get organic… reuse.. recycle… and get viral

No… this isn’t about being environmentally conscious – although that is a good idea. 

Everyone remember my buddy Shelly?  She’s got a small video thing going – and from time to time she hits me up for ideas.  This time its a small Halloween Zombie flick and she’s been having problems getting a good clip of a virus growing out of control.  So I ask her to get online and I share my desktop so I can see what’s she’s been doing.

Let’s go over what she’s tried so far… clips of blood cells floating and even going disease ridden.  Good – but they look a bit too much like the same clips of blood cells floating by you see all the time – and very… 1960’s Fantastic Voyage – not really able to build any tension when you see them – because you expect Raquel Welch to float by in scuba gear any second.  Then… there’s Clips of viruses from CDC and other places …which… looked a bit too much like something from a High School Health Class once again – about all the menace of well… virus videos from health class.  She tired zooming in to make the virus grow, adding filters, colorizing – all kinds of stuff and it just didn’t get the menacing look she wanted.

We talked about it – and I pointed out maybe what she needed was just a good animation of an organic texture that grows.  We started out with … and yes she told me I was nuts… a fireball. 

Now, why a fireball?  Because they have this lovely growing and snarling growth pattern.  There’s something incredibly feral about fire – so we started with a fire.  We opened after effects – and we added a solid, then added the fireball footage I had, and used that as a texture on this lovely blood red solid.  So that the texture grows incredibly fast in all it’s firely furry. 

Now – when you make fire a texture you get this very 2 dimensional flat almost sandstone look… and at this point Shelly’s pretty much decided I’ve lost any touch I ever had… and here’s the 50,000 dollar tip for the day about making a slick organic from a texture.  The glass filter. ‘)

Glass filter has this wonderful ability to smooth and add a sheen to the texture.  Makes it very blood / liquid like.  Now she sees what we’re up to…  organic looks are really all about this very uneven growth pattern that looks – controlled.  Flames do that very well – as do water – even explosions – heck try several things and play around with it you’d be surprised at the results. 

Now – here’s the full sequence for those who want to try this… I used a flame – but you can choose any video clip you want.  I’m totally about playing around with different clips and see what kind of weirdness you get.

1) Video Clip (Fireball)
2) AE Solid > Color it how you like.
3) Texture the Solid with the Video Clip.
4) Apply the Glass filter to the Solid.
5) Apply Color Correction > Curves and adjust to your taste.  (Higher contrast gives a lot of drama)
6) Apply Text and other filters of your choice…. enjoy.

As you can see this gets you a very nice organic look – like flesh growing out of control.

In this case – I added a very simple timer and slapped the name of the virus for text, then added a video camera look to it using scan lines… and as the virus grows out of control we flare the light, adjust the focus with a blur, and eventually – even drop glass shattering like it’s broken the slide it’s under from growth.   An effect that I always loved – going back to old 1960’s movies like… the Fantastic Voyage… okay it’s hokey but it’s fun – and as long as it’s very short it works.  As with almost everything here – this is a project that will take about an hour of your time, it’s quick, and its from nothing but reused / recycled footage – which I’ve preached the glories of several times.  (Always keep your old stuff – even if it’s not useful for the project because you never know what it’s good for!!  )

Here’s the final:

 

 

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Something wicked this way….

Portal Tranisiton Demo

had someone ask me why they hadn’t seen me do anything with video or actually “post” anything but writings and musings in a while – and rest assured I will post more stuff very soon – so here’s the beginnings of some of the effects for a side project I’m working on. 

This is a bit of the standard glowing warping portal – and this is the pt 1 version – before all the toys have been added so to speak. 

It’s really only 4 layers – 2 particle layers that have had turbulent displacement applied, one which has a shine effect applied to generate the white/wispy/glowy globlets – the other uses the turbulent to give it the liquid look.  In this version – it’s appearing before it’s cover effect so you can see that early on in the shot.   If I didn’t have a cover effect coming – I’d probably drop in a gradual progression so that it kind of fades in – possibly even with a dissolve like Star Trek transporter type look to bring it in gradually.

Just for reference – I’ll probably be using a variant on that as a cover effect – or perhaps a ground pounding blast – hard to say – I want to see what I can bring out of the image and I’ll know more.  Since I’m dealing with a relatively bright natural light shot it makes it more difficult to sell effects.  Go too much – and they get cartoonish – go too little and they lack impact or look cheesy.  It’s a hard balance in unforgiving light values.  The upside to doing effects with natural light is of course that they also can help you sell the effect. 

In this case, I’ve duped the video layer with Haakon and I – created a nice matte, and then applied turbulent displacement to that, and by varying the opacity and using an expression to handle that layers turbulent displacement – we use the natural light to help sell the effect by warping whatever comes into the “field” of the portal.   Notice how we’ve got that nice ‘”pop bottle glass” warping illusion as I enter the portal?  That’s all that is. 

In fact all of the effects work on this clip here was done in about 30 minutes or so – using some footage I had been playing around with of just Haakon and I on the drive in front of the house.  To remove the shadow of me as I enter the portal (yes my shadow warps and fades out too) was nothing more than using a gradient alpha on the photoshop’d still frame I used to cover me up.  I use another photoshop element here – and you can see the momentary bump – to freeze Haakon and hide me walking back to the camera.

Mind you the finished version of this will not use this footage.  In fact, the finished version of this effect will most likely be stored as an object I can reuse for a variety of effects – but the finished version of the demo here will be completely different footage.  The effect – I’ll be able to basically drag and drop on to footage and use when i need a portal or something along those lines and I’ll keep repeating that until I see it happen. 

All joking aside – I realized that much of the video effects I’ve done I can reuse on other footage so I’m trying to create a small library of good effects that can be reused and this is one of them.  I’ll get them posted when I’m done so people can play with them if they like.

why are you shooting? what’s your story? who cares?

You do.  But before you can answer why you’re shooting… or even what’s your story… or who cares you have to know the answer to these questions or you’re wasting your time and everyone elses.

When I was in film school, I had a great instructor who gave me the best bit of advice about how to make a good film that everyone would see.  Now, granted the value of advice changes over the years – and this was eons ago when 80’s hair was well… it was the 80’s we all had 80’s hair… so it was a while ago… but the value of this single bit of advice has not diminished even a drop.

Bill Neff, gods of cinema bless his twisted soul, said to me, “If you want to tell a great story that everyone wants to see over and over again.  You go out and you make a great story that everyone wants to see over and over again.  It’s that hard and it’s that simple but that’s how classics are made.”.

It’s simple, it’s obvious, it’s down right zen… and like all of those things it’s so incredibly true that it’s pure genius.  So – how do you do that?  How do you tell a story that everyone wants to see over and over again?  Where does it come from?

I actually asked him that very question and this is the advice he gave me – which I pass along to you – and you hopefully, will take with you and pass along to others.  He said, “What kind of a story would you want to see?  Ask yourself that – and then ask if what you’re shooting is good enough that you’d want to see it.”.

Once again, simple, obvious, and the kind of thing we all over look.  The kind of thing we all take for granted and ignore because, like velcro, like duct tape, like anything thats so obvious that you can’t live without it… It’s something you have to do to understand why you need it, and then you can’t live without it.  Once you begin the process of creating a great story that a lot of people want to see you can see the benefits of it.  Until then process and procedure just seems like a lot of extra work – and you just want your idea – your story to get made.  There’s where the mistake is made by people.

Over and over and over again – on youtube, on google videos, on hulu, on almost everywhere on the internet there are literally hundreds of thousands of videos now… and only a handful are actually worth the time it takes to watch them.  Most of them are made because someone had “a cool idea”, but they had nothing else.  Others are all but unwatchable not because the story is bad but the visuals and the script don’t have anything to do with the story and the audience just goes “Huh???”. 

Even more suck because the characters are about as appealing as a block of wood… or the direction just doesn’t click… or… well there’s a lot of reasons but the bottom line is the world isn’t benefiting from those movies being made and the chances anyone really wants to see it … are really low. 

It’s also why some movies … are very small, very low budget, very simple cast, very simple crew… and very very good.  (See http://www.yellowlightsmovie.com – shot on $500… and damn good.)

So why is it that there’s 2,220 movies about cats on www.youtube.com and the rare little flick like www.yellowlights.com?  Because those who just grab a camera and shoot something that was ‘cool’ or they thought’d be ‘awesome’ or a ‘good idea’.  These people knew everything about those 30 seconds that you saw that were interesting… and nothing about the other 3 minutes, 10 minutes, 45 minutes or 90 minutes of the film they made.

Bottom line… they didn’t know their movie – didn’t know their story.

On the left – is a collection of the top 10 Videos from YouTube.com – 2008.  Odds are a couple of these you’ll remember.  Most you won’t – in fact it’s telling that several no longer even have their Youtube links active now, and it’s already 2009.  

To say ANY of these have a story is … really stretching it.  None of them are noteworthy and none of them will you remember (except maybe Achmed the Terrorist… and only because of the screaming tagline “I KEEEEL YOU”). 

Point being here – yah these were all popular in 2008.  But for the most part no one will remember any of these in the future, and aside from the 3-4 weeks they were each popular – no one remembers them now.

And aside from becoming parodies of themselves… they generally speaking aren’t remembered except for their 5 minutes of fame.  Now – a lot of people are writing columns right now about how to make one of the viral videos and what does it take to make a viral video… and the truth is – about 30 seconds, a ton of luck a camera and you have a great viral video.

But… on the other hand… if you have a great story – if you shoot a great movie – then it’s going to go viral on it’s own and that won’t take luck.  It’ll just take some hard work.

So if you want a good – sorry – a great story… Then… you have to examine the why you are shooting what you are shooting.  We have to ask ourselves why are we shooting it?  Is this something that’s interesting enough to catch our attention and hold it – and if it’s not then ask yourself why it’s not.

They say every story is worth telling.  So look at your story and figure out why it’s worth telling.

Now – open up a copy of Celtx or your preferred word processor or just grab a notebook and write down what makes your story worth telling.

  Write it down in a very clear, concise sentence so that when you need you can look at that – and you know why your story is worth telling.  The purpose of this is to write the vision statement of your film.  What’s a vision statement?  A vision statement is just that, what your vision of the story is in a single statement.  It doesn’t have to be wordy, or lengthy, or witty.  It just has to be something as simple as “This is a story about a boy and a girl.”, or “This is scary tale of one man in a bar.”, or “The story of my kids at the beach.”.

Now, you can begin to write out the story.  Start with a simple framework of what you see in your mind as it happens step by step.  Make it a simple outline and then keep moving on.  The goal here is to work in layers – like a painting – you put a layer of story down.  Nice and simple.  First the order of events – then the smaller details – then the characterizations.  And at each turn ask yourself if what you’re putting into your story fits in with that statement.  Is the funny bit about the guy who drops his hot dog in the sand a part of your story about your kids at the beach?  If not – then set that aside and put it in another story.  Keep your story clean – keep your vision clear – and stay focused on the story you’re trying to create.

Next… play through your story in your head.  What parts of the story really hold your interest?  What parts of it make that vision statement – and your elevator pitch -  become true?  What’s an Elevator pitch you ask?

Well that’s your story – if you were to tell it to someone in the time it takes to ride an elevator.  Imagine you only have 30 seconds to sum the story up… well that’s your elevator pitch.   Often, your elevator pitch and your vision statement are going to sound almost identical you’ll find.   But the Elevator pitch is how you’d sell the idea to someone else, so feel free to add in the most important “sales” points to sell the story to people.  Just remember – it’s got to be short and sweet.

Now – the next step if you’re really into your story is to take the story you’ve written and start putting down not just as words – but visually.  Take each scene, break down the visual elements, add notes, details, thoughts – as I mentioned Celtx is really great for this, and it’s free.  

Even if it wasn’t free – of all the software I’ve seen or used for writing scripts, plays, movies, even comics – Celtx is probably the best I’ve seen, and it’s certainly the best at being able to build, rebuild, add layer after layer until you have a completed story – script – storyboards – you name it.  Just because you’re not an artist doesn’t mean that you can find pictures, images, and other visual media that can bring your story to life better and in ways that can help you share that story to others and – even yourself. 

You’ll often find the process of building each layer of the story makes you closer to the story.  Makes it more real to you.  Unfortunately as you get closer to the story you may find yourself becoming so familiar with the story you forget things, or you just “assume” things about the story, and even find yourself tacking more and more on to the story. 

Which is why at each step you drag out that vision statement and you ask yourself – does this add to my story?  What’s missing from my story?  Is this still a story I want to tell?  If I don’t why not?  What would make it a story I want to tell – and does that match up with the story I have envisioned?

At the end of the day, it’s all about your vision.  It’s all about your story.

Doing a lot for very little…

Just when you thought it was safe… I drag you back into cXML validation! Hey – put down the torture devices…. it’s not what you think!  Remember a few posts back – we built a quicky validation tool?

Well had someone ask if I actually use that, and the truth is – no I don’t.  The actual tool that I use is the one shown here.  But all of this began as something very similar to the code you saw here.  There’s a lot more exception handling – and slew of features added into it since we / I use this for all kinds of cool eCommerce tests around work.  

As you can see the initial purpose of the tool remains the same, which is to validate cXML documents.  With this I can load the documents into the tool – and using any of the pre-populated addresses – it is capable of process an actual file, which is to say round tripping where we begin with the PunchOut set up request and go all the way through the Purchase Order (OrderRequest) and even the POOM (PunchOutOrderMessage).

It was built completely on the free VB Express system from Microsoft so it cost literally nothing to build.  Were I to sell this – I’d probably charge around $500 to $1200 depending on the added features I’ve put in there and people would I have no doubt pay that for it.  (I know because I’ve been offered that much for it).  So there’s no reason that with a bit of ingenuity someone looking to really add to their portfolio or even just make a few dollars can’t do this. Which is kind of the point to the exercises that I put up here. 

With the economy currently in shambles for the tech industry there’s a lot of things you can do for very little cash that can reap some good rewards.   You don’t have to spend $$$ or have a lot of start up cash, software or hardware.  What you need is to sit down and say, “What tools need to be built?”, “What do I need to do my job better?”. 

There is always a better mousetrap out there – and even if your budget is nil – all it takes is some very basic coding skills to make something that you, your department, your boss really needs.

Thats the root of it really using your skills to their best advantage.  If you happen to make a really great whatever so much the better.  And you’ll note I don’t use some exotic code – I use the very basic, very simple Visual Studio Express and a bit of code here and there to really  create a tool I need for my job.  This one was built because we didn’t have any test tools like this where I work.  Once again – you see a need – you build a tool.  The more you build the more indispensable you become.  Don’t wait for your job to out pace you  … out pace the job.  Create things.  Get messy.  Have fun.  It’s when we do this that we stand out from the crowd and get noticed.

Just some food for thought… take care until next week.

great website designs … for free

Haven’t spoken much on building just your basic website in a while and I thought I’d share a few quick and easy tips on what you can do for next to nothing.

Went out on www.mineeds.com and found myself someone looking for a new website – and I have to be honest the prices being quoted to this guy were pretty off the wall.  Granted, he wanted a shopping cart with a 50,000 song catalog… but I have to say $4,500 is a pretty steep bid (since the shopping cart does most of the heavy lifting and he’s already picked one out).

Had to ask myself – if I were starting a business could I really afford that?  Probably not.  What I’d be looking for is something a bit cheaper… like FREE.  Now most people don’t have the ability to do free – but many web builders can work a lot on prices to help small businesses by using a free template, a bit of ingenuity and a decent eye.

Here – on the left is what our guy started with.  Which… is pretty barren, and looks a bit retro-web 1990.  They want obviously a very upbeat pro-site – and those are not cheap.  But I figured I’d see what I could do with FREE just for fun.

(BTW – definitely check out the site here in a bit when the catalog is up sounds like they have got some good stuff there.)

I went to a number of free template sites – and finally found one or two that actually were free.  (Which is rare these days it seems – but that’s another rant for another day.)

Now, after some perusing I selected two free templates in PSD format that didn’t look half bad for something that said “Youth, Fun, Hot, Music” to me.  The author is listed as http://www.free-templates-download.com/?id=25 and you can get this one there.  It’s not bad – there’s a kind of music DJ flavor and it’s a clean tech design – menu on the left – company name at the top – and we can use this page to replicate all the other pages we need.  All in all it’s not a bad choice. 

Which is what you want to look for in templates – something that you can replicate for each of the pages, that allows room for catalogs and shopping carts in the center where it catches the eye – and with a nice big logo to get you that branding that every business needs.

It is however … for all it’s hip attempts… about as bland as vanilla ice cream with the cold blues solid colors and grays and and sharp edges and we need to change that.  We need hotter – we need louder – and we need something that says using the site will make you cool.  So for that we need to do a bit of Emmeril on it and do a Salsa BAM!! to it…. when we do… we get the page on the left here.

Really all we did was bring it into Photoshop, do a bit of playing with the color overlays, give them a nice readable logo… and suddenly we have something cooking there.  Duplicate a few of the image layers – give them a standard gradient overlay, set that to a color burn.  Do a corona flare on the girl – a bit of beveling to a layer with the DJ… and we have a bit of a smoking site design from nothing that cost us nothing.  (Which… I would recommend that everyone read the “nothing” and “free” carefully these days.  Just grabbing a template does not make you the owner necessarily.  ALWAYS read the fine print!)

Now… off the same website I found… this design which is very very dark skateboarder.  But… for some reason I saw something different.  I saw not the dark moody gray and black but a very fluid motion between the skateboarder and the tendrils above him that said, “Hey this catches an eye” but it needs to say “HOTTER” and “LOUDER”.  Which in some ways … is a shame because it’s such a nice simple design.  So … I did my best to make it loud and fun.

  And this is what I got.  I got flowing glowing tendrils of the night and flames coming off a glowing logo as a raving dancer dives into the heat of a party.  

Okay… that’s the schpeil I’d use to sell it – but the truth is the same design as above with a bit of “BAM” and you’ve got something recycled into a very cool look.  All of which – is essentially free, just takes a bit of elbow grease to unlock the look into something very unique.  Which is important.

Just grabbing a free template which has a decent design for a small business isn’t enough.  If the design is even half way good someone else has it.  You need to take it and make it your own.  How?  Simple.  Do what I did.  Don’t look at the design from “What can I make out of this?” but “What can I make this INTO?”  – basically what can I create from this that isn’t there.  Well – I figured music – I figured party – I figured South Beach – hot nights, good times, and smoking good toons.  Thats what they need.

The catalog is the easy part.  It’s just something displayed on a page.  The hard part is knowing what the page needs to say or do or look like to really sell.  It’s the difference between the 1990’s retro-web page with the simple text and links … and really hot links that sell items.

 

 

it’s not my dog…

years ago… in a bygone era… there was a comedy medium called “vaudeville”.  People performed short skits on stage and made people laugh. 

One of the more famous bits out there was a skit where a small boy and a large dog are standing on a street corner.  A guy comes walking up to the kid and says, “Hey kid does your dog bite?” and the kid says “No sir.  My dog’s the nicest dog in the world.”.  The guy reaches down to pet the dog and it all but rips his arm off.  The guy yells at the kid, “Hey Kid I thought you said your dog didn’t bite!!” and the kid says, “Yeah – but that ain’t my dog!”.

As with all comedy – there are valuable lessons to be learned here.  The first is obvious.  Never assume anything.  Just because a dog sits next to someone doesn’t make it their dog.   (Don’t accept responsibility for an event beyond your control.)  Lesson two… don’t blame someone else for your assumptions.  It’s not the kids fault.  Yelling at them because you assumed something does not make you less dumb.  It just makes you loud… and still wrong.

Lesson three is that just because a dog stands next to you – you don’t have to make it your dog.  A responsible person in fact, does not accept responsibility for the actions of dog standing next to them – and they don’t accept responsibility for the actions of people who assume things just because they’re in proximity to the mistake that’s been made.

Now, you can say the kid was misleading – but he wasn’t.  The man asked a direct question, the boy gave a direct answer, and the out come was a near disaster.  Is it the boys fault for answering a mans question?  No – because the man never asked probably the most important question in that situation.  “Is that your dog?”. 

We all make mistakes and we all make assumptions.  The quickest way to avoid both is very simply to know what is our actual situation.  Where are we.  What we’re doing.  And what is going on around us.  There’s a tendency for us all to become jaded as we get older and assume that when we enter situations we’ve been in before that we have all the information. 

Boy with dog = boy owns dog = boy knows about dog. 

But that’s not always the case.  We need to begin to start accepting we don’t know it all.  That what we see isn’t always the case, and to question the obvious whenever possible.    In the mean time – begin with something small… learn to say “It’s not my dog.”.

things that help pay bills…

I had a couple calls this weekened from friends who are going through some rough spots.  Naturally we talked about things to bring in a little extra money.  Now one thing that always happens when people go through rough times is there is this tendency to not think about what resources they do have.

For example – a few months back I did a blog about how to do set-extensions.  A video set extension is a relatively simple illusion used on almost every TV show.  If the look isn’t right – the buildings wrong – the sky’s too this … you need a castle next door – you do a set extension.  It’s basically like doing a photo-shop for video.  Here’s an example…

I took a few seconds of video of my backyard – actually the back arena area.  A few seconds on Flickr – and boom – we’ve got Skyscrapers. 

Which – if you’re looking to add a few dollars to your pocket and have the skills – is a pretty simple trick. 

Go out – find some “Future Home” of signs, do some video of those locations.  If possible get some good images of the proposed site with buildings on it… offer your services to help sell their sites.  Show off your presentation skills. 

Believe it or not – this is the sort of work which can bring in a good $50 – $150 a month for very little work.  Include PhotoShop files as well as video in case they don’t have it.  The idea is to allow them to sell better.  Realators, Construction Companies, Architectural firms – all have a need for this kind of service.

Naturally, no promises but yeah, I do know that this sort of thing does help pay the bills.  So there’s my tip for this month – - and for everyone hoping I’d do a update on the cXML work I’m doing … I promise – that is coming.  But I’ve had a lot on my plate so – have had to work at … well, work. 

all burned up…

Okay… so had a few minutes this weekend and my son had asked about how the demons do their warps in the tv series “Charmed”. Ironically enough … Andrew Kramer had on his blog this week a bit that’s very much like the old “staked” flame away from Buffy and Angel.  So this is my way of giving and unabashed plug to Andrew and his site… and I would be really evil – if I didn’t mention he’s got all kinds of updated video tools you can buy there. 

Anyway – after a bit of telling my son that these effects weren’t as hard as you might imagine led to me grabbing some old video footage… And here’s a couple examples I did in After Effects to show him how easy these effects are to do.  Very fun – and surprisingly easy – they just take time.  My only complaint is I really need to break down and get a better quality camera because it’s sad when the CG work has better quality than the original footage. 

Now – admittedly the warping / warbling warp in on this is largely to cover the fact I was too lazy to go out and shoot any new footage so I took a bit of garbage footage lying around and used that as a quickie bit for the burn effect.

A better copy of the burn – is below.  Here I’m using a simple image of a penny and you can really see how the right media really makes the effect. 

So… let’s get down to how the effect layers out – and that is really the secret to making it work, a lot of layers each one over lapping the other. Now this is explained a whole lot better in one of Andrew Kramer’s tutorials and since I don’t do tutorials – and Andrew Does I’m going to refer you to him here. 

The only real twists I’m adding to this is – I don’t use any pre-comp’d smoke which he does, and I’ve simplified this up a bit so we’re not using several layers that he is.  Remember I’m doing this for just a very quick effect on some very grainy footage and Andrew’s outputting HD level.   For a lot of work (web for example) this is good enough and it’s very quick. 

So – we take a simple comp shot of just the woods – and another shot of me walking in these same woods.  If you have a green screen you can do this very quick – but if you’re just using raw footage it won’t take long for you to matte the woods out – and then overlay these shots.

Now – we apply the layered burn effect which is really just a combination of linear radiant’s on a texture – that is then applied with color.  As this transitions across the layer it causes it to glow.

The next set of layers uses a similar radiant and glow effect on a texture – that we’ve boosted to a point where it’s pretty much a very jagged linear ramp that as we transition this across – gives the effect of it erasing or burning away what is below. 

We add over this a layer of smoke and some particles that pass over it. You can see that we need to do this on a very semi-transparency to the overlapping layers that are placed over the footage.  But that’s really how easy this effect is to pull off.  It’s not complicated – it’s just a bit of repeating the same effect with slight variations one over the top of the other, and then applying them in a set order.

Once again – you can get a great detailed video tutorial on this over at Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot.net site who is pretty much the definitive guy for any After Effects effect.  Any of us who do anything with video from your basic beginner to long time pros can learn a lot from him – so even if you’ve never used AE that’s the place to go if you want to learn these effects.

Make some color happen…

I’m taking a breather from the next installment of eCommerce talk.  Not that discussing the glories of PunchOut catalogs and on line supplier services isn’t hoot – but I needed to add a little color so I

grabbed a bit of video I had lying around and I did just that.  If you take a gander at the clip here ther’s a couple tricks that are pretty easy to create some very dramatic and colorful footage out of well, kind of drab footage. 

The clip here has the original footage, first – just a simple few seconds of the back yard around the house here on a typical Seattlish late afternoon.  Meaning – it’s overcast and dark.   And that’s not a bad thing – in fact the nice thing about it always being overcast here is that it’s easy to light a video shot, and you seldom ever have to worry about over exposing the shot.  But life isn’t always about various shades of grey.  Now, the original footage isn’t all that bad – there is some color there.  But as you can see its a bit washed out.  So one of the first fun things you can do to boost the color is to replace the sky entirely.  So I did – I spent a few minutes out there on Flickr and got a very nice flaming red sunset. 

¹Fun tip for Video and Design:

Which … btw – is under a creative commons license that allows it to be used.  Flickr has a very nice feature that allows you to do a search for works that are under the Creative Commons – so keep that in mind.  It’s under the Advanced Search settings – scroll to the bottom of the search options and check the boxes for Creative Commons reuse policies.  You can even have it search for stuff that you can use commercially – which – is pretty cool.  (Be even cooler if you could download actual video instead of flash videos – but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.)

Anyway, like I said, I got on on Flickr and looked around for a very very dramatic flaming red sky since I really wanted to give the shot a vibrant dramatic boost.  Now the trick to doing this with a shot that’s very effective and very quick is not to roto-scope all the frames but to do a color matte.  What’s a color matte? It’s really simple to do in After Effects and it’s very useful.  First things first – is to duplicate the shot, and then desaturate it completely.  Then hit the levels and totally boost the sky so it’s got a really almost black and white look.  Then, last but not least bring in a good luma key.  Drop the photo in behind it so it shows through the key – and wallah – you have a very dramatic sunset.  Now, you may have noticed that it’s ALL black where it’s not colored sunset… so drop a mask across the area you want to show at the bottom and pin to that the original footage.  Do a little color correction on it and you have the very dramatic scene you see here.  (A little more work and we could get the little color spots out of the edging – but this was done very quickly  – even still its very dramatic.  Got a nice vibe to it and the colors’ literally scream at you. 

What it is not however … is particularly realistic.  And the downside of this technique is that you really make the fine details get blocky and pixelated. So its really good for less than photo realistic effects but you need to use it wisely or it really will drown out any moments that need to be done subtley.  So … how do you color it up without losing detail and without making it… blah?   Color correction gel.  What’s that?

Simple – the way you’d get a similar effect is to use Andrew Kramer’s free AE plugin – the Colored Gel Effect.  It takes a bit of getting used to and tweaking to get just the look you want – but the results are awesome.  If you look at the detail of the trees – they keep that very soft pine needle blur, and when they move in their own way they’re very … cabin on the lake.  I was tempted to play around with a mask or two on the barn down there – but decided to leave it be – basking in the golden sun.    You know they say that Lighting sets the mood for a shot quicker than anything – faster than sounds, faster than anything in the shot.  So play around with some color, have some fun with it.  I will.

The joys of being a POSR

Nope… not a mis-spelling – that’s POSR, as in Punch Out Setup Request.  As part of this current set of postings on cXML and the magic that is eCommerce that’s the subject dujuor.  The totally awesome and completely cool … POSR.

Now, a POSR is probably the single most important part of the eCommerce step by step.  It’s what authenticates and allows and online catalog to be sent to you. 

Here’s what one looks like  courtesy of www.cxml.org…

The first section of a POSR handles the Doctype and how to handle the document…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE cXML SYSTEM "http://xml.cXML.org/schemas/cXML/1.2.020/cXML.dtd">
<cXML payloadID=1233444@ariba.com   timestamp="2000-03-12T18:39:09-08:00">

Now the grey line up there has the doctype and you can put all kinds of good things in there but what I’m showing here is the most important part – the DTD.  With this badboy you can write an app that will allow you to validate all your cXML and make sure it works, using some very simple XML routines and a few free tools available on the web. 

TIP:
You can – also find xml validators that can read the DTD – but many will choke on this line.  XML Notepad for example is designed for pretty much XML only and not cXML, and will choke.  The same thing goes for some browser based viewers.  If that’s all you’ve got to view xml – remove this line and you’ll find it’ll load the file fine.

Anyway, you can use the DTD to learn a lot about what’s wrong with any cXML that you’re given (or that you create) by validating it against the DTD.  So if you’re not – do so.  It’ll save you weeks of headaches.  This is especially true if you’re dealing with SAP or some of the Oracle solutions out there that like to write their own versions of cXML, or worse let you output in any fashion you want without telling you there are rules to how cXML is processed. 

<cXML DTD and  Consultant Rant Begins Here>
I would say 80% of the work I’m currently doing is on telling people how to validate their cXML, and fighting with people who tell me, “But we work successfully with dozens of vendors doing it this way…”.  That may be the case – but cXML has rules, and it doesn’t matter how anyone else works – if you’re outputting to cXML you follow it’s rules or you pay.

The reward for following the rules is that if you do have a valid document – cXML is as stable as a rock, and your cXML will process like cannonball from a cannon.  So it is worth the effort to do it right, even if your “consultant” tells you it’s not necessary.  (Clue – if your “expert” tells you it’s not necessary to follow a standard… slap them.  They either don’t know how to follow the standard, have been told by a software application advertisement it’s not necessary, or something but the bottom line is – they don’t know.  I’ve seen a rash of “consultants” who claim this standard or that standard isn’t needed.  It usually is – and the only reason why they don’t or they won’t use the recommended DTD standard is that they assume what they’ve been told by articles or others who are not familiar with them, that a DTD is basically the same thing as an XSD schema.  

They hold many things in common, and often have a degree of interchangeability – but there is a reason why a DTD and an XSD exist and we don’t just use one or the other.  The subtle nuances in how they work allow them to perform different degrees of use for different types of uses.  For cXML the DTD is the model you need to be using, and one of the reasons is that certain required fields within the cXML DTD file enforce rules needed to make cXML work efficiently and correctly.  When consultants try to slip around these rules, or try to get loose with the rules – it may work fine on their local system, but when they try to connect to anyone else, it becomes costly and time consuming.
</End Rant>

Before move on, it’s important to point out one thing in the DTD.  DTDs are versioned.  Each version has it’s own requirements and rules.  If you find that you’re not validating – check the version which you’re validating against – it does make often a very big difference.  You can read more about each of the versions, and get copies of them at www.cxml.org.

So… let’s get back to the POSR.  What this does is it handles the hand shaking between the customer who is “Punching Out” to the vendor who has the catalog of goods that they will punch out to us.  Now the concept of the “PunchOut” is very simple.  A customer may have a massive catalog of items, but we don’t want all of them, or we may have rules regarding certain items in the catalog.  (Joe the Janitor probably isn’t allowed to buy the same things that Victor the V.P. does at a company.)   This can be controlled by the catalog that is “punched out” to the customer.  And all of this – begins with the POSR, where we authenticate not just the company but often the employee at the company who is requesting access to the catalog. 

This is done at the header of the POSR.  Here’s what a header looks like:

<Header>
        <From>
            <!– Supplier’s identity –>
            <Credential domain="NetworkID">
              <Identity lastchangedTimestamp="2000-03-12T18:39:09-08:00">AN01333333333</Identity>
            </Credential>
        </From>
        <To>
            <!– BCE’s identity –>
            <Credential domain="NetworkID">
                <Identity>AN01222222222</Identity>
            </Credential>
        </To>
        <Sender>
            <Credential domain="AribaNetworkUserId">
                <Identity>admin@ariba.com</Identity>
                <SharedSecret>bce’s shared secret with AN</SharedSecret>
            </Credential>
            <UserAgent>Ariba Network v20</UserAgent>
        </Sender>
    </Header>

The area you need to pay closest attention to is the one that reads “AribaNetworkUserId”, which I’m going to break from things here and point out that cXML is a standard developed by Ariba, and so – you’re going to see a lot of cheerleading for them in it.  But you will probably have to change this for some eCommerce companies who… ahem… have competing products.  But what you should never deviate from – is the use of a ID and SharedSecret.  These will generally be supplied to you – from the vendor doing the punchout.  These are the most important part of the punchout.  Without them… you won’t authenticate, you won’t get a catalog and you will most definitely not pass go and collect $200.

Now if you’re familiar with earlier versions of cXML you’ll note that up in the Suppliers Identity – there’s a lastChangedTimestamp and you may not have seen that before.  The truth is cXML (even with all those DTD rules) is very flexible.  And you can actually put in your own Identities in this section so if your internal cXML processor needs other names to identify it – go to it.  I’ve actually seen cXML where there were up to 15 Identities here.  So long as the Identity that you and your vendor have agreed upon is in here amongst the others you can get pretty creative and this is a good place for you as an organization to make use of multiple identities.

The next part of a good punchout setup request is … the request itself.   It contains a cookie, and if you have to do debugging something really handy… the BrowserFormPost.  If you can locate this you can discover exactly here it originated from – and often this can help with network an connectivity issue resolution.  So – keep track of that. 

<Request>
    <ProviderSetupRequest>
        <OriginatorCookie>c546794949</OriginatorCookie>
        <BrowserFormPost>
             <URL>http://service.ariba.com/returntome</URL>
        </BrowserFormPost>
        <Followup>
             <URL>http://service.ariba.com/laterUpdates</URL>
        </Followup>
        <SelectedService>BCE.Edi</SelectedService>
        <Extrinsic name="user">
           <Identity>user234</Identity>
        </Extrinsic>
        <Extrinsic name="url">
           <URL>http://service.ariba.com/anotherurl</URL>
        </Extrinsic>
    </ProviderSetupRequest>
</Request>

Also up in there… are the extrinsics.  Now I’ll let you in on a secret.  Most of the stuff you see up there?  Look up in the DTD – you’ll find a lot of it is not required.  Remember that rant on DTDs I had up above?  The DTD – will tell you exactly what fields are required and which fields are optional for cXML.  Now, some vendors may have rules over and above those – but the DTD is core.  It speaks – the world listens.  So – check to see what you need and what you don’t need. A good rule of thumb for efficient processing is that if you don’t need to be sending  it – don’t.  All that does is make the systems on the vendor’s end have to read through it and figure out if it’s needed or not.

Put into a cXML document only those things you absolutely need for the best performance. 

And that leaves us to the last part about the POSR… the closing tag. 

</cXML>

I won’t go into a rant over tags here – but I will say that a well formed document with complete tags is essential.  Don’t get sloppy.  cXML is not forgiving when it comes to tags.  It’s not chopped HTML where an unclosed tag will let it slide through.  It may work on your system – but validate, validate, validate. 

Get a tool which handles DTD validations, or roll your own.  Either way – validate your stuff.  If you use a tool like SAP or Oracle, find out how to get your output – even if you have to get it from the server logs and validate that.  Make sure the application you’re using actually does churn out valid cXML if you’re sending it to a vendor.  The time you save on that one chore – may save you weeks of arguing back and forth which of you has the problem.  Don’t just assume your cXML output is good – KNOW it’s good because with the flexibility in some tools that I’ve mentioned it will actually let you create very bad cXML that no one can run no matter how forgiving their system is.

Well this is a larger post than I meant – but I’ve been behind on my postings… so seemed I should make up for it here.  Next we’ll look at the PunchOutSetupResponse (the return to the POSR) – the OrderRequest and the POOM.  (Yeah, yeah… I can tell you’re all shaking with anticipation.)

See you next week.