Friday, April 29, 2011 Collaborative 3D Video Project Update 4/11 – Jordan, Mexico and South Africa onboard for Principal Photography

I just want to fill you in on some of the developments in the C3DV project that grew out of the ICCN annual conference recently in Los Angeles. The movie deal capital of the western world lent the project a little of its aura and we were able to take some big steps forward, most notably during a read through of the first draft of the completed script in a very speedy, informal session in the Biltmore hotel's lobby. Among those sitting in for the reading were Freedom Reign, from the Clubhouse in Hayward, CA and Suha Syouf and Saif Atari from one of the Clubhouses in Jordan, in the Middle East. Freedom discussed ways that his Clubhouse could develop much of the CGI needs of the project and Suha and Saif jumped in to take on much of the principal, live action, 3D videography. The script, originally written in English and Spanish (the Spanish scenes already pegged for shooting in Mexico City with the members of Alejandro Jiménez's Clubhouse) will now be shot in Arabic and Spanish and subtitled to accommodate members and audiences in various languages. Skype meetings are already in the works to begin the process of reconceptualizing the English language scenes for their new setting and any issues of cultural relevance. Following the reading we looked at imagery online of the areas around the Clubhouses in Jordan for suitable location settings. It looks to be an exciting transformation for the characters and setting of (formerly) Mike and Lee, and their CGI pet dog, now more likely a rabbit.

Part of the entusiasm for the shift to filming in Jordan was instigated by inadvertently seeing a video that Saif and Suha presented of a large, metal camera jib that one of their Clubhouse members had developed (video below). The idea of the 2 cameras mounted on the jib, shooting in 3D as they swept through space, was too exciting to ignore and we instantly found ourselves talking about the possibility of working together on this project. Before the conference had ended, the small camera package was passed on to Saif and the two Samsungs are probably already mounted on the jib as I write this. We'll post some test imagery of that as soon as it comes in. Alejandro has also purchased two Kodak cameras, similar to the Samsung cameras that went off to Jordan, so that his Clubhouse will be able to start shooting their scenes fairly soon.

And I can't leave out mention of the fortiutious discovery of some beautifully drawn work by members of Paballo Diboke's Clubhouse in Soweto, South Africa. These drawings sparked a conversation with him about filming some of the 2D scenes of the artist creating the characters as depicted in the script of first being introduced as a series of drawings that are eventually transformed into full, 3D, live action charaters. Paballo readily agreed to work with his members to draw and shoot the scenes needed for this portion of video. Skhumbuzo Ngobese, Coordinator of the Clubhouse in Etwatwa, also in South Africa, offered to help out with this part of the project.

Also, while at the conference, we held a panel discussion on the state of 3diy.blogspot.com and it's plans for the future and as a clearing house for information on the ongoing C3DV project. Many people have used the blog for the various demos, many unrelated to C3DV, and we hope to be able to continue posting fun 3D project demos and ideas going forward. So stay tuned. It will also continue to serve as the project page for C3DV as filming is about to get underway on 3 continents.

Lastly, the first draft of the script was completed with the members of Jeff Sweeton's Clubhouse outside of Chicago, IL. Members at Clubhouses in Utah, New York City and Bogota, Colombia all pitched in on the writing of the script. Jeff Sweeton pulled this whole aspect of the project together over several months. Without that effort this whole post would probably be about a cool camera jib video I saw while wandering around at the conference, but not too much about what was being done with it.

Home made camera crane \ رافعة كاميرا - صنع منزلي from PBYRC computer clubhouse on Vimeo.

أحد أعضاء نادي الكمبيوتر, أنس, قام بصناعة رافعة للكاميرا تسخدم في تصوير الأفلام, حيث قام بإعادة استخدام بعض الأدوات المنزلية بطرثقة ابداعية

سيتم استخدام هذه الأداة في انتاج بعض افلام النادي و دعم مشاريع برنامج أصوات الشباب "أدوبي" و أفكار أخرى

انتاج 2011


One of the clubhouse members, Anas, has built a home made camera crane for using in film making, he resued old material avialble at his house in a very creative way

this tool will be used in film some videos at the clubhouse, and supporting the Adobe youth voices program and other ideas

produced 2011

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 C3DV Green Screen Test - Mexico City to NYC

C3DV Green Screen Test - Mexico City to NYC from Computer Clubhouse on Vimeo.

This is just a quick test to see how some green screen shooting done at the Clubhouse in Mexico City (the boy and girl characters on a green screen) could be composed with other footage (dog, background, sound fx) created or acquired at another location (NYC). There are some chroma key issues, lighting/shadow problems, aspect ratio differences, etc. But the main point is just the facility of working w/elements from different sources. It took about an hour to put these elements together.