Author: Anthony Pearson

Tranquility Wifi

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Nothing excites me more than that feeling of realisation that you can do something and it’s much simpler than you think. One such things I discovered last night. Using my phone’s 3G to connect my iPad online. And what’s more it’s wireless. My humble Galaxy Ace has under tether settings, something called Mobile AP, which believe it or not doesn’t stand for Anthony Pearson. Actually it stands for Access Point and it turns your phone into a mini wifi hotspot. I can even connect my walkman to it!

20120515-204527.jpgTo prove it’s use, I am doing this entry at my local pub on my iPad, which only has wifi. The 3G access is from my phone. And here is a picture of my food. I did want to test it somewhere more remote like the top of Primrose Hill but it has been chucking it down all day.

This post was also done using the official WordPress app which I also have on my Android phone. I know what you’re thinking….why not just do the post from my phone. But all this typing would have much more fiddley. The app is great for posts and pages, but not so good for anything else like media management, CSS and plugins etc…

Uli Meyer Studios

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Today I had the privilege of being given a personal tour round the animation studios of Uli Meyer, a local based artist here in Camden Town. He has worked with big animation companies such as Warner Brothers, Touchstone, Disney & Universal to name a few. But it is his collaborative work with the late Ronald Searle, creator of the infamous St. Trinians School, that appears not only to be a personal highlight of his career, but a heavy influence on it.

His studio (for an artist) is incredibly tidy and organised but there is no doubt who rules the office. The characters themselves! Sketches, models, huge ink drawings all portraying the most fantastic clan of animals, ghouls, misfits and eccentrics both good and evil. Each character, like Night At The Museum, is frozen still by the arrival of us real people, but when the office lights are out, I imagine they run riot like Gremlins.

The studio is large and certain areas dedicate themselves to specific tasks – video editing, modelling, computer graphics and sketch room. The hallway serves as a gallery and hung on the stairs is a picture I’ve seen before. I’m here to purchase it and am relieved that it’s not been snapped up before my arrival today. The picture shows a tramp finding a discarded heart in the dustbins. In the background a silhouette at the window is heavily quaffing a bottle of wine. Though there is no title on the frame, Uli’s eyes light up when he tells me the title. “It’s called Trashed“. The picture is part of a series of similarly themed pictures, by Uli, based on the universal theme of love. Other pictures from the series are also in the hallway and all feature a bright red heart, the only colour in these great ink drawings.

Do check out his blog which shows some of his amazing artwork, some completed, some in various stages of evolution! Now I can’t wait for the building works in my flat to complete so I can take this, my first ever piece of purchased art, home to hang on my wall.

 

Time Flies!

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Anyone who doesn’t know, my flat is undergoing extensive repairs since a flood last November… and yes, it’s STILL going on. So I’ve been quite preoccupied with that on what feels like a full-time basis. I’ve also been doing lots of web-design favours for friends. So what I’m saying is basically it’s been a while since I last blogged. But before you get the violin out…no don’t… there have been some exciting stuff going on too. Like I’ve purchased a Zoom H4N for sound recording…more experiments from that anon…stay tuned viewers. Also a NAS drive, more or less my very own 3TB cloud, though it’s video streaming leaves a lot to be desired thanks to Seagates badly designed app. However, I’m not disheartened as knowing the geek community it won’t be long before someone releases a better one than Seagates miserable effort.

Anyhoo, here’s a video clip. Pretty basic….

…except that that was originally just a photo!

The flies are created using the png on the left with a particle system, whilst the clouds are used moving masking and a simple skew. Skew is better than simply moving the cloud layer as it allows the clouds at the top (and therefore nearer) to move quicker than the clouds at the bottom (the ones further away nearer the horizon) A simple technique yet very effective. Considered adding a lens flare but thought it might be overkill. Sometimes simple is best.

Pre-production photo shoot

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Had a marvellous few days in Eastbourne. Fought off the temptation to spend my time at tea dances and instead headed off across the South Downs taking in Beachy Head and a fab National Trust hamlet called Birling Gap which, for me, is the nearest thing in real life to Wits End I’ve seen so far.
The Downs were excellent, though you are reminded of it’s links with suicide (3rd highest suicide rate in the world). I met one of the chaplains, a group of volunteers who patrol that spot looking for lonely quiet individuals and offering to chat! Thought it best not to mention Wits End!
Now it’s back to the drawing board as I try and use the footage and photos I’ve taken to augment the project.

2011 – More than a dream!

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I have been working hard, honest. The thing about pre-production and/or learning anything new is that at the end of the day, you don’t really have anything to show for it. Well, I thought I’d change that and have edited a quick montage of all tester clips and stuff generally marked on my hard-drives as “CANDELETE” – that’s all files that I create just to experiment and test an effect or process that I’ve just learnt. Other than that, the clip is usually redundant. After all, when am I going to need a tube train on the New York subway, unless they script a film called “The Taking of Balham 123”)
That is until now, where, before the files ARE deleted or permanently archived in that warehouse where the Arc of the Covenant also lives, they can have pride of place in this montage. Enjoy.

Latest from Wits End

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Pre-production on the Twilight project has now taken half a year and may take another year or so at this rate. It’s slow but I’m learning so much. However, I am going to have to take some shortcuts, especially with the drawing, which ain’t necessarily a bad thing. Have found a new website called http://www.archive3d.net/ which has a huge repository of models and shapes which will help me in leaps and bounds. And they’re all royalty free and free to use commercially, which means I can use and adapt them for the set in my film.

Thanks to this I have made excellent progress drawing the managers office in the Twilight (complete with rehearsal piano). I had already made great progress with the auditorium and stage (including the Wits End Mighty Wurlitzer), Mrs Kepelwicks Village Store, The Severed Arms and the front gates. I still have corridors, fire-escapes and the main entrance/box-office to do and no doubt other bits and pieces which I won’t go into now. Once that’s all finished there will be fine touching, painting and compositing to do, not to mention experimenting with the greenscreen and finding the look and feel of the film before I return to the script.

Looking forward to watching the LIVE show of The Twilight Ballrooms  – I will be there on 7th August. Good luck to all those involved. The image of the exterior of the Ballrooms (above) wot I drew, appears on the poster of the live show! Yay!

On a downside, I’ve decided to loose the URL www.alifeofbrian.co.uk which finishes today. But don’t despair Brian fans (either of you) as the film will still be viewable on this site!

New dates for The Twilight Ballrooms (LIVE)

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Whilst the movie project is called The Twilight Ballrooms, there is also a LIVE show with the same name. This is also written by me but is completely different storyline from the film which is set in 1980. The LIVE show is set in present day and is presented by the Ballrooms’ resident magicians Malcolm Marvelle – Master of Mystery and the lovely Rita! Other characters include The Butler James and The Roger McGuffin Holiday Dancers.

Originally called “Malcolm Marvelle Master Of Mystery and the lovely Rita”, it will be at the Curtains Up Theatre, Barons Court for the first fortnight of August 2011 at 8:30pm. More information including links to buy tickets can be found at www.falseimpressions.co.uk – The show which features live magic is produced by Richard Leigh.

Here is just some of the show’s posters that are appearing around the pub theatre.

Vanishing Point

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Experimented today with something called “Vanishing Point”. There is much you can do with this Photoshop filter which helps you edit a 2d photo in a 3d environment. One of the cool things is when you export it to After Effects. (Check out this tutorial from Andrew Kramer) By moving the virtual camera in the import you get this. If edited right it can look like a perfect faked dolly/crane shot. This one is just rough, but remember, the original is just a flat 2D photo. Can’t wait to try some more test out.

If anyone can…..

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Today was a bit of a Red Letter Day for Tranquility Base Presents in general. After months of research and general umming and erring, I finally bought a new video camera. However, no ordinary camera. You maybe surprised to learn that I actually bought a DSLR – something that I’ve seen other enthusiasts do of late, even though I will primarily be using it for video filming. Yes, I chose the Canon 550d or if you live in the States, aka The Rebel T2i!

A Rebel T2i without a cause

So why a DSLR. Well, for the same price as it’s camcorder equivalent, you get more manual control over important aspects such as exposure and focus, not to mention great depth of field. For the Twilight project I needed a camera that would respond well to greenscreen so exposure control was a plus. And don’t forget the ability to swap lenses too allowing extra features such as wide angle shots, great, detailed close ups, zoom without digital zoom pixelling and heaps more which I will, no doubt, discover as I learn to use it! All that and a great selection of formats to record video in – NTSC & PAL in 24p,25p,30p,50p and 60p, from standard to Full HD. Indeed, by most accounts and reviews on the Internet, Canon is the best for Video on DSLR. Just look at the numerous examples on YouTube and you’ll see why – others just aren’t good enough. And why have almost good when you want Red One perfect….well almost!

Everyone will have different needs when it comes to filming. I found this old post last January on the brilliant Video Co-Pilot website. Read it if you’d like a well written summary of your options.

There are naturally downsides – it’s polycarbonate body makes it a little vulnerable to any accident that may happen as well as susceptible to weather if used outdoors. But hey, that’s nothing when you consider its potential – and that’s precisely what I want to consider in the next month or so. No doubt, loads of demos and experiments heading this blogs way…. so bite me or humour me! Either way get ready, the Twilight Ballrooms is coming!

The Devil’s in the detail

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Have completed this 3d model as part of the local village store. The sweet wrapper images were a real bonus and are courtesy of Jason Liebig from Flickr! Many thanks Jason.

The actual model may well end up as a blur in the background, but that would still be the case if I were dressing a real set. At least this way I don’t have to Flambar everything!

Panarup!

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So the last few weeks have been a mixture of different Twilight related projects. Lots of 3d drawing, notably the top of the Twilight tower which has now been added to the Ballrooms. I have also been designing numerous posters from the Twilight’s history. I did something similar to decorate the set when we took the Twilight’s live show to Edinburgh in ’06.  However, these new ones are far more superior, even if I do blow my own trumpet. The new posters not only appear in the film but are also needed for the new live show this August 2011. Indeed much of the current pre-production is dictated by Richard Leigh’s deadlines for set building for this show. It’s been great fun thinking up old variety act names (“The Wimple Sisters – There’s Nun like’em”). It’s also started making the Twilight come alive.
Today, to try something completely different, I’ve been working on manipulating 2d images to make a 3d aerial pan. Here is the result of my experiment. (Very rough, you can even see the edges of each photo, but you get the general idea)

Great tip – if you use the advanced search bar in Flickr you can choose pics that have a Creative Commons License, some even for commercial use! (IF IN DOUBT – ALWAYS ASK THE OWNER). Some of the pics in these shots were CCL but I hope to use original shots once I get my new DSLR. More of that anon!

Ray of Light (uncompleted)

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Found this little gem from the Tranquility Base Archive. Kylie Vilcins plays “Adelaide” in the rather weird monologue shot around the same time as Starmaker (in which she can also be heard singing “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts”) Although uncompleted, there is something appealing about the character. She reminds me of an Australian Kristen Schaal.

Softbox lighting

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2 x 5500K 85W 5000lm pure white daylight bulb

Bought 2x85W softbox lights and stands to use with my green screen from Amazon. There is a slight problem with fluorescent flicker but at the moment I’m putting that down to having a cheapo camera. It’s not too much of a problem at the moment anyhow as you can see in this demo below. The only faff at the moment is having to assemble and then dismantle all the equipment  – you do need a lot of space for green screening, particularly because you don’t want shadow hitting the green, nor do you want green reflected onto the subject. Things should get a little easier once I get a camera with a wide angle lens, something my current cheapo camera lacks.

This clip marks my first official visit to Wits End where the film is set. As you can see, service at the pub is not great!

Old clips

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Well, I have finally purchased dedicated web-space for this website and have spent most of the week moving files. Like any move you find items that you’d completely forgotten about. Here is one example, a trailer I did from 2006, to the Star Trek theme. Reminds me of the projects that were hot at the time!

My how times have changed, as this next clip will no doubt demonstrate too. It was skit that was part of a genuine campaign back at the 2005 general election (hence the crappy dry speech at the end). The music is original too. They say a week is a long time in politics. 6 years is a veritable lifetime ago!

Greyscale Gorilla & C4 Cafe

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“I am the gorilla!”

A blog worthy of mention, Greyscale Gorilla This one covers all my favourite subjects on Post Production, namely After Effects, Cinema 4d, Photoshop and others. Some great video tutorials (video tutorials are always the best) and a competition called the 5 Second Project which is very entertaining, check out the superb entries, inspiring stuff. All this done by a fella called Nick Campbell (he is the gorilla) from Chicago, USA. Nice one Nick!

As I explore the demo of Cinema 4d even more, I have subscribed to c4dcafe.com – who have some excellent tutorials too.  However it took me 3 attempts to get my subscription accepted, (you can’t view anything until you have subscribed which is annoying) and once you’ve completed their rather interrogative questionnaire, they hint heavily for donations. I hope some day they take a leaf out of other sites more accessible walk-in setups and deal with their funding issues by advertising or selling their own products, such as my favourite site Video Copilot or indeed Greyscale Gorilla! Another brownie point for them!

Draft complete

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Well, the Twilight script has now completed it’s first draft and is being re-written and tweaked as we speak. Am now exploring the feasibility of various things I would like to achieve in the film and that may take several months. I feel it is vital to tackle however – it will determine not only what I can achieve in the film but may very well determine the whole look and feel of the film.

My plans are to take the computer graphics a step further and make my set from them. It is after all much cheaper than building a set, and you can be more adventurous too as you’re not limited to space and budget. My first efforts in that direction this past fortnight has been drawing the local pub where some of the films scenes take place.

And here is the first draft…no doubt it’ll change a lot down the line.

You can see already that the whole thing isn’t going to look naturalistic, there is inevitably a drawn theme to it. But that’s no bad thing. My thoughts are for doing a similar thing to the characters.

The difficulty will be getting the actors inserted into the set. Will post my tests on this blog later no doubt.  Also, graphics like this takes a while to render (so have had to order more RAM – which may take 2 months to arrive, no thanks to Apple) And there is so much more I have to learn about rendering with decent light (Global Illumination, Caustics and Ambient Occlusion to name just a few) Oh, so much to do! I’m in Geek heaven again!

In the meantime, if anyone wants to give me money to buy a good camera (£700-£1,400) or some decent lighting lamps (£300) feel free. Cos I’m skint! (More on my search for those later in this blog too)

Photoshop tutorials

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This year I hope to be able to incorporate mattes into my videos, especially with the Twilight project. For this I realise I will need to swot up on Photoshop and what it can do. There are plenty of good sites such as psdtut+ which I’ve mentioned before on this blog. Here is another. Nothing sells a tutorials site to me more than some great examples of what can be achieved and to this end, this site will not disappoint. Time to get practising.

If you’ve got any more great suggestions for good PS tutorial sites, share them here.

New domain

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An impulse find led me to purchasing the domain www.actormusician.co.uk

Not really got any use for it at the moment other than I thought it was a bargain for £6. Just got it pointing to the music part of this website for the time being.

My dream URL of course would be www.tranquilitybase.com or tranquilitybase.co.uk – neither of which are in current use by their owners. Am trying to get in touch with aforementioned – fingers crossed they get back and say yes, that would make my decade!

Blink and you’ll miss it

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There was a picture of me on the telly tonight. My girlfriend spotted the blink and you’ll miss it moment. It was on BBC2 doc celebrating 25 years of Les Miserable with Matt Lucas. There was a peripheral mention of “Oliver!” and up came this pic!

Me as Oliver and David Garlick as The Artful Dodger

It was odd as I’d never ever seen this pic before! Even more weird to think this was 27 years ago! Check out the big radio mic on the Artful Dodger! This pic was taken at the Palace Manchester as the show was there before transferring to the Aldwych for a Christmas run in 1983. I remember this day as one of my favourite days ever. I travelled with my father (I was 10) and it was the first time I had ever flown on a plane or stayed in a hotel.

…and the lovely Rita!

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Richard Leigh’s production of the live show wot I wrote “The Twilight Ballrooms” had a successful run at Jermyn Street last month and there is more to come in 2011. Michelle Roberts who plays what’s left of the “Roger McGuffin Holiday Dancers” took some great photos. These will be appearing on the Twilight Ballrooms website in due course. Meanwhile I was able to use one of the photos to create this demo poster.

 

Blowin in the Wind

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Had a little learn and play with the Daylight System in 3ds-Max today. Made a little weathervane from scratch to render in it that I imagine would probably sit well aloft the Twilight Ballrooms main tower. Maybe we’ll see this shot again someday in such a context, though hopefully less plain looking (Come on, I quit Art when I was 12 years old. That’s what happens when your homework is pointlessly sticking bits of dry pasta to cardboard!)

And I’m excited about seeing Gareth Edwards movie Monsters soon. Saw an interview with him on the Culture Show the other day. The guy is doing exactly what I want to be doing (if only I had the money). He’s living the dream! And I want his big flat screen TV too. From what I’ve seen he’s really committed to the immense amount of work that is involved whilst coming up with some very imaginative stuff – though I’m pretty sure it’ll look low budget compared to my attempt here at a weathervane. Now they ARE scary!

Red Giant Software

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Not only a great selection of post-production software and add-ons, the website also has a great selection of videos and tutorials on how to get the best out of these products. From Grading software with fabulous presets, to lens flares, text effects (including the ubiquitous Matrix generator), vintage effects, state of the art video noise reduction, ray effects, keying software, oh to name just a few!
But Red Giant’s “Pièce de Résistance” is its Trapcode Collection of particle generators, most notably “Particular”. This effect comes in many forms and categories and Red Giant have been wise to subdivide its possibilities into various different versions of software. Also worthy of mention, and one of my personal favourites, was “Psunami” which is a sea generator like no other. Incredibly realistic, you can also have huge control over its environment including camera angles giving you the power to make some amazing effects which would only otherwise be possible shooting from a helicopter. In can take a while to render but its still significantly faster than doing it on 3d modelling software, and the wire mesh preview gives almost realtime rendering which is ideal.
So check out the website, the software, Red Giant TV and give their demos a try. It’s not so much whether you’ll buy something because you will, but more that you find the perfect solution from its vast array of offerings.

Movie Poster Font

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Give your movie poster a touch of class by using that font Hollywood uses on the base of all of its posters.
Download it free from www.abstractfonts.com
The small credits “Directed By, Written By, Produced By” etc… are all achieved using one lowercase letter shortcuts. There are also extras like DVD and Caption logos and much more. It couldn’t be simpler. Great stuff.

Mailchimp

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Get visitors to your site to subscribe to your mailing list.

This is a great and FREE site. Mailchimp is the answer to your mailing list needs. It can help you set up a variety of forms such as mailing lists or questionairres; it’ll help you customise these forms with your own design and provide the code for embedding it in your own site; non-coders can get a link to their own page created especially for their form; it  protects you against spam and webbot attacks and allows visitors to your site to subscribe/unsubscribe safely.It will let you plan email campaigns, filters results from your database and…..oh everything! OK, if you’ve a serious amount of subscribers and mailout every week, you’ll probably have to pay a premium to upgrade your service, but the limits for free customers are very generous and if you’re just starting out with mail management, then you can’t go wrong registering with this site. There are even plenty of tutorials and prompt boxes to help you along.

Everything on HOLD!

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And I mean everything.

Had to dismantle all my equipment to deal with a burst radiator pipe in the wall. Dust and debris everywhere. And during the repair process, the face of Christ appeared in the wall, presumably in time for the Pope’s visit later this month. Shame its been plastered up. If I had charged pilgrims to see it, it could have helped to the cost of its repair.

Luck of the Welsh!

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Working very hard on a few things. Have been redesigning Richard Leigh’s False Impressions website and still, yes still, been working on the the new Twilight site. I’m very pleased with how its turned out and can’t wait to show it off, hopefully next month. And have purchased www.actorcv.com

All in all a busy month. Even been to Paris.

And I’ve also written a song for welsh acting legend David Garland Jones. (Video produced by Jon Tregenna)

Check out some of his clips on YouTube.

Adobe launches CS5

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If you’re wondering why this could be good news then you probably have no reason to be on this website. It’s fantastic news. Actually, it’s better than that.Yes, for nerds like myself we will spend the next few months playing with the various demos which are free to download off Adobe’s site – And if anyone out there would like to sponsor me the £3000 odd to buy it, then get in touch!

But it’s more than just playing around with gimmicks. Adobe, like their jilted lover Apple, have shown a tendency not only to predict the future but to shape it too. What they say, generally goes. And by watching all the free programmes on Adobe TV and privately produced videos on YouTube, you can get a sense of where all this is internet stuff is going; what trends will last and what seems to be dying. Useful stuff to be savvy with.

Sad news.

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Christopher Cazenove on location with “Kane & Abel” in France, 1985

Christpoher Cazenove passed away last month. I was priviledged to have worked with him, albeit 25 years ago on the American TV miniseries “Kane & Abel”. I featured the clip in last Octobers blog (click here to see) This clip contains a small scene when the Abel family, en route to the church to baptise the new found infant, bump into his character, the Baron. Cazenove shot the close up takes on top of a step ladder rather than a horse and I remember being impressed by this simple trick of filming. Our scenes were filmed at the Château d’Ussé, France

Stop press…

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Richard Leigh has persuaded “Malcolm Marvelle – Master of Mystery and the lovely Rita” to return to Jermyn Street Theatre this November 2010. Ticket information will soon be available on their website.
It’s a show not to be missed. But don’t just take my word for it. Click the video here to get a brief glimpse of what others have thought of past shows in the “Twilight Ballrooms Guestbook”

Creative Cow

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What this site hasn’t got for the serious movie maker isn’t worth knowing. It certainly has a comprehensive collection of external tutorials covering a wide array of categories, including many Adobe products, specific camera equipment and the main 3d modelling programs. And when you’re on a tea break have an explore of the rest of the site too. The showreels people have submitted are awesome and inspiring, there’s a jobs board, excellent resource and links to some other fab sites.

Visit www.creativecow.net

Free CG software – Blender

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Have you ever wanted to create your own CGI graphics but thought it out of your price range and ability? Think again. Ever heard of Blender? What?! It’s been round for years, c’mon! Check out the website. Basically, its open source software which means its free to download and use. And like most open source software (OSS) many people use it. Which means theres quite an established community online who forum and discuss its problems and potential. So if you get stuck on something, chances are there are many before you who have had similar problems too. And those people have often found the solution you require and have posted it on a forum. Good huh! And there are numerous free tutorials, repositories, libraries, textures, links etc…Download it now at www.blender.org

For good YouTube tutorials on Blender basics, I would recommend Super3Boy’s tutorials. Okay, he does sound like a young teenager and throughout his 30 odd tutorials his voice breaks, but the guy is good and tells you what you need to know with some fun, easy to follow examples to get you going.

Dream House!

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In the mid-nineties, central Europe was gripped by the biggest thing in music since Michael Cretu’s “Enigma” stormed the charts in 1990. Swiss-born Robert Miles released “Children” – a style of music that would later become known as Dreamhouse/Trance. It was to be played in clubs and caverns all over Europe for the next 35 years and would later prove popular with fitness instructors, DIY superstores and speeding motorists.

I would now like to present “La Twilight Serenissima” – my own humble tribute to this, often deliberately forgotten, genre of music. This track was originally intended to be a cheesy underscore for a magic trick.

Happy New Year!

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Have started learning the basics of 3ds Max and there’s still the new look Blender 2.5 Alpha version to learn. I’m in geek heaven.

Production is currently underway also for another episode of Insomnia due in the Spring. I think its the best one yet and will be the first one in WideScreen.

Widescreen is going to be more common on this website. And HD!

Site of the Year – Video Copilot

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Video FX guru Andrew Kramer and his team run this website that sells their own VFX products and After Effects plugins including Action Essentials 2, ProScores, Twitter, Optical Flares, Riot Gear and more. These are very professional looking products at a snip of a price that you’d expect to pay elsewhere. But it is not just these that makes this site my Number 1 choice for any creative artist starting out on their own. It is the 100+ online tutorials by Kramer that are…free to watch! Kramers enthusiasm and passion for the subject is infectious. If the software, the tutorials or his positive personality don’t inspire you then I’m sorry for your loss. And it is your loss! Don’t be a loser. Visit www.videocopilot.net and buy their products! Now!

Mr Rock n Remix

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This clip shows my recent experiment with a Vocoder. It basically takes an input such a vocal wave and sends it through the modulator of a synthesiser. Then when you play a chord on the synth, the input can be heard mixed with the chord that your playing on the synth. On a monotone level it can produce a robotic sound. Speak live through the mic/modulator input and you can get that robot to say anything.

It works very well with chords too as you’ll see here. I’ve used Lynsey Parkin’s sampled vocals that were used on Mr DeJa Vu which feature in Episode 3 of Insomnia.

The first part demonstrates (albeit not very subtle) how you an use this to thicken vocals. In the second part of this tune, you can see I’ve changed the chords away from the original tune altogether and it still works.
And here’s another experiment, a remix of the remix of the….

If you’ve not yet watched Insomnia – Episode 3 then this is the original