Peter Greenaway

At the recommendation of Bill I shall take a look at some of Perter Greenaway's work. Bill specifically recommended Dante's Inferno, formally known as "A TV Dante".


Lumiere & Company

"I do indeed think that cinema is mortal. There is a lot of evidence already that it is dying on its feet."

Peter Greenaway made a 52 second short film for the Lumiere & Company collection of short films. It relates images from the origin of the Lumiere Brothers' first camera in 1895 to the present day.




M is for Man Music Mozart - Vesalius Song




Windows

"Windows" (1974) features narration (provided by Greenaway) over four minutes of shots depicting an English countryside in which 37 residents felt compelled to commit "defenstration," i.e., falling out of windows. The first of Greenaway's lavish "fictional histories," this is a good primer for newcomers and features effective use of Jean-Philippe Rameau on the soundtrack.

Grow Plant Grow #2

Another test of the plant growing. Very little progress made.

Grow Plant Grow

I've been quite busy working on a backstory and underlying concepts for the video sequence I'm going to construct from my tests.

But I've been doing some occassional experimentation with an effect to make a plant to appear to be growing from the ground.

So here's the very first test...

High Definition Filmming may be a possibility

The other day I did some networking. Guy, who has been starring in my experiments knows a fellow by the name of Justin with a broadcast standard High Definition video camera. Justin is eager to become reaquainted with his "creative" passions so he kindly lent his services to Guy to help him with his latet film project.

Guy held a meeting with him at lunch time of Friday 13th so they could discuss Guy's project. I thought it would benefitial to come along and meet Justin - a wise decision and he seems to be an insightful and delightful chappy.

He's also expressed interest in filmming my project too which would be wonderful because the quality of MiniDV video is hurting the realism of my compositing.

A break down if the scenes involving the megalith

This is probably a few days overdue but here is a break down of the scenes involving Guy and his interaction with the megalith.


It all starts with Guy being filmmed in front of the blue screen.




So the first thing that needs to be done is key out the background, leaving this...



Now I need a background. A photo I took of a field will do nicely.



The background is added. I then adjust its colours so it matches the video of Guy and key out the background's sky.



A sky is required and since I want this scene to be set a night an image I took of the moon should work. This was originally a 10 megapixel image but it has been shrunk down to make it more transmittable over the Internet.



Now to add the sky...



Its time to add a megalith. Many years ago I found what appearans to be an Indigenous Australian knife-like tool. Its not very big, not even 10cm tall but it seems like it will make an interesting megalith.



So I took a image of the stone with a light source originating from the same direction as the light source in the picture of my field.



The megalith is added!



To make the layers seem more cohevsive and create the illusion the light source is constant, I add a volumetric filter. It also makes it look as though moonlight is shining on Guy.



And there we have it! A composited shot including the megalith! Its not perfect though, the shadow on the megalith for example probably isn't cast at the right angle but since this is only a test its something to be mindful of in the future.

Now sit back and watch the 5 second clip - this is a new edit!

Gripe about the E-Media Video Studio

The roof is much too low and therefore the lights hang much too low - ideally, the roof needs to be at twice its current height for my purposes. However, I can't really complain because there aren't better facilities available and I certainly couldn't devise something like this at home.


The problems posed by the roof at is current height is:

1) Beams of light and lens flares are easily visible in the frame and when someone is standing its a nightmare to get them within the frame without the light interfering.

2) Its difficult to make the light appear its coming from a certain direction. By this I refer to the natural light in the background plate not matching the artifical lighting in the video.

Guy parts the sky - not finished

Guy was going to part the sky like Moses parted the sea...



But time did not permit to add decent clouds. I tried but they just weren't working.