Behind the Scenes: Making Colin Fly

I thought I'd do a post to show how a special effects shot is created for the videos. It really depends on what's required as to whether I need full-on effects or not, but for the recent video for Gashapon Mini Action Maze Game, I needed quite a complex sequence.

The effect required for Colin the Robot to :

• Approach a sign (defocused, and then focused) with "Free Flying Lessons" written on it
• Walk onto a green 'track' (an enlargement of the miniature Gashapon game)
• Be seen walking on the actual game itself (As if Colin was now somehow tiny)
• A closeup of Colin with the real game seen behind him
• The hand of The Curator coming in, flicking the action lever on the game
• Seeing Colin being flipped up into the air and out of frame

Quite a lot!

So here's some screenshots and notes on how it was done:

Colin Invaders

Here's a behind the scenes photo showing the creation of the digital LCD Colin for the end of the Mini Space Invaders Cocktail Cabinet arcade machines video.

The little icon version of Colin was created by me in the style of an LCD game sprite, and then animated in Photoshop with a an added blue background. Using the Blue-screen filter in iMovie, the background to the video was then removed, and overlaid onto a closeup shot of the miniature game screen.

Shooting Colin

Here's some behind the scenes photos from the recent video for the Pocket Shot Shooting Gallery by Basic Fun.

Shown is the product as it arrived in the mail - boxed and unopened for 16 years!  I took some photos just to preserve how it looked - I know that I've probably made hardier collectors very angry, but for me these working miniatures are here to be shown working - not just a sealed package.

Also there's a shot of me making the fake game board 'alley' that was used in an effects shot for Colin to walk on as if he's miniaturised and inside the game (and yes, Im using a bread box lid as a ruler - this is a high-end production I'm running here).  All the other shots were done with blue screen.

Making tiny robot hats

Today was a weird day. spend the morning making a tiny chef's hat and apron for a robot, and then the afternoon trying to cook bacon on a miniature barbecue (only 2 inches wide)

You can watch the video to see how I faired with the latter, but as for the tiny chef hat and apron, I thought I 'd share a few photos from the day. I also had to make some little placard signs for Colin's segment of the video. Oh and some matchstick kindling bundles which totally failed to light.

The 5 Paths to Youtube Success

Being a long-time watcher of Youtube content, you see a lot of channels come and go. Some rise up quickly to become overnight successes, and others are slow burners, gradually building a following over time. Some content seems random, whilst others seem carefully curated and crafted.

So what's the secret?

Here are the observations of the 5 Paths to Youtube Success, by one of the people that helped many of the lucky ones one their way, just by watching:

1.  Celebrity
If you're already famous, getting a fan base is much easier. We have seen many Youtube channels set up by celebrities as an extension of their creativity - for example George Takei's TakeisTake or Adam & Jamie's (from Mythbusters) Tested.com (although they joined the already established Tested channel)

2. Memes
Whether it be a shocking moment captured, humour, trends, titillation or just being offensive - the right video at the right time can spread faster than any other and generate millions of views. But be warned - they're also the most difficult to maintain channel momentum. Most Meme channel only end up having a handful of videos and never recapturing that initial lucky success.

3. Skill & Talent
Showcasing a great skill or talent at something, be it physical, mental, vocal, craftsmanship or other can generate a huge following, as people seem to enjoy watching them show their stuff - but it may still take time to get high viewing figures

4. Great Presentation
Being a great presenter of content seems to be hugely important for Youtube success. Many of the biggest channels (that are not covered by any of the above) seem to do best if they are presented well by a team with: clear speaking voices, clever wit and affable personalities. Most of the top shows I've watched, regardless of content, seem to ALL comply with this point

5. Working Your Way Up
This last one is the hardest of all, as it takes a lot of work and even harder still - patience. This involves working your way up from scratch by starting with zero, trying stuff out, learning, changing, developing, listening, promoting, sharing... whatever it takes to claw yourself an audience. This can take several months or, more commonly, several years; but is by far the most rewarding to see


Personally, I have to put myself at number 5, as its early days for me and my little channel at www.youtube.com/workingminiatures - but I have great fun doing it, I'm learning with every video I produce and its really rewarding seeing the numbers steadily climbing :)

So my advice (for what its worth) is create content for yourself - make the kind of Youtube videos that you would want to watch, not what you think are trending.  Be patient, experiment, watch other videos and learn from them and slowly, (perhaps very slowly) you will start to get an audience.

And that may take time, but don't give up - for the first couple of weeks of my channel, I was pretty much the only viewer!

Also, explore the tools that Youtube have to offer - take some time to learn their admin system as there are a plenty of tools they provide to help you on your way.

And above all - enjoy it!

New Video: DOUBLE FEATURE! 2 Different Miniature Marvel Comics + Eating 33 YEAR OLD Gum!

SPECIAL DOUBLE FEATURE!! The Curator takes a look at TWO different working miniature Marvel Comic Books - one REALLY tiny one from 1966 (Mini Marvel) and another series from 1981, (Bubble Funnies) which is original and unwrapped... and STILL CONTAINS 33 YEAR OLD GUM!!

You can guess where this is leading to.  Let's hope The Curator can avoid blowing his lunch over the camera long enough to show us these two amazing Marvel comics, featuring Spider-Man, Captain America, Spider-Woman and The Hulk.

And then see what Colin the Robot gets up to when he takes a peek at the collection...

COLIN SMASH!?!?


SHARE, LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to keep the videos coming out of The Museum!



Bonus Content:

COLIN'S COMIC BOOK

Most of the time I don't have any idea what Im about to do - in real life AND in making the videos.  I just shamble along until an idea appears.

But for the Comic Books, I knew that I wanted Colin to read an adventure about himself - so this one took some pre-planning.

First I created the artwork for the comic - I did this using a cool Photoshop template that makes it really easy to lay out a simple comic book. It even has photo actions built in that turn regular photos into comic book-style artwork.

So using that, I create a cover, and 4 pages (You can view the comic in a separate post here)

Then, I printed them out on an inkjet, using gloss photo paper for the cover. Cutting them out and glueing the pages back-to-back, I then stapled it along the spine and - there we are: A suitable fake comic book, the same size as the Marvel Bubble Funnies.

It worked really well on screen - I even managed to get Colin's claw to hook onto the edge of the page for some shots. I think its the best puppetry Ive done with him so far.

I mean, he could have just done it himself, but he's immensely lazy.

Here's some shots of the construction:

And this is something I wanted to add into the video, but couldn't find a place for it. Its the original vending machine that the Marvel Minis comics would have been sold in 1966. Its the only shot of one I could find:

Colin's Comic Book

Here's the artwork for Colin's Comic book, which featured in the 2 x Marvel Mini Comic Books video. You can also learn more about how I went about making it in this post.

Video Production: Feeling a bit green

As you might imagine, I don't have a full TV production studio at my disposal making these videos - its just me, my desk, some bits of white board, some cheap LED lights my iPhone and my iMac.

For editing, I use the excellent (and excellently FREE) iMove by Apple, which for standard editing (cutting, transitions, captions etc) is really easy to use and does the job really well.

But it also has a few basic special effects feature in it, which I'm trying to make use of were I can. Nothing advanced of course - the tools are very basic, but you can do a lot with them if you use some imagination.

As an approximate indicator of the level of SFX at my fingertips, I'd say about the same level of Doctor Who in the late 1970s - early 1980s. I could so laser effects for example - but the holder of the laser gun would have to not move, or the laser beam would appear to stay in one place whilst the gun waved around it.

But another tool in iMove is Chroma Key - more commonly knows as Blue or Green Screening.

This is where you shoot something in front of a plain blue or green background, and then overlay that video over another regular piece of video (a background). Using the computer, anything blue or green is then digitally removed, leaving a masked element that appears to be part of the background video.

Using this you can get some great effects - but to get premium quality chroma key, you need a proper green or blue background and have it properly lit. If not, the masking effect can be a bit rough, and give the effect a 'cheap' or 'tacky' feel.

But as 90% of the items in my collection are retro and have that 'tacky' vibe, then this style suits me perfectly. So for the Prize-o-Matic video, I wanted to show Colin the robot seemingly trapped inside the arcade cabinet - and green screen seemed the perfect way to do this.

I bought a selection of bright blue and green card and craft foam sheets and gave it a go. I'd already shot the background video (a closeup of the miniature arcade cabinet) so all I needed was the shot of Colin flailing about.

I ended up using the craft foam sheet, as it was easy to cut, prop-up and handle during shooting.

Seen here you can see the shot before editing - in iMove you can also crop out unwanted areas (which has been a god send) so the area top right wasn't seen. Im holding both colin and the front piece of green foam sheet here.

It ended up working pretty well - in iMove you can also tighten up the green screen effect by 'erasing' an other parts that aren't being masked that well - usually a slightly different shade of the green, or a shadow.

Shown below is a grab of the finished shot - when you watch it, it looks like a really retro bad special effect, but I really like that - and I love having my hands tied by limited technology. Makes me feel like Im having to be creative to get results, rather than just installing an effects plug-in for my software and having it do it all for me.

Anyway, I'll be using it quite a bit in video to come!

Video Production: Losing My Voice

With the prospect of needing to keep the flow of new videos coming out of the Museum, it wasn't a good start for me on Saturday morning. I sat thinking about having to edit together the Mystery Miniature video - and it filled me with dread. Not so much the content, but the process.

Editing the video clips together is fun, and you can quickly see everything come to life on front of your eyes - what's NOT fun is having to edit the audio.

For several reasons I record the audio separately to the video - this give me more flexibility and stops me having to multi-task too many things at once when trying to record the video (which is hard and fiddly enough as it is).

But Im not a pro voice artist, and I usually end up with around 45 minutes of audio for each 4 minutes video. With stumbles, retakes, lost threads, trying to think what to say - its a lengthy process.  And ayou can imagine, editing all that together takes a long time, cutting out waffling dialog, splicing sentences together to makes them flow faster - it was doubling the workload for every video.

And then, watching them back, I felt like the voice over wasn't really adding much to each episode - all you really need to see is the miniature being shown and demonstrated, with a little humour injected to keep it interesting.

So I decided to give it a try. I already decided to reduce the intro sequence and introduce some new music (after I discovered the Youtube in-built music library) - so I figured, why not change the whole format at the same time?

Ignoring the audio tracks that I'd already recorded, I set about editing the video with no voiceover, just the visuals and captions.

I was surprised that it worked well - in fact, the process of having to limit the 'dialog' down to fit on a few captions really stop you from needlessly waffling or dwelling on an obscure point of interest. It keeps the pace moving faster, which I like.

You can still get humour into it though the written captions - almost like they're commenting on what we're seeing on screen together - and with the little easter egg-style end videos (which are GREAT fun to do by the way).

Ive shot and edited two more new videos with no voiceover reordered at all - and they're working better and better.

So for me, losing my voice is an important step in keeping the videos tighter, and also giving it a little style of their own that doesn't follow the mainstream.

But this is an ongoing process... who knows what may change next?

Video Production: Youtube music violation??

I think I've now 'broken my cherry' when it comes to having a channel on Youtube... I got red-flagged for music copyright infringement.

It was for the Mousetrap miniature game review, which used 'The Entertainer', a piano ragtime tune written by Scott Joplin in 1902.

I downloaded the MP3 for it from freemusicarchive.org, which seems a good quality resource site for Creative Commons licensed music, and gives you clear links and details of what to add in your accreditation.

This version was presumably performed by someone and added to the site - however somehow, it got red-flagged by Youtube!

To explain:

In your Youtube video channel admin page, you get an overview of all videos you've added - under one of these (The Mousetrap one) I suddenly noticed there was a some red text saying that the video contains copyright-infringing music and must be removed.

Looking into it, Youtube has some kind of clever algorithm that automatically checks all videos and detects any kind of music within them. It then 'reads' the sound patterns and checks it against a database of copyrighted music. If there's a match, it marks it to be deleted. Clever stuff.

For The Entertainer, it marked that it was copyrighted from the soundtrack of the 1973 movie The Sting, which it must appear in - however my version wasn't taken from this soundtrack.

But if this happens, there is a  'dispute this' button where you can then put your arguments to Youtube. If they agree, the video is 'un-marked'. If they don't, and you fail to remove the video, they can delete your account. And that's append may times apparently.

If you get one and you got it from a reputable source, my advice is write a succinct message in the 'dispute this' form, outlining:

• the site you got it from
• the type of Creative Commons / Public Domain licence or agreement that covers it
• a link to the Creative Commons licence page (which you should have on your video accreditation)
• a confirmation that you HAVE an accreditation on your video, in accordance with the terms of the CC / Public Domain license
• be polite, and say that if the above is still not correct, then you will of course remove the video

That way there shouldn't be any problems. Just because its on a CC sharing site doesn't mean that it actually is - the creator of the music or the site may be in error of the rights, so be careful.

I'd favour on the side of Youtube on the argument - keep them happy as they can just turn your channel off instantly. The creative commons sites can't help you on that score.

The outcome of my own 'flagging'?

The conceded it wasn't an infringement and removed the label. There was no accompanying message, it just got removed and the video is fine.

Something to keep an eye on though.

Museum Setup: Update 3

Good weekend here at the Museum - completed the first video which is now live on Youtube, which I'd actually shot and recorded at the same time as doing the intro video the week before.

I needed to shoot a couple of extra clips, and record new opening audio, as it was originally going to be added in at the end of the intro video - but that took so long to do that I wasted to split them up.

Extensions before construction seen next to the current over-crowded Museum

Then, I finally got hold of the Museum extensions, so we now have THREE wings! This means Im going to be able to showcase the whole collection at once, and not overcrowd things. I'll also be able to divide things up into categories - House & Home, Arcade, Toys & Novelties and so on.

Building of the cabinets went well, and they look awesome as a set of three.... hope thats enough space!

...And the 'After' shot! So much space! Exhibits not properly laid out here - I'm just planning
where to put the different categories

Then, I worked on the third video shoot, which went well. Well, I say 'well'... it required trying to get a particular game to work on camera. Nearly two hours of trying, and I still couldn't get it to behave. So I compromised with a shot featuring a little 'assistance'. After editing it all together, it seemed quote funny, so I think that will do. If I maybe carried on for another hundred attempts I might have lucked out, but bugger that.

I also had to do a couple of weird shots, one of a dancing Statue of Liberty, and the other a shot of me slapping Colin the Robot.

Such a weird thing to film. Her face says it all.

Third Video will be online soon.

Museum Setup: Update 2

Things are progressing nicely here at the Museum - Additional floorspace has been ordered (from Ikea) and will be collected soon. Then, our chief architect will work on the long construction process, which may be shortened if he bothers to read the instructions.

First video shoot

The first ever video for the Youtube Channel began shooting recently. It took a while to work out a process to make it feasible - and after some laughably bad pilot shoots (culminating in the featured exhibit failing to work), I rethought things and went with a different approach.

Filming, talking and demonstrating intricate miniatures all at once is just too much (for me anyway). Too much going on to keep things sounding natural and also try and think of things to say when you're trying to remember where a tiny button is and keeping it in focus on the camera.

So I tried a different approach of recording the video and the audio separately. For the first shoot, I did the video first, and then the audio afterwards. It seemed to go really well, and meant I could focus on each task, getting good quality video shots and then taking time to get the audio right without the pressure of everything else.

So I spent half an hour demonstrating with my hands and doing pantomime style gestures that I could then edit in to suit the dialog - it sounds like it wouldn't work, but it does! And without having to sync in live dialog, retakes and additional camera angles become more achievable. I was able to do a run-through and then redo the whole thing but with a macro closeup, so I can inter-cult between the two in the edit stage. And recording dialog when you're not distracted by a camera viewfinder and getting the exhibits to work properly makes things a lot easier to sound natural.

Above is a shot of the filming in process - as you can see its a pretty high-end Hollywood kind of production. The desk, the room and everything you see was hand-crafted by prop masters to perfectly replicate cheap-ass scummy housewares. You can't see a camera in shot, as the budget only allows for one and I was using to to take the photo. But if you're interested, Im using an iPhone 4S, combined with the excellent Olloclip add-in wide-angle and macro lens. Without these, the quality of shots would have been useless. Lights are little tabletop bright LED things I found on Ebay - the white one is usually in my bathroom... as I say, pretty high-end setup. And the iPhone is mounted on a cheap knock-off Gorllapod style tripod, which allows me to create a low eyeliner. Other than that, the only other kit used is a cheap clip-on microphone, which plugs directly into the iPhone and helps to give clear audio - much better than the built in mic.

So it all went well, and in half a day I had pretty much all the shots and audio takes I needed to edit. (Shown here are my extensive, professional notes.)

I'll be using iMovie on my iMac (which in the photo double up as a back-board prop stand and light power supply) which should give me everything I need - although its been a few years since I looked at it, so might have to relearn a fair bit.

Next update soon.