November Notes

I was talking with my son the other day about summer jobs.  He wants some extra cash – and with us in a bit of a rural location it’s a little harder to wander up and down he street with a mower and offer to mow someone's lawn for $5. 

As we talked I started to realize how many jobs for kids are now gone.  Paper routes – the mainstay of child cash, have been killed by the internet like the newspapers themselves – well the internet and overall lack of humans reading at all.  Bussing tables is still popular but child labor laws prevent that at the age of 15… and you also have to fight with adults who are vying for the positions.  Same with McDonalds, stocking shelves, and many of the traditional minimum wage jobs of American youth. 

Not to be less than politically correct or insensitive to migrants – but the adage used by congressmen who applauded the opening of restrictions on immigration is that most of these jobs Americans don’t want.  Which may be true.  But there is a difference between not wanting a job, and not having them available to you due to excess competition.  Which isn’t to say the woes of American youth rest where they are because of illegal immigrants or any other such nonsense. 

No the woes of American youth rest where they are simply because we’ve systematically dismantled a number of jobs which, economists refer to as “long tail indicators”.  You have to wonder how many kids who wanted to buy 3 comic books can only afford to buy 1.  How many kids who wanted to buy mom something nice for mothers day, or spend a little cash on some bottle rockets or even an extra Hershey bar… aren’t doing that.  If they aren’t – then what effect does that have on things like candy bars and comic books and summer movie tickets and even… summer bonnets or cheap mothers day gifts. 

Humans react financially a bit like squirrels.  You cut off that long tail and yes, they can survive.  But not well.  The balance is gone, they can’t leap as far or as fast and they don’t recover very readily when they fall.

Just some food for thought.

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved.  The real milestones are less prepossessing.  They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave.  Our lives are measured by these.”  ~Susan B. Anthony

Sue – was not the hottest chick that ever lived.  In fact most people only remember her for being on the dollar coin with the stern faced babe that we all thought was a quarter half the time.  But, she was very wise.   We mark our lives by the events.  By birthdays and special days and things that happen once.  But the real milestones are the moments we have locked away inside us.  My first memory of my daughter is not of her birth.  I was most definitely there – I cut the cord, mine, were the first hands of our family to hold her.  But those are just a few of many precious memories – not my first memory of her.  Because at that moment in time, at the moment of birth - she was not the woman I know today.

My first memory of my daughter, was the day she grabbed my hair and grabbed my ear – and sucked on my nose and giggled.  As moments go it’s not the prettiest.  I’m pretty sure she has no recollection of it.  But that is my first memory of her as a person, unique and defined, and fully capable of making a decision, and mischief all her own.  That is a memory.  I'll always have it, and it will reside along side her first steps, her first words, her first day of school, her first playhouse, her first pet, her first dead pet, her first … you get the idea.  Her giggle was the sound of someone who knew what she wanted and knew she’d just gotten it.  No compromise.  No caring what anyone else thought on the subject… it was going to happen and there was nothing I or anyone else on this planet could do to stop it. 

That was the first time I really met my daughter – and it was wonderful. 

We, as a people have an obsession with someones “firsts”.  In fact, even graduations – which are actually celebrations of what has gone and what we have accomplished and completed – focus not on what the person has done but what they will do in the future now that they’ve graduated.  What new firsts will they have is apparently the gist of it.  When we’re supposed to be honoring the achievements that brought them to this brave new future.  We’re supposed to be honoring the journey – not the destination.  Often, with graduations we forget that.  Any journey worth going on is not easy.  If everyone could go there – why bother?  Well, Robin, was never one to take the easy road.  Not that she ever went out of her way to make her life more difficult – she didn’t have to.  She’s just never been one to let an obstacle get in her way.

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”  ~Henry Ford

Robin, not everyone knows didn’t come into this world with the best of health.  She was born with a strep-b virus and for almost a week she required constant care, IVs, and a lot of work from doctors and nurses.  Often – these were not her assigned doctors or nurses, in fact the doctor that saved her life through this period stayed up with her for several days.  Changing from one vein to the next as they collapsed and he fought tirelessly to make sure she had the fluids needed to help fight the infection and survive.  We had very little money at the time, so you can imagine my surprise when the only bill we received from this doctor, was for the syringes and fluids.  I think from the time she was born, everyone knew that she was special.  She was not then, nor is she now, a child who dotes on “firsts”, she focuses instead on results in life and always has.  Her goals over the years have changed.  She for example, has not wanted to grow up to become a sled dog in Alaska named “Gus Yoshi” for many years.  :-D

Nor does she still want to be a veterinarian, or an architect, or … well she is a teenager.  The world for her is still a moving target.  For now – she wants to go into International Studies with a Business Major.  Which is incredibly practical, and incredibly pragmatic… and I have to admit… I sometimes wonder if she wouldn’t be  happier if she still wanted to be “Gus Yoshi” the sled dog, or Babe the big blue ox.   She has always achieved goals and often even if they were hard.  So her wanting to join the ORCA program while still in high school  was not a big surprise to me.  Her completing it – also not a surprise.  ORCA is hard.  My daughter – is harder – always has been, always will be.  She has a strength – a depth of character that I’m pretty sure even she has no idea how deep it goes.  It goes beyond passion, and beyond perseverance,  and beyond stubborn.  When Robin decides she wants something – well – something gets done.

For 17 years I have watched this child become a girl,and the girl become a woman.  I have seen her succeed, and fail, and live and love and laugh.  There is nothing more incredible that to be able to say that this woman, is perhaps one of my best friends – if not my best friend. 

I have seen her triumph and seen her tears.  She has been my rock – my anchor – my life. From the first time she climbed on top of me and grabbed my hair and my ear and chompped down on my nose giggling it has been a lesson every day for me.  If I had to pick the one lesson that she has taught me it is the lesson that you have to be true to you.  To live your own course, your own path.  She has taught me to live.  So today … is her day.  The day she graduates.  And I, am faced with the knowledge that soon… she’ll be on her own and gone full time.

But she will never be alone.  She will always have the very best part of me – my heart - with her.  I am not sure what course she’ll take over the next few months.  Whether its studies here, or somewhere else, what I can tell you is that where ever she goes, whatever she does, whatever life she chooses to lead… it will be, without a doubt a life without compromise. 

“There is just one life for each of us:  our own.”  ~Euripides

I had a couple calls this weekened from friends who are going through some rough spots.  Naturally we talked about things to bring in a little extra money.  Now one thing that always happens when people go through rough times is there is this tendency to not think about what resources they do have.

For example – a few months back I did a blog about how to do set-extensions.  A video set extension is a relatively simple illusion used on almost every TV show.  If the look isn’t right – the buildings wrong – the sky’s too this … you need a castle next door – you do a set extension.  It’s basically like doing a photo-shop for video.  Here’s an example…

Which – if you’re looking to add a few dollars to your pocket and have the skills – is a pretty simple trick. 

Go out – find some “Future Home” of signs, do some video of those locations.  If possible get some good images of the proposed site with buildings on it… offer your services to help sell their sites.  Show off your presentation skills. 

Believe it or not – this is the sort of work which can bring in a good $50 - $150 a month for very little work.  Include PhotoShop files as well as video in case they don’t have it.  The idea is to allow them to sell better.  Realators, Construction Companies, Architectural firms – all have a need for this kind of service.

Naturally, no promises but yeah, I do know that this sort of thing does help pay the bills.  So there’s my tip for this month - - and for everyone hoping I’d do a update on the cXML work I’m doing … I promise – that is coming.  But I’ve had a lot on my plate so – have had to work at … well, work. 

Okay… so had a few minutes this weekend and my son had asked about how the demons do their warps in the tv series “Charmed”. Ironically enough … Andrew Kramer had on his blog this week a bit that’s very much like the old “staked” flame away from Buffy and Angel.  So this is my way of giving and unabashed plug to Andrew and his site… and I would be really evil – if I didn’t mention he’s got all kinds of updated video tools you can buy there. 

Anyway – after a bit of telling my son that these effects weren’t as hard as you might imagine led to me grabbing some old video footage… And here’s a couple examples I did in After Effects to show him how easy these effects are to do.  Very fun – and surprisingly easy – they just take time.  My only complaint is I really need to break down and get a better quality camera because it’s sad when the CG work has better quality than the original footage. 

Now – admittedly the warping / warbling warp in on this is largely to cover the fact I was too lazy to go out and shoot any new footage so I took a bit of garbage footage lying around and used that as a quickie bit for the burn effect.

A better copy of the burn – is below.  Here I’m using a simple image of a penny and you can really see how the right media really makes the effect. 

So… let’s get down to how the effect layers out – and that is really the secret to making it work, a lot of layers each one over lapping the other. Now this is explained a whole lot better in one of Andrew Kramer’s tutorials and since I don’t do tutorials – and Andrew Does I’m going to refer you to him here. 

The only real twists I’m adding to this is – I don’t use any pre-comp’d smoke which he does, and I’ve simplified this up a bit so we’re not using several layers that he is.  Remember I’m doing this for just a very quick effect on some very grainy footage and Andrew’s outputting HD level.   For a lot of work (web for example) this is good enough and it’s very quick. 

So – we take a simple comp shot of just the woods – and another shot of me walking in these same woods.  If you have a green screen you can do this very quick – but if you’re just using raw footage it won’t take long for you to matte the woods out – and then overlay these shots.

Now – we apply the layered burn effect which is really just a combination of linear radiant's on a texture – that is then applied with color.  As this transitions across the layer it causes it to glow.

The next set of layers uses a similar radiant and glow effect on a texture – that we’ve boosted to a point where it’s pretty much a very jagged linear ramp that as we transition this across – gives the effect of it erasing or burning away what is below. 

We add over this a layer of smoke and some particles that pass over it. You can see that we need to do this on a very semi-transparency to the overlapping layers that are placed over the footage.  But that’s really how easy this effect is to pull off.  It’s not complicated – it’s just a bit of repeating the same effect with slight variations one over the top of the other, and then applying them in a set order.

Once again – you can get a great detailed video tutorial on this over at Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot.net site who is pretty much the definitive guy for any After Effects effect.  Any of us who do anything with video from your basic beginner to long time pros can learn a lot from him – so even if you’ve never used AE that’s the place to go if you want to learn these effects.

I’m taking a breather from the next installment of eCommerce talk.  Not that discussing the glories of PunchOut catalogs and on line supplier services isn’t hoot – but I needed to add a little color so I

grabbed a bit of video I had lying around and I did just that.  If you take a gander at the clip here ther’s a couple tricks that are pretty easy to create some very dramatic and colorful footage out of well, kind of drab footage. 

The clip here has the original footage, first – just a simple few seconds of the back yard around the house here on a typical Seattlish late afternoon.  Meaning – it’s overcast and dark.   And that’s not a bad thing – in fact the nice thing about it always being overcast here is that it’s easy to light a video shot, and you seldom ever have to worry about over exposing the shot.  But life isn’t always about various shades of grey.  Now, the original footage isn’t all that bad – there is some color there.  But as you can see its a bit washed out.  So one of the first fun things you can do to boost the color is to replace the sky entirely.  So I did – I spent a few minutes out there on Flickr and got a very nice flaming red sunset. 

¹Fun tip for Video and Design:

Which … btw – is under a creative commons license that allows it to be used.  Flickr has a very nice feature that allows you to do a search for works that are under the Creative Commons – so keep that in mind.  It’s under the Advanced Search settings – scroll to the bottom of the search options and check the boxes for Creative Commons reuse policies.  You can even have it search for stuff that you can use commercially – which – is pretty cool.  (Be even cooler if you could download actual video instead of flash videos – but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.)

Anyway, like I said, I got on on Flickr and looked around for a very very dramatic flaming red sky since I really wanted to give the shot a vibrant dramatic boost.  Now the trick to doing this with a shot that’s very effective and very quick is not to roto-scope all the frames but to do a color matte.  What’s a color matte? It’s really simple to do in After Effects and it’s very useful.  First things first – is to duplicate the shot, and then desaturate it completely.  Then hit the levels and totally boost the sky so it’s got a really almost black and white look.  Then, last but not least bring in a good luma key.  Drop the photo in behind it so it shows through the key – and wallah – you have a very dramatic sunset.  Now, you may have noticed that it’s ALL black where it’s not colored sunset… so drop a mask across the area you want to show at the bottom and pin to that the original footage.  Do a little color correction on it and you have the very dramatic scene you see here.  (A little more work and we could get the little color spots out of the edging – but this was done very quickly  - even still its very dramatic.  Got a nice vibe to it and the colors' literally scream at you. 

What it is not however … is particularly realistic.  And the downside of this technique is that you really make the fine details get blocky and pixelated. So its really good for less than photo realistic effects but you need to use it wisely or it really will drown out any moments that need to be done subtley.  So … how do you color it up without losing detail and without making it… blah?   Color correction gel.  What’s that?

Simple – the way you’d get a similar effect is to use Andrew Kramer’s free AE plugin – the Colored Gel Effect.  It takes a bit of getting used to and tweaking to get just the look you want – but the results are awesome.  If you look at the detail of the trees – they keep that very soft pine needle blur, and when they move in their own way they’re very … cabin on the lake.  I was tempted to play around with a mask or two on the barn down there – but decided to leave it be – basking in the golden sun.    You know they say that Lighting sets the mood for a shot quicker than anything – faster than sounds, faster than anything in the shot.  So play around with some color, have some fun with it.  I will.