A coworker a mine sent me a link to Kanye West’s “Homecoming” video and asked if I could recreate this effect and how easy is it to do. Its nothing complicated and seemed pretty easy. So I pulled open Final Cut and started hackin’ away at footage from a music video shoot here in our studio. All the footage was shot DVCPro HD on the HVX-200 against a green screen.

I keyed out the green, dropped a color matte behind the footage and applied a luma travel matte to the studio footage. This didn’t get me too far. I swapped the two tracks and applied the travel matte to the footage this time…. and Whallla! I was seeing the above track matted by the keyed footage below it. However, only the lightest areas of the footage were showing through. I changed to a alpha travel matte. While this completely matted the image based on the outline of the keyed footage, I still wasn’t getting any depth like in Kanye’s video.

Knowing that a luma travel matte working on the idea of brightness (or amount of white) in an image, I decided to add a 3-way color corrector to the studio footage. I then boosted the whites and mids most of the way up. I turned to blacks up slightly as well. Sure enough, there it was. I could throw anything on that top track, set its composite mode to “Travel Matte - Luma” and I’d have the effect. I moved both tracks to V2 and V3 and put another color matte on V1 to recreate the background.

I looked at this composition closely and realized…. I just created the iPod commercial effect. Has apple really been using a technique that was this simple. Granted when Apple does it, they have flying partials, moving cameras and a host of other elements to control, but the base effect was this? Awesome! While the effect can only properly be done by the post people working with Apple, I thought it was pretty sweet to mimic the effect in shop here.

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With the launch of MobLogic, the office needed some new equipment. And by some, I mean like a 14 boxes of stuff! My B&H dream finally come true - a crazy amount of boxes full of the best equipment. Nice! Topping the list, two new Z1Us, one HVX-200 and four, count them, four 32 GB cards. Not to mention all the audio and studio equipment. And this is about 60% of it. Theres more coming! SWEET!

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In our latest technology purchase, our shop has bought a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card for our MacPro. We’re hoping to capture off our DVR and use news footage for our shows. After deboxing the B&H shipping box, I discovered the product in a box that seemed to be way to small! I knew the PCI-Express card was small, but man, it was much smaller than expected. Inside, you will find the card, a CD and a small tri-fold quick install guide. The full 35 page manual is on the CD (way to be green!).

After carefully reading the install instruction and reading up on PCI slot choices, I popped open the MacPro and dropped the card into slot #2. Blackmagic’s site mentions that you may be prompted to adjust performance to the slots, but after powering up, I wasn’t prompted. Granted this is the only other card in the machine besides our ATI (ehh) video card.

After installing the software there wasn’t a noticeable difference in the performance of the computer, heck there wasn’t even any outward difference in starting FCP, Color or any of the other apps. However, FCP now has more easy setups, and more options under external video monitoring. I connected our 9″ Sony production monitor via the component out (NTSC out) of the card. Instantly, after setting the Video Output in FCP to Intensity NTSC, the monitor showed video. Amazing! Beyond FCP, I then became interested in if Color would also broadcast to this monitor in the same way. I fired up color, and bam! I had an external monitor for color correcting in Color! Sweet! At $350, this card was becoming a GREAT investment.

We currently don’t have a HDMI monitor in the shop, but I’m pulling for a low end small HDMI TV (about $500). Stay tuned as I will be testing the capture capabilities of this card. But if its as easy as setting up an external monitor, I’ll be highly recommending this product to anyone with a MacPro.

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“Steal this Webshow! Welcome to the first MobLogic! Mission #1: What do you want in a news & politics web show?”

Have you seen this yet? MobLogic is a revolutionary web video destination. Head on over to the site and you’ll see what I mean! They player on the front page is HUGE!! 800px wide. If you find it somewhere else on the web, I’d love to know about it. Beyond this flashy exterior the concept of the show is solid. “News and politics the way you want them;” “Of the people, for the people, by big media,” lead the list of my favorite tag lines for the site. The show is run and produced by Adam Elend and Jeff Marks of CBS, but more importantly, the producers of Wallstrip.

“With MOBLOGIC, our goal is to put the news in context and make it viral!” says Elend. “We’re gonna make you laugh, we’re hopefully gonna make you think, and most importantly, we’re gonna deliver the news in a way you can relate to.”

Check it out. It will completely change your idea of how you want your web video! I’m sure to be posting on MobLogic’s post production and approaches to producing web video. Enjoy!

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Check out this article on communicating with a colorist.

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