Thursday, January 14, 2010

Video backdrop series, part 5: "Liar's Chair"

We're halfway there. Are you still with me? Ah, that's okay -- I'm mostly doing this for myself anyhow.

The backdrop for "Liar's Chair" attempted to with ceiling fans what "Summer Storm" did with sprinklers (it didn't quite work, however... more on that below). There are also some flashes of purplish light (sped up horizon tilts through trees at a slow shutter speed), bursts of almost unrecognizable freeway traffic rushing by, and an electrical current running through the second half (one of the few effects I used that was not captured in-camera but rather taken off the Adobe Premiere effects shelf and tweaked to look more explosive). The still frames you see here don't do the actual results justice because this backdrop is all about patterns of unrelenting motion and timing to the breakneck pace of the music.

The bummer part of this particular backdrop is that the first minute or so could barely be seen on the theater's screen. There just wasn't enough contrast in my ceiling fan footage. Add to that bright stage lights and a projector that wasn't great with subtle shading/color, and you're limited to subtle background movement when you wanted something audacious. Luckily, by the time the lightning bolt showed up, the visuals were complementing the band's energetic performance nicely. That's the section captured below.

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