to, and lets you filter by “sync to video”. And listening and downloading are simple as well.
– Human Workshop is another such site – with, from what I’ve listened to, some unique and quality music. The web site says it’s all licensed via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license; if you want to use it commercially they give you a form to fill out.
– You can use the files at Free Production Tracks for any purpose – commercial or noncommercial. They ask that you refer back to their site in your credits.
– Soundclick hosts just shy of an amazing 400,000 pieces of music. You can search by genre and get commercial licenses for between $10 and $50, or select “creative commons” from the pull-down menu at top left, and filter for free music (again checking attribution requirements for each you use).
– the Internet Archive is a project to preserve all kinds of audio files, including live performances by well-known artists. If you absolutely want to use a big-name piece of music but don’t want to track down who owns the rights, this is the only way I know of that you can do it. These archive files are only for noncommercial use – check the individual file information to determine further requirements and/or limitations.
Free Sound Effects
– For sound effects – completely free – check out Universal Soundbank. The French version claims 20,000 sounds (the English claim of 12,000 is probably out of date) – and they’re all listed alphabetically by category.
– Pacific Digital Video mainly offers sound effects, but also a handful of completed music tracks – as well as lots of links to other resources. Use their sounds in exchange for a link back to their site.
– Music for Video offers both music and sound effects – but the music requires an annual fee of 1400 euro for permission to use all their music. The sound effects, however, are free. They just ask that you link back to their site if you use it on the internet.
Music for a fee (licensing)
If you’re looking for a broader pool to choose from, check out these web sites that specialize in licensing music and sounds from a large number of contributors:
– Music2License offers a license for 40 Pounds Sterling, regardless of what the music is used for. They have a wide variety of music styles and offer a number of different search options.
– The Blue Mask offers BIG sounds composed by Simon Wilkinson for (all prices in pounds Sterling) 0.99 for the mp3 plus 9.99 (noncommercial) or 49.99 (commercial) licensing fee. Fully searchable and browsable, the only downside is that the previous include a woman repeatedly saying “the blue mask dot com” which can get irritating. Probably he knows I own AudioRecorder Pro (see below).
– SmartAssMusic offers a variety of services, including music licensing, most commonly for $20 per track. They also span the gamut of music styles.
– FreePlayMusic has about 6200 pieces of production music, indie music, and sound effects you can license. The production music is the kind of stuff you’d have difficulty finding elsewhere, but you’re also going to pay $25 to $75, if not more (less than $10 for sound effects). It’s free for in-home or educational use; however, I had trouble previewing files – it uses Media Player, and it kept freezing up.
– Jamendo offers 30,000 “free and legal” music albums for download and use for private projects; but if you want to share your video, they’re not free – but in many cases, nearly so. Select your song, specify its use and the license term, and you’ll be given the licensing cost – often as little as $3. You can also “go pro” and get access to everything for an annual fee. The cool thing about this site is it’s a community – meaning the tracks and albums are sorted by popularity.
– Citybus Productions as a smallish (but growing, I presume) collection of production tracks you can license for about $25 bucks (web site, amateur video) or more for broader uses; and a list of sound loops for producing your own music. You can search by category, but their tracks are not tagged for other search options.
– Rumblefish hosts 30,000 pieces of music for licensing, and I particularly like them because of their user-friendly search function that allows you to search by mood, and the fact that for a YouTube video or a vlog piece, they only charge $5 (though the price increases for other, more commercial uses). They have a good working relationship with YouTube, and if you use their work it will immediately be flagged on YouTube. They won’t deactivate your audio, but if you want your video to be ad-free, dispute the copyright and put your invoice number on the form – it’ll be cleared up within a day or two.
– SoundSnap offers an amazing 100,000 sound effects and music loops (for use in a music editing/production program) at reasonable pricing depending on how many you buy (from $1,80 per sound to $249 for an annual unlimited subscription) and they are working on plans whereby you can contribute your own sounds for revenue sharing.
Other stuff
Also intriguing is Hobnox, a Germany-based sharing platform of sorts (in public beta testing). They offer users 2 GB space, and the ability to upload and share (and download) all sorts of content. They claim to be a forum to facilitate collaboration between creative types, so you may find someone there with similar interests to work with. In addition, they have a somewhat limited but extremely user-friendly, cloud-based AudioTool to create your own beats (here’s a sample of what I did in 20 minutes – gaps are due to my bandwidth) Check out their “what is Hobnox” link for more.
Along similar lines, New Grounds is a sharing and collaboration platform – a social networking site for creative types. In addition to music, they have flash video, gaming and other collections/sharing portals. Each uploaded music piece comes with its own copyright information.
Niklas Aman specializes in music for video, and has a fair number of pretty good tracks for different moods. He charges by the second and is very responsive to requests. Check him out on Twitter.
DIY Tools
If you want to take a shot at producing your own audio, the simplest option is to record it with your camcorder, import it to your editing program, delete the video, and edit away. You can also record directly to your computer – but I’d advise against using your computer mike. I’ve had pretty good results with the USB mic that comes with the RockBand video game. A couple of programs you can use to record are Audio Recorder Pro, for $39.95 which I’ve used for years with great success, or WireTap Studio for $69 – which I haven’t tried. Of course there are plenty of other programs, including the option to just use Windows MovieMaker directly.
One of my discoveries this week on Vimeo was an excellent series of how-to videos by Carleton Torbin. I’m guessing he made a short film with lots of different kinds of animation, and followed up with the series of how-tos, as a kind of “the making of” series. I could have it backward. Other than a peculiar fetish with a stuffed squirrel (which makes it kinda cool actually), Torbin explains basic animation in a way that is accessible to any beginner – and provides a basis from which you could take it to the next level.
To make browsing them in order easier, I’ve listed them below. And at the end, you can watch the movie that puts all the techniques together.
As I weathered the worst storm to hit Washington, D.C. in years (they’re calling it “snowpocalypse”!) I thought about a video I made the last time I was in our nation’s capital. There was much less snow on the ground that time; it was just a few days after President Obama’s inauguration, and the city seemed eerily silent – a stark contrast with the crowds and activity I had seen on television just days before. Row upon row of porta-johns were lined up on the national mall, and only a few solitary runners and the hardiest tourists were out there with me. I passed the workmen scrubbing the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, and was startled to see a huge red-tailed hawk perched on one of the pedestals along the stairway. I wish I had taken more photos – another guy was there with one of those lenses that look about a foot long, snapping away. Anyway, I wandered around and took advantage of the quiet to get some impressions of the city, and later that evening took a drive around town as a light snow began to fall again.
I put the images I gathered into a short video / slideshow, which you can see below, but that’s not what this post is about. Instead, I’d like to share how I did the last few images at the end, which combine several images on top of each other, overlaid with a burning – or rather “unburning” credit, and using chroma key (aka “green screen”) technology. The video below contains the first version of that effect, which you can watch if you have about a minute to spare.
About a year later, I modified the video to enter it in the Lonely Planet’s “My Journey” video contest. No, I didn’t win. This guy did–> (with a pretty cool video!). I added some text, and my friend Dan Cooper and I put together a combination of some public domain patriotic music, and I redid the final credit. Take a look at that version below (fast forward to the last 20 seconds or so if you want) and I’ll explain how it was done.
OK, it starts with the image of the hot dog stand at about 1:35 where I give the music credit. Then, on a separate track, I added another still with a lot of blue sky, and used the chroma key function of Premiere Elements 7 (but many editing programs have it). Some programs will guess which color you want to make transparent, but in this case it’s best to indicate you want to choose the color (else your program may pick water instead of sky), and then choose the most representative part of the sky. If the sky is all exactly the same color, but any smog or haze (like in this one) and you have to play around with it. If you look closely along the left bottom of the sky you’ll see I wasn’t able to get rid of all of it. The chroma key effect removed all the blue sky (made them transparent) and left behind the haze. Or smog. Whatever.
Next the fancy part.
– I used Power Point to create my credits exactly how I wanted them to appear – using a color that would work with the rest of the images. I actually printed it lighter “mustard” but the other chroma key effect later on changed it.
– Next, I printed it. Try to use most of the paper, leaving an inch or two all around.
– Then I got a large non-glossy poster board about the same color as the paper I printed on (I never new there were so many different “colors” of white!).
– I cut inch-wide strips of a 3X5 index card, and folded them and glued them so that they would function as spacers between the poster board and the printed credits. What I was looking for was a way to hold the credits about half an inch out from a piece of poster board the same color as the paper – and without the sheet with the credits bending. You may have to get creative here.
– Next I went outside and used duct tape (which really is good for just about anything) to tape the poster board to a wall outside so it was vertical; and set up the camera with tripod, so that it was about 4 feet from the paper, zoomed in so that the credits filled nearly the entire screen.
– Now for the safety briefing: Make sure there is nothing nearby that will burn easily. If you have a fire extinguisher or a bucket of water, now might be a good time to have it nearby.
– Now you need a pretty decent lighter – or you can light a larger piece of paper – but you want a good-size flame. Hit “record” on your camera and light the bottom of the sheet with your credits on fire – as evenly as possible. You want the whole thing to burn relatively evenly. If the right side just burns and it falls off the poster board, it won’t work. Light it all across the bottom.
So after the credits are burned, it’s a matter of importing from your camera to your editing program. Trim appropriately, and at this point I reversed the clip – so that the credits actually appear from the fire rather than get consumed by it. This clip goes right over the top of the others, and then you apply another chroma key effect – this time selecting white (your paper) as the color you want to make transparent.
And that’s pretty much it. You can go out and spend hundreds of dollars (or more) on another program that will do this effect without the risk of having to notify the fire department – but it’s also possible to do it with a very basic editing program. Good luck!
I’ve been continuing to research better timelapse video, and found a great channel on Vimeo. I could sit and watch these all day! I’m concluding the best way to do landscape/nature timelapse where you may be operating in low light is (besides expensive gear) to record individual frames at specified time intervals, ratherthan simply recording and speeding up the footage.
To see an amazing example of what it could look like, check out this one:
Patiently awaiting the results of two video contests I’ve entered: Reel Insights’ monthly contest and a last-minute entry to WordPress.com’s “Give Thanks” contest.
In the Reel Insights contest, mine was the only entry for about two weeks. Then there was a second with a couple days ago, and during the last 24 hours of the contest it seems the number rose to 13! The monthly theme was “the Most Generous Person I know”, and some of the entries focused on convincing the public that “their” person was THE most generous, while I and some others focused on defining and understanding “generosity” – which is what I understood the assignment to be (despite the title!). My entry is here:
But I think (in addition to my own, of course!) the most competitive entry is likely to be this one:
The second contest I entered was (admittedly) a rush job, but I found out about WordPress’ contest on Thanksgiving, being held from 23 to 27 November, on the 27th. So I put the entry below together. It’s limited to 30 seconds and tries to be a little different. Of course the next day I found out they had extended the contest to 4 December! Check it out, it’s only 30 seconds…
After seeing the video I put together for the “Going Green” contest, a friend who’s starting down the addicting road of video editing asked me how I did the intro to the video – speeding up the movement of the clouds while retaining the sound. In truth, it’s pretty easy, and a trick I like to use often as an establishing shot, or as a background for the end credits. To tell you the truth, I got the idea from “Survivor”…!
Anyway, the trick is to film on a day when it’s windy, and the clouds are moving relatively quickly. Use a tripod, and make sure you don’t have anything on screen that moves too much, like branches or leaves moving near the camera. I left animals on the “Going Green” video, but only because they’re far away and I wanted it as part of the effect. Film for at least ten minutes.
When you get your footage on your computer, the first thing you should do is trim the beginning and end, because the camera surely moved a bit when you pushed the “record” button. If you don’t do it right away you’re likely to forget later when it’s sped up.
Adjust your lighting using whatever video editing program you use, and be sure not to use any “auto” effects that adjust continually during the clip. Although the piece I used in the “Going Green” video is at times a little dark and then gets a little light, remember I was trying to emphasize the rain clouds and knowingly filming directly into the sun. With more expensive equipment it could have ended up better. But the point is, if I had used “auto” effects in the editing process, the light/dark variations would have been much more emphasized.
Next you’ll want to separate your audio and video, assuming your program will allow you to do this (most do). On my editing program it’s “unlink audio and video.” I then use the function “time stretch” on the video portion only and in the case of this particular clip, sped it up by about 1500% – or fifteen times its original speed. Now you’ve got a short video clip and a long audio clip – and all that’s left is to choose the portion of the audio you want to match your video and you’re done!
Is 1500% speed not fast enough? You can always do more. Just remember that there are always things moving that you may not be aware of, and at a certain point it’s just going to look blurry. And the other thing is to plan ahead so that you’ll have enough video for your final product. For the video below, I had to take 35 minutes of footage, in order to speed it up fifty times its original speed. I’m still not happy with it – I wanted the complete sunset – and also you can tell that it was so windy that day that even a tripod wasn’t enough to keep the camera completely still. Maybe next time!
