Calling on your creativity for advice

[Nicohk92]

I'm not sure where to post that question so in doubt I'post it in general since t's the most viewed. My apologies if it's not the right place.

Next month like every year I work on the same industry award event in France. there I produce a webtv for a specialized website and all week long interview actors of the industry and insiders of all sorts to give their take on the particular field this gathering is about. It's very low budget and the videos are mainly watched by the interviewee themselves, their relatives and others in this specialized field.
I usually have a couple interns use my equipment and do the interviews and I stay backstage editing around the clock (cause it's the most intensive I noticed, with over 5 videos to cut and upload each day). To speed up things and be original, a few years back we set up a kind of videomaton (not sure how it's called in English). It was pretty basic and consisted of a box to isolate the guest from the salon around and inside we just set up a projector showing powerpoint prez with slides showing questions that the guest could go through by clicking on the mouse next to him. We tried to make everything seamless as best we could, had a microphone hanging from the ceiling of the box and consumer camcorder facing the guest.

That was fun at first cause it had some novelty effect and made people smile. But after 4 years, it starts getting very redundant.

So I am being consulted for ideas. And since right now I am deep up to my neck with asp finishing another project, I'm thinking I might find some use for asp here too.

The most obvious way asp could bring something to the table would be to invent a character, sort of mascotte (stylised, not too childlike) Which could ask the questions (using the box or not). The guests too could be modeled. Of course that's what first comes to mind but it wwould be hard to implement since:

- simple intw shooting and editing takes a lot of time as it is.
- I don't have a lot of time to prepare before the event
- Papayago and lipsynching is uncharted territory to me

I'm sure you'd agree that the concept has stated above is too much work to be realistic. But there maybe shortcuts I am not aware of

Should I just move away from asp and look for a concept elsewhere for this project? Maybe some of you have ideas for an original interview format involving asp (or not).

I am completely aware that this post is in a way asking for creative input, a commodity that many are paid for.To address criticism in advance, let's just say that no-one is forced to mind this post at all. And I'm just going on the off chance that somebody has just the right idea available (either popping up right away, or inspired by past experience). I could not and would not ask of anyone to actually brainstorm, which is I agree a real job. Also if something comes to mind and you are gracious enough to share with me, you can expect my outmost gratitude, and I'll surely owe you one (I can give you credit also, but it's pretty useless)

[slowtiger]

Your main problem seems to be not the way the interview is done, but a general lack of interest forthe topic by the people. Unless you don't tackle that, any change in interviewing would be only cosmetics.

[Nicohk92]

I totally agree. But the small audience is mainly due to the very specialized area we address. We actually have among the programming an interview format that is more standard, in depth and conducted by a real journalist.

The box thing and the majority of the videos are more "gadget content". Questions are usually in the line of a "chinese portrait" and here cosmetic is perhaps as relevant as the content itself cause it gives the immediate appeal. I cannot hope for the audience to be driven to these small bits for an intellectual purpose, but rather by curiosity and fun factor.

But true, the ideal would be to have a name and authority in the field, take the stance of an opinion leader. It's happening little by little but at first we need to throw some glitters at people and grab the attention in a more basic way.

We also investigated the possiblity of live feed, twitter, reddit and a more interactive/social approach but our very poor bandwidth makes all this impossible.

[gdewizard]

You might use AS with a video editing program, I use Corel video editor. It is not too hard to use. Forget lip sinking, put the character facing away from screen so no lip movement to see. The new dials, smart bones and actions should make it easy once U get it set up once. Cobalt wizard

[jahnocli]

1) You could have people interviewed by glove puppets or marionettes (glove puppets are easier, and you could probably find some commercially produced versions that could be easily adapted for what you want). You'd need to 'ham it up' on occasions to get your point across, but that tends to be funny anyway, so could provide some humour...No lip synching involved.
2) I seem to remember some old Filmation series where the faces were drawn but the mouths were spliced in from live action footage (solves any problems associated with lip synching, but can look kinda spooky!)
3) You could use ASP's 'automatic' inbuilt lip synching. It's pretty poor, but if the content is the thing, maybe that's not important. Papagayo comes with phoneme catalogues that you could just rip off for this -- you don't have to use the program, just download it and use the content. (The program is free, so no worries about copyright).

3 ideas off the top of my head. Bon chance!

[Nicohk92]

I really appreciate the input you guys. It's a real treat to have my problem given some consideration.

Gdwizard. I'm actually an editor by trade so editing interviews is no issue and we've been doing just that for years.This year I'm just trying to divert from standard viral interviews which can't have tremendous prod value with our small means and increasingly fall flat. Having the character facing away to avoid lip synching is a good idea and I take note of it, thanks. But I think it cannot be applied as more than a time saving trick for some parts, hardly the basis of a visual concept. I appreciate the suggestion tho.

Jahnocli. These are fairly good ideas which add to my options so I'm very grateful. My only fear (and that's my fault for not being descriptive enough) is that it might be a bit over the top for some of them, border line grotesque, which could be fine for some audiences (where you suggestions would be totally valid). Here there is still some sort of professional esteem to maintain as most interviewees have egos and won't fancy being mixed up in puppet shows (But again, I wasn't clear about that and your ideas are great and give perspective)

1: I would love to do that, It'd make my job so much fun. I fear my employer has a different opinion

2) I 've seen that before. Actually, it's been used in a popular Canadian series (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xSdD5vTCw) which is hilarious to French people cause the Canadian accent sounds rather odd to our ears.I am not really sure if this is 3d or real footage for eyes and mouths, I have a big doubt now that I see it again. It is spooky for sure. And for that reason may not help the image of the people accepting to be interviewed. Great lead anyhow.

3) That's unfortunately the only realistic lead that I have been thinking about as well. Realistic if only I had enough time to devise and get acustomed to the right workflow. So not that realistic in fact as editing normal intws alone takes up most of my time during that mission.

I downloaded the demo of Crazytalk (which i heard about in this forum I believe). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXRjX5bNGKA .
The preset characters look unappealing and I doubt manipulating photos instead would be very tasteful. I still have some exploring to do there but if you have experience with this soft, I'd be interested to have your opinion.


Bottom line of my brainstorming (with your precious help), is that time constraints and tone expectations call for something simple and unpretentious. Perhaps base myself on a mascot, which is not too cartoony and childish but rather modern, slick and abstract. Has anyone seen the Spanish cartoon from the 80's I believe called la linea?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VWcqILJam4

I'm sure you'll agree this doesn't look that simple after all and it's still a bit too childish for what I seek but still gives an idea of direction.

Perhaps I should think more in terms of character design and see how my interviewees fit in whatever concept comes up. We've never used green screen in all these 5 years by the way, and it's not trouble for me from an editing point of view. There might be something to do there.

Anyway thank you so much for the feedback which broadens my perspective and provides that vital outside look. Then again, I may find something outside of the realm of asp entirely. I will update you in any case.


Merci!

[Greenlaw]

CrazyTalk is a fun novelty program but with images of real people, it can be kinda creepy. Here's a test my daughter and I made with CrazyTalk 7 a while back:



At the time, I was evaluating this tool for generating mouth shapes for our short film 'B2'. I thought the result was kinda funny but it wasn't right for our production and I wound up manually animating the mouth shapes in Magpie Pro. But if you're looking for something that's quick and easy (i.e., 'automatic'), it's worth a look. Setting up this test took only a few minutes, and then it was just a matter of feeding it audio. The behaviors seen in the test (eyes and head movements,) are fully automated but you can manually puppet them too.

G.

[Nicohk92]

Wow B2 is absolutely gorgeous. You need to take it to completion cause from the fur texture to the environment it's really jaw dropping, . I gather this is 3d right? (Maya?3dsmaxd?). It's nice to see a 3d artist doing his 2d on anime.

And yeah about crazy talk, just what I feared , I have to agree with the last sentence of the clip.

I put on my hand on a cheap little app for mac which changes a photo into a drawing look.
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/celling ... 2156?mt=12
I've tried different solutions for that in the past but here with the right settings, it's sometime pretty good (way better than what I could do on photoshop).

Perhaps a combination of the two... The one good thing about these kind of mainstream little apps, they re quick to use and don't cost too much, when quality and precision isn't a requisite of course.

Thanks for sharing

[Greenlaw]

Wow B2 is absolutely gorgeous. You need to take it to completion cause from the fur texture to the environment it's really jaw dropping, . I gather this is 3d right? (Maya?3dsmaxd?). It's nice to see a 3d artist doing his 2d on anime.

Thanks! 'B2' has been an 'off and on' project for me and Alisa (my partner in crime,) but life and work kept getting in the way of getting it done. The film has been sitting on the shelf since last May but with freelance work slowing down for the summer, were planning on picking it up where we left off and finishing it as quickly as possible. The production is 3D but created in LightWave. Most of the character animation is experimental--we were using iPi Mocap Studio with dual synchronized Kinect device to capture the motions. Here's an early test video from over a year ago showing how the system works: Sister Mocap Test. This summer we'll be experimenting with triple synchronized Kinects.

Regarding 2D with ASP, because I do 3D for work everyday, I kinda enjoy drawing and animating 2D more right now--it's sooo much easier (relatively speaking of course.) After we finish B2, I really want to make another 2D short using ASP.

Regarding the cel rendering app--that looks pretty neat. I'll have to check that out myself. Anyway, yes, you can use any image in CrazyTalk so that should work. To use CT, you simply load an image, define the shape of the head with a spline, define where the mouth and eyes are, feed it audio and the program does the rest. Basically the software is analyzing the audio and deforming your picture on the fly and it does a surprisingly good job at it. What CT does is fairly limited compared to what can be done in ASP, but it's still a pretty cool trick. I would think it would work well for a serialized interview type presentation that needs to be done quickly and cheaply. It might be fun to composite the results into live action scenarios.

Anyway, whichever method you choose, let us know how it goes.

G.