How I made a video of me talking to myself.

[gadgetguy]

Read about it and see the video here.

[Bodyslide]

Looks Good...

[gll99]

Nice job

Looks pretty realistic.

I have to find the time this winter to try something like that. Maybe some blue/green screen effects too. Looks like fun.

[lumis]

thats pretty good..

the only nitpick i have is the audio seems to be a little bit louder on the left side than the right.

[gadgetguy]

Thanks all.

lumis,
It probably is, but my focus on the audio was cadence and synch. Since I only used the built-in microphone the audio was sub-standard anyway and everything I tried to clean it up, only made it worse.

[freebird73717]

That's pretty creative!

[SLK001]

Looks good. And who IS Patty Duke!? (You look "mature" enough to remember!)

[lordsmurf]

Megadeth, Sweating Bullets "Hello me, it's me again"

[gadgetguy]

And who IS Patty Duke!? (You look "mature" enough to remember!)

My early childhood memories are dim, (5 -8 years old), but she was one of the first girls that I noticed was a girl.

[SLK001]

Yeah, I liked the cousin!

[gadgetguy]

Yeah, I liked the cousin!

Do you really think she was hotter than Patty?

[rkgibbons]

I've been playing around with this type of thing for the last year, and I've managed to create some pretty neat shots. If you have a good compositing program (like After Effects), you can get Yourself walking in front of yourself, etc. But, even without, you can do some neat stuff.

Try this:

In the first take, pour yourself a glass of milk, and then place the milk carton down on a table (still in the frame). Now, when you shoot the second take with you in the other chair, pick up the milk carton and pour a glass for yourself too. It adds a bit of interaction that is easy to accomplish, but adds tons to the realism of the scene.

[gadgetguy]

rkgibbons,
Good idea. I was thinking that what I did by accident, (having my hand overlap the pantleg on the other side) , should be done on purpose and perhaps more noticable to remove the "2-halfs" impression. But I can see where adding the milk carton, (or similar) would extend that even further.


In case it went un-noticed, I did not use any commercial software for the production of this video.

[Stormin Norman]

Thats pretty creative gadgetguy.

[FulciLives]

I always find it amazing what can be done with AviSynth scripting.

Pretty kewl video!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dphirschler]

Now wait ten years and film half of it again. Then you can talk to yourself as a "youngster".


Darryl

[gadgetguy]

Funny, I thought I left "youngster" behind a long time ago...

[Dragonsf]

Could it be done with a "Blue Screen"? Maybe one could film the scene in 3 parts: one with the person on the left, one on the right (both with the same monochrome 'blue' background) and one with any real background only.
(This could also be a still).

Use an AviSynth filter, which can mix 2 sources, such that the 2nd source is only be seen in areas, which are 'blue' in the first source.Thus the 'blue' areas are transparent. Should allow for some errors in colors, as real monochrome filiming is nearly impossible (in a consumer environment).

Just an idea. Using the proposed avisynth script is elegant anyway.

[gadgetguy]

Sure it could. It would make the lighting process easier.
Chroma-keying is the next process I want to attempt, but I don't have any green-screen material. AviSynth does have Chroma Key filters, but I haven't been able to access their site to learn the command syntax.

[Dragonsf]

Not only the lighting process, you can use any background. The colour material would be a problem.

[lordsmurf]

Do yourself a favor and make this a bit easier.

First, turn the camera on as fully manual a mode as you can. While many will auto focus, re-balance, correct exposure, etc ... it can be turned off to manual.

Second, shoot at night. Light it yourself. Go to Home Depot and pick up two mechanic's lamps. The plain metal funnel-looking thing that have a clamp on one end, and the bulb screws in funnel. Now don't use a "normal" lightbulb, those suck. Go buy yourself a "blue" lightbulb from a photo supply store. Not your local photohut crapshack, but a true professional photography store. They run about $5-10 each, get 2-4 of them. They burn out easy, so be careful (reason to get more than just two). They also get hot as hell, so be careful. I mean 2nd-3rd degree burn hot too, makes a match look like ice. Clamp them to something, and then duct tape the clamp down too so it doesn't shift around. Angle your light so you don't cast shadows.

Costs a little money, but works well.

[ozymango]

My early childhood memories are dim, (5 -8 years old), but she was one of the first girls that I noticed was a girl.

I always wondered just what it was about a hot dog that made her lose control .. ...

Great work! And first thing I noticed is you did it all with FREEWARE! Boy, how far have we come from the days of 8mm cameras and title written in felt tip!

[gadgetguy]

LordSmurf,
I wanted to set everything to manual, but the instructions for adjusting AE manually didn't seem to do anything, so I just went with it as is.
I've often wondered how those high intensity (250 or 500 watts) worklights that they use on construction sites would work. It seems they would be convenient since they have their own stand and are adjustable for height and angle. Have you, (or anyone else), tried them?

[44echo]

VERY COOL!

[lordsmurf]

LordSmurf,
I wanted to set everything to manual, but the instructions for adjusting AE manually didn't seem to do anything, so I just went with it as is.
I've often wondered how those high intensity (250 or 500 watts) worklights that they use on construction sites would work. It seems they would be convenient since they have their own stand and are adjustable for height and angle. Have you, (or anyone else), tried them?

I doubt the light is the correct temperature. But the stands would be handy. I once rigged up an extra Christmas tree pole with a mechanic's lamp and the blue bulb. VIOLA! Instant "studio" lighting.

This stuff doesn't need to be fancy, use those jerry-rigging skills.

As far as the AE controls being turned off, just keeping trying. Look up tips online for help if needed.

[Dragonsf]

The normal worklights don't work. I tried them, but they made things worse. But the stands are really handy.

[ozymango]

I wanted to set everything to manual, but the instructions for adjusting AE manually didn't seem to do anything, so I just went with it as is.
I've often wondered how those high intensity (250 or 500 watts) worklights that they use on construction sites would work. It seems they would be convenient since they have their own stand and are adjustable for height and angle. Have you, (or anyone else), tried them?

I have! Frankly they're probably overkill unless you're trying to light a gym or something like that. Also they tend to be pretty "harsh" and give you very contrasty shadow areas combined with flat detail, unless you light from a couple of different angles and then you've got so much light on the subject that it's a good way to look all sweaty very quickly. Not all that appealing.

In my experience (just videotaped a house concert a few weeks ago, it came out great), you don't need to do the full manual treatment of the camcorder -- just set your white balance manually. While you can use 3400K photoflood lights, I don't really see the need if you're working with a digital camera, you can white balance pretty much anything, with a few caveats:

1) You'll want the light in the scene to come only from your chosen light sources (e.g. your floodlamps) because it's changes in outside lighting that'll most affect your shot (like if you're using floods in a room during daylight and leave a window shade up, the changing sunlight will affect your lighting). So close all the curtains, set your lights using the same bulbs for all sources, then white balance to this.

2) 3400K photofloods (the "blue" lights at your local photo supply shop) are great for illumination but not absolutely required -- when you work with color negative or positive film you have a much more critical need to pre-set your color temperature and filters to match your film source. With a digital camcorder, again you can set the while balance to match your light source (assuming the light source is constant). I tend to prefer using plain halogen bulbs (or even some of the higher color temp fluorescent "spots") for most of my lighting (with video cameras) because it's easier and cheaper for me to carry (or find) spares on short notice. And you'll definitely burn out a bulb right when you need it most.

3) If you can set up three light sources, from different angles, you can light pretty much any room (with relative ease) and keep shadows and highlights looking good. Placement is a matter of practice and depends on the color of the wallpaper or paint, can you bounce off a white ceiling, stuff that you just have to experiment with. You can set up a fairly inexpensive lighting rig with a couple of floodlight sockets (on adjustable connectors) like the kind you find in the outside lighting section of Home Depot, and bolt or clamp that to a cheap tripod (or build your own stand out of some galvanized or PVC pipe (watch that the bulbs don't get close to PVC pipe!), depending on what you're most handy with.

4) The sensitivity of most CCD devices nowadays (even with the gain set low) allows for very nice exposures even with relatively modest lighting; I tend to go with "less" lighting just because most people don't like standing around in front of bright lights. So the more "natural" the lighting appears in person, often helps people relax in front of the camera (also bright lights can make people sweat and believe me, the camera will capture that perspiration with amazing clarity!).

5) If at all possible, discourage people from wearing white during the shoot, or any really contrasty color, it makes it much harder to get a good dynamic (visual) range -- you either have to overexpose the white shirt to get their face to look natural, or underexpose the shirt and it ends up looking gray. This also from my shoot a few weekends ago.

Hope this helps!

[gadgetguy]

Thanks all, for the info. That should help for future projects. I guess the most important thing I get out of this is that whatever the light source, you want it to be as consistant as possible, and set the white balance to it.
Of course, I can't find anything in my Cam's operating instructions about white balance, but I'll keep digging and/or experimenting 'til I get it.
Thanks again...

[ozymango]

I once rigged up an extra Christmas tree pole with a mechanic's lamp and the blue bulb. VIOLA! Instant "studio" lighting.

LordSmurf;
The mention of "blue bulb" and "Christmas tree pole" suddenly took me back to my childhood, when we'd go visit my grandparents at Christmas (early 1970's, where does the time go?) and my grampa would bring out his S8mm camera and this INCREDIBLY BRIGHT AND HOT floodlamp.

And I remember how when he turned that thing on you could feel a blast of heat from that thing as you went blind ... ... a lower-power version of that Martian death ray in the original "War of the Worlds."

But the movies sure looked good later! Of course you were working with ASA 25 movie film so you had to use 100,000 candlepower lights just to make things visible.