Alright, OK, uh huh

It has come to my attention that I have not been preparing for film making as well as I should.  You see, I need to be getting ready, writing scripts, ironing out my work cycle, and most of all, making sure my enthuisastic fellow film makers are contacted and up-to-date.  Most of all, really, I need to put God first.

So, here I am.  I plan to take a whack at – no, better, conquer – this filming delima and help solve the mystery of the ages… uh, that is, solve the problems involved in making a film.  😉

If you are dedicated to me, I will endeavor to be dedicated to you.  We work together to accomplish a common goal, a single aim, to suceed in whatever we set our mind, and hands, to.

We will conquer.

Now, let’s see what can be done this afternoon about all those film making delimas… please pray, this may be hard.

Thanks for listening,

-b

P.S. You can see some of what I have been doing from previous blogs.

Current Project: “Electronmicrograph: Simulation of Life” – Blender

My current personal project that I am working on is Electronmicrograph: Simulation of Life.  It is an image of a fictional organism as seen through an electronmicroscope.  Made in Blender, I have the option to animate the scene and create a video from it.  But that may be very operating intensive, and as good as it may turn out, I may not end up doing it, sadly.

As I am not finished with the image and I do not want copyright infringement, I will not be posting any hi-res version I have of it so far.  I will post a screenshot instead.  That way you will get to see what it looks like in the program and in the render preview.

I started this project two days ago.  The first night I created the basic model.  The next day I added more detail to the mesh, and also added the material information.  And today, I hope to work on the full scene. (Previously I had only worked on the main organism, now I plan to create an entire scene – that is, with background and some foreground.)

I need to compare my work to actual electronmicroscope photographs to see if my materials look realistic.  This is one of my best works so far.

Thanks for listening,

God bless,

-b

P.S. All images copyrighted

Testing

No films yet.  No footage edited.  But that’s OK, because “necessity is the mother of invention”, and “where there is a will there is a way”.  I will figure it out, or some other solution, precarious to others, perhaps, will present itself a necessity.

Since the camcorder saves the video files in a  .tod proprietary file format, I am not directly able to edit the footage I shoot.  But now, just as I spoke of that I remembered a video I had seen, and the concept of making films excites me greatly.

Anything of quality takes hard work.

So, we’ll see what the days ahead bring… right now, I am converting a .tod video file of Dr. Narendra Singh being interviewed (by me.)

Dr. Narendra Singh - smiling during interview

I hope to be able to edit once it is done.

There is so much I could create, so much we could share … but I only have so much time, I must, in the end, choose which way I will go; what journey I will pursue; which river I will run.

Oh, so many wonderful, fantastical things to be created!  Worlds to be known!

Please keep me, my destiny, and Minosa Films in your prayers – in the days ahead, and hopefully, always.

God bless,

Thanks for listening,

-b

P.S. Never give up

Blender green screening, VSE – and how to make your own greenscreen!

I am endeavoring to learn some of Blender’s (blender.org) VSE (Video Sequence Editor) and node compositing editor.

With the VSE you can arrange video clips and do effects, such as achieving a fade out to black (using three strips – video, gamma cross and color generator.)

Using VSE as a simple video editor may be very useful, and as it develops hopefully it will overrun such commercial monster products as Adobe Premiere Pro.  One advantage over Premiere Pro 1.0 that I have found is that Blender’s VSE accepts an .avi compression that I use, whereas Premiere Pro 1.0 doesn’t.  Besides that, Blender is completely free and open source, and is an alternative to Windows Movie Maker.  WMM can be very useful for shrinking file sizes and doing some simple editing (and you can do text effects and transitions,) but Blender’s VSE seems less dumbing.

And now about the greenscreening:

With the node compositing I am endeavoring to make a successful chroma keying – taking out a certain color, like bluescreening, also known as split screen – but it is proving quite a bit harder than I hoped. It seems (as is perfectly logical) that to have an effective keying I need very clear, pure colors to key out. Otherwise you get grays when it looks blue and your footage becomes very spotty.

Hopefully I will get some good results soon. Here’s a screenshot of my first work with chroma keying – overlaying a video on an image – not so great, but I’m learning.

Old machinery (video) on old machinery (image)

Also, doing further testing this evening, this chroma keying business may be much more difficult than I had hoped. Looking online for professional options, I found these two sites: (the first site recommended the second site.)

DIY (Do It Yourself – Bluescreens, Greenscreens, Backdrops and Background stands) Highly recommended to check out – you can find out about how to make your own greenscreen the cheap way. (not fool proof.

EEFX (green/blue screen backgrounds and backdrops(?)) Great for seeing professional quality equipement, seeing the prices, and learning about what makes their cloth special.

Hope you enjoy – looking forward to filming soon! Praise God!

-B