I’m pleased to finally share a short film that, some time ago, Director Martin Cooper and I were commissioned to make for inclusion in a project called “One Minute Mistake”. “The Appliance of Science” is what we came up with.
Somewhat of a departure from our usual documentary projects, it was a lot of fun to make. Despite my reluctance to appear onscreen! Filmed on a green screen with all the backgrounds of the ‘laboratory’ generated in Stable Diffusion (AI Image generator). The editing and compositing process, done entirely in After Effects, was a very interesting challenge.
We hope you enjoy it.
Staring – Martin Cooper, Adrian “Uchujin” Storey & Steve Gorton Director – Martin Cooper Director Of Photography, Editor & Digital Compositor – Adrian “Uchujin” Storey Hand-drawn animations – Parham Ghalamdhar Opening Title Card – Michael Knaggs Music – Ethan Uslan (Used under a CC 4.0 Licence)
So, here’s an animation I’ve been working on as part of development for a (possible) longer idea. (Best seen full screen with the sound:)
Animation is made doubly difficult for me, because despite having an artist for a father, I CANNOT draw. So, this took a while, and used a fair few photo and video references to get there, it’s also the first real character animation I’ve tried to do in this 2D style. It is A LOT of work.
New found respect for all people doing this for the movies etc.
After Effects in case you were wondering, with some audio tweaking in Audition.
It’s that time again, a self-indulgent review of my year and this is only part 1!, ostensibly for anyone reading here but basically for me to remember all the stuff that went down.
After seeing my short “Not with a bang” when he was the judge at St Neots Film Festival, Christian “Documentally” Payne hinted that he’d quite like an ident for his videos in a similar style, so seeing as it was his birthday and I hadn’t got him a card…….
You can watch the ident above and read about how I made it below :)
Christian said he wanted something “dystopian” so armed with a Sony A7SII and a CameTV Optimus gimbal I went out and shot some short clips in a deserted town center in deepest darkest England. Obviously not on a Friday night because who wants to walk around with loads of expensive gear and long hair in an English town center with all those drunk Brexit supporters, not me that’s for sure. I was looking for big signs to replace with his website address, a shot that could be anywhere and which signs I would need to replace that were parallaxing behind other things as that is a lot of extra work.
Once I had watched the footage, decided on which shot I was going to use and imported it into Premiere Pro to trim it to the correct length, the fun began. The workflow I used was similar to the process used in “Not with a bang” but thankfully less complicated, it goes like this:-
For each sign or element that needs replacing find the frame in the original video where it is at its largest and export a TIFF of that frame, making a note of the frame number.
Open it up in Photoshop and paint out unwanted elements (e.g. text) in the original sign using a combination of the clone tool, fills and adding noise to make it look as “in the scene” and natural as possible. Add in any text or images that will replace the original sign. Tweak to taste referring back to the original frame to match grain, lighting and faux-3d position.
Turn off the background layer in Photoshop and export a transparent PNG of the whole 1080p frame with just the new element and its background. Open a new After Effects composition, import the footage and the transparent PNG you just created. Marvel at how great it looks, or tweak it using curves etc until it does. Open a new Mocha Pro project and import the footage. Carefully track the sign/element you are replacing paying particular attention to the planar surface, the corners need to be accurately placed and tracked for this to be convincing. This step can get complicated if the track doesn’t want to play ball or if the element you want to track passes behind other things in the scene or if there are lots of reflections or if the scene is shot at night and the footage is grainy or……lots of other reasons. Just persevere with it, Mocha is very good at tracking (way WAY better than the native tracking in After Effects). Once you have a good track position the play head in Mocha to the frame number you took the original still from and use the “align selected surfaces” button to push the corners of the planar surface out to the corners of the 1080p frame. Hit the “Export Tracking Data” button and copy the “After Effects Corner Pin (supports motion blur)” data to the clipboard.
Hop back into after effects and paste the data onto the PNG layer (with the playhead at the beginning of the composition) Play back the composition and exclaim – 1) “oooh that looks nice” or 2) “fuck that doesn’t look right” For option one, pat yourself on the back, save the after effects project and have a nice cup of your chosen hot beverage, you need to get up and walk around now because you’ve been at staring at a screen for long enough. For option two, try to figure out why it looks shit and go back into Mocha to refine the track or Photoshop to tweak the replacement until you get to option one.
Deep vein thrombosis averted re-watch the original clip paying very close attention to any reflections that pass over your replaced element or brightness changes that occur over the clip duration. In After Effects watch your composition again and think about wether you need to add brightness/curve adjustments over time to mimic any changes you noticed occurring in the original shot. If you noticed reflections you may need to place a copy of the original footage over the top of your lovely tracked replacement and mask some areas so we can see the reflections again, it needs to look as real as possible because our brains are very fucking good at noticing when it doesn’t.
Right done all that? Now go back to the beginning and do it all again for every element you want to replace! If one of your elements passes behind another element in the scene scratch your head and think about how you are going to make that work with a combination of masked copies of the original footage or some other voodoo. If there is a reflection of something you have replaced visible in a shiny surface in your footage you are going to have to deal with that too. It will be a pain in the arse, especially if the surface it is reflecting in is curved, good luck with that.
Ok, really all done and happy? Great! Render out the final composition from After Effects as a nice high quality ProRes file. Import it back into the original Premiere Pro sequence and place it above your original footage. Add any additional effects like the old TV or RGB split ones I used in places, add an adjustment layer and colour grade to your chosen look. Add in the lovely audio track that you got sent to complete the recipe… Export to a nice internet friendly codec. Upload to Vimeo or Youtube and send your friend/client a link and revel in all the praise they heap upon you for your great (and fast) work. Go and have a well deserved beer.
Alternatively hire me to do it all for you, my rates are surprisingly reasonable.
Well…We’re here again, the end of another rotation around the sun.
This is a year I will never forget as it was the year I finally escaped Japan – after 10 years and 1 day exactly.
5 months in to my rehab/recovery and I can honestly say ….. well I could write a book on how I feel about the whole thing, but I won’t for everyone’s sake….Let’s just say, so far, it feels 99% like the right decision.
As I settle into my new life the only things I miss from that god forsaken set of islands off the coast of China are my dear friends (that was always going to be the hardest part) and natto, and I’ve found a natto supplier close by…
I’m splitting this years end of year look back into 2 pre and post Jexit (see what I did there? Topical :) posts to make them less ridiculous to read and because that’s how the year has felt.
A big thank you to the friends (new and far away) and colleagues who made it as always an interesting, productive year.
Thanks also to the clients who hired me and gave me the opportunities to work on some interesting and diverse projects and a pre-emptive thanks to all the new clients who are going to hire me in 2017 to do amazing work for them…
So settle in for part 1 of the run through of the bastard that was 2016……
January
Whilst I was hiding my scary tattooed body away from the poor easily frightened Japanese people in a private hot spring bath 2016 started the way we were soon to understand it meant to go on, with the death of David Bowie closely followed by actor Alan Rickman…
I published my collaboration video with calligrapher Nakajima Hiroyuki promoting his upcoming aptly named “LIFE” exhibition. (All shot on an iPhone 5s by the way…)
In what was to turn out to be the beginning of a great friendship I interviewed legendary calligrapher Koji Kakinuma for the documentary I’ve been DPing and producing in 2016, “Traces of the soul” about calligraphers worldwide…
The awesome talents that are Eiichi & Atsuko “Scart” Miyamoto finally (seriously Eiichi….finally!!) opened their gallery in Tsukiji and I was lucky enough to get riotously drunk with them at the opening party…
I interviewed super lovely guy and talented calligrapher Hiroyuki Nakajima for the second time, again for “Traces of the soul”…
After a shoot for his “Strangers” fashion label (All the product and look shots over on the site where shot by me) I grabbed a quick portrait of my dear friend Kevin Mullin and his writer/editor soon to be wife AnneMarie Luck…
I went to CP+ 2016 with Matt Allard from Newshooter and even ended up with my first cameo of the year in the video:)…
We published the 2nd and what turned out to be final episode of the “You’re not from ’round here” podcast this time with the awesome Anthony Davis…
Spotted a great paste-up in Shibuya alongside a new 281_Anti nuke sticker…
And I was enjoying taking pictures of the fucked up-ness of Tokyo again thanks to the low-light capabilities of my recently purchased Sony A7SII and having my hand firmly on the exit door…
Matt Allard and I also went to NAC in Tokyo to test out some $1300 Arri Sky Panels and while we were there we tested my $70 Pergear light with some interesting results…
Underworld played a secret gig in Shibuya and I was at the soundcheck and got to meet Karl & Rick…
Sometimes it snows in April, and this year it most definitely did prompting me to write my 1st (and probably last) blog post on a celebrity death…
I half killed myself trying to keep up with Koji Kakinuma on another shoot for “Traces Of The Soul”
I did the motion graphics for the new News Shooter ident which plays at the beginning of every video…
I spent several hours a day with my head in After Effects working on my short film…
I held a $20,000 paint brush at a secret shoot…
My good friend the talented and lovely Laura Liverani was in town and she had an exhibition of her Ainu photographs at a sneak peak of the Ainu documentary she is working on…
I had given up not trying to frighten people when I went out…
I was filming with Icelandic DJ/Producer Arni Krisjanson for his crowd funding campaign…
There were some interesting parties…
Most days I wanted to scream this at the top of my lungs…
There was brief respite from losing people…(obviously thats not true, but there was a brief respite in losing people who had touched me in some way)
June
I went to Bali for “Brightening horizons by paying it forward” and directed/shot & Edited a video promoting the Banyumala Jungle Waterfall Trek in Wanigiri village.
It was awesome…
I am proud to present my latest short film “Not With A Bang” (Title stolen from T.S.Elliot because I have delusions of grandeur) the result of months of work and what amounts to a final parting shot to Japan.
I advise watching it full screen on a reasonable sized monitor or it won’t make a lot of sense and you’ll miss most of it.
I’ve had the general idea for this kicking around for ages but it was only after a conversation with my good friend Sean Lotman a few months ago that the idea finally crystallized into something I thought I could attempt.
I knew roughly how to realize it but I also knew it would involve a LOT of work and the learning of some new software (Mocha for all the motion tracking) and getting much better at compositing in After Effects.
I had no idea when I started just how long it would take!
Motion tracking 30 signs into one shot and compositing them so they look like they are part of the scene and not just tacked on is a laborious process for very little pay off in some cases but I knew if I was going to do this I had to do it to as well as I possibly could.
Cue days of watching tutorials, trying things, refining them and frame by frame motion tracking. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat…….
In total it has taken more than 2 months of work…..for 3 minutes of film!
The end result isn’t technically perfect but…..in my humble opinion it’s pretty damn good. I doubt if anyone other than other motion graphics and composting people will even see most of the imperfections.
I have a new respect for the guys & girls that do it full time for a living because it makes your brain hurt and some parts of it are really fucking tedious!
That said it was a really interesting learning experience and a great way to improve my skills and for that reason alone it was worth all the time.
For the record all the statistics are from reliable sources.
Big thanks and respect to my sometimes collaborator and good friend Sean Bonner under his new alias //delay(5000); for making the music that adds an extra level to the soundscape.
Thanks also to the mystery girl (you know who you are:) who I filmed for the people disappearing shot.
So just a quick little thing I made over the past day playing around watching tutorials on After Effects. Seemed appropriate given Tokyo’s turn to winter in the last day or two.
Mostly culled from THIS epically long Lester Banks tutorial.
With a few elements of THIS Laurie Knapp water in C4D tutorial.
Plus some of my own ideas and tweaks.
Allow me to present a short music video for your delectation.
“I Love You But…” is a song I wrote and recorded more than 10 years ago and it is one of the pieces I still love most from my time as a musician. I’ve recently been frustrated by a couple of stalled documentary projects and needed to do or learn something new before I went crazy, so I’ve been studying 3D modelling software and After Effects. Anyway, the video above is the result of my meddling.
Who is the song about? Now, that would be telling………..
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Spotted a great paste-up in Shibuya alongside a new 
