{"id":202,"date":"2010-04-18T09:43:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T08:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=202"},"modified":"2025-03-08T22:49:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T21:49:20","slug":"army-peer-to-peer-safety-video-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=202","title":{"rendered":"Army Peer-to-Peer Safety Video Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good news and bad news – my entry to the US Army Combat Readiness \/ Safety Center’s video contest<\/a> was approved, but so were a load of others!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Oh, and of course, there is the “Safety Emmy”!<\/p>\n

You can see my entry here.<\/a> I have another one planned, but am waiting for watermelons to come in season (they say the commissary will have them next week).\u00a0 Don’t ask.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Then, in Premiere, using the chroma key tool and making the red transparent.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I wanted a kind of “morph” effect on the same background.\u00a0 I admit you can tell I’m running in one place…<\/p>\n

And finally, the day and night scenes used behind the biking and running shots are exactly the same scene.\u00a0 I tried doing a series of shots at dusk, but if you don’t have a $$$$ camera it ends up looking grainy.\u00a0 So I simply darkened the background.<\/p>\n

Regarding some of the other entries – check them out!\u00a0 The one with the speed cop<\/a> is kind of clever, and the guys in the “Tacos”<\/a> clip do a pretty good job.\u00a0 I also think the MADVC <\/a>guys did a good job “thinking outside the box.”\u00a0 Quite frankly, most of the videos are drinking-and-driving videos, which is definitely a challenge in the Army.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 That having been said, one of the very first entries, a music video titled “I’m a PFC now”<\/a> is a pretty commendable job of doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,21,22,39],"tags":[73,79,80,12,78,82,72,77,81],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-and-tricks","category-video-contest","category-home-editing","category-video-effects","tag-army","tag-blue-screen","tag-chroma-key","tag-contest","tag-effects","tag-peer","tag-safety","tag-video","tag-virtual-blue-screen"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5666,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/5666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}