Day one: It's Wednesday and my major Halloween party is on Saturday. I have many things left to finish, even though I've spent more than a month preparing already. I am determined to have this visual effect, particularly because I found the perfect location for them. But can I create the effect in less than three days? I was willing to cut some corners to meet the deadline. Originally I was going to have busts custom built with the help of another artist friend who is good with clay and plaster, etc... I ditched that concept in the last days because of the time crunch. In their place I went to a place down the street, called the Architectural Revolution, where the have for sale a large variety of plaster casts. They have a lot of busts in many different sizes and styles. I first pick out Bethoven to test it out. My test? I recorded my face with a camcorder and then lined up the image from the camcorder outputed through my cheap outdated video projector. The results were'nt bad at all, I was cracking up my roomate at least. So the next day I went to get an Elvis bust. Elvis and Bethoven? I thought it would be perfect. Unfortunately Elvis was almost more than double the size of Bethoven, which would cause more severe complications when shooting the video, also Elvis's lips were especially prevelent, an undesireable quality. If I had more time I would have shaved them down, but I found it wasn't necessary with the viewing distance I was working with. I picked out Michelangelo's David.
Day two:
the location for the busts was clearly visible, but out of the way from reach. It was perfect. I positioned the bust on two different levels and then left them alone. I installed my video projector on the ceiling of my loft space, on it's side, as this is a better aspect ratio for the layout of the busts. I would have to shoot the video with the camera on it's side as well, though. Conveniently, there is an air duct that covers the projector from easy view. Once I have my projector aimed at the two statues, and the light from it covers them well, I no longer disturb it. It's crucial that neither the projectors or the busts move from this point on.
In the evening, My friend Jay and I prepare to tape the footage, by singing the song I planned on using "fight for your right to party" by the Beastie Boys" It had two parts, so we had to figure out which of us would do each part. That was easier said than done. We set up the camera and ourselves just opposite the statues, and hooked up the camera's video out to the projector, and then proceeded to line ours faces up with the statues. After a lot of fumbling around we ended up with one of us on a low stool, and the other on a ladder. We had to brace our selves as much as possible to avoid moving our heads. It's interesting trying to be as animated as possible with only your face, not your head. We would sing along to the song from an external stereo, when we were done singing, we continued our "animation" for roughly 30 seconds to facilitate looping the video later. the footage that resulted from this is quite funny to watch if you don't know what it is to be used for. (I'm the guy on the ladder, and those are t-shirts on our heads).
Day three:
Importing the video into Final Cut Pro on the mac. Then exporting a frame of the video to Photoshop, whereas I created a mask (graphic layer to put on top of the video). I masked out all but our faces with black (no light from the projector), then created a fairly abstract white glow around our faces to create light from the projector to illuminate the whole bust, and to make the busts look as though they are lit from 2 light sources, not a video projector.
I layered the mask onto the video in Final Cut Pro and added the song track. the final video was outputed to DVD using DVD Studio Pro, and programmed to play and loop automatically in a dvd player. An added function programmed in, forced the dvd player to hold onto the last frame of video before replaying the loop, so there was never a break in the "animation". I was thrilled, and a bit shocked that I was able to pull it off. It wasn't perfect. Occasionally the footage didn't line up as perfectly as it could have, but never really off. Also the lighting was very different on my friend than it was on myself when we shot the raw footage, so it looks like the top bust has a 'tan". With more time this would have been flawless, but I still managed to entertain a few hundred people the night of the party. It was rather subtle in a good way, too. Unless you were really watching them you might have missed that they moved. It was a lot of work, but worth all of it!
want to know more? e-mail me: andora@mote.com.
