You'll Never Leave
From Davidbond.net
This is my thank-you to all the lovely people at b3ta for the daily happy. Which I need now I no longer work with Richard Soos. Recent events led to the new ending :o)
You'll Never Leave
Download video (15Mb WMV)
Contents |
Music
The music is by Chikinki, my brother's band (he's the drummer / writer, Steve).
Buy their latest Album!
Techie stuff
Tools Used
Made with Blender, Google Deskbar [Ctrl-I], DDClip, VirtualDub, LAME MP3 encoder, Paint Shop Pro 5, CDex, Mozilla Firefox, ConTEXT, SSH, vi, DivX, Filezilla, Windows XP Home, ABC VideoRoll and Becky's love.
Blender techniques
Mucho particles and very few models. Even the two character models were a bit much and I'd do much simpler characters next time.
Audio sync techniques
This was a matter of sitting with a stopwatch and working out how many frames I would be into the sequence at each audio breakpoint. I'm very proud of this aspect, especially the "glitches" on the computer zoom.
2D in 3D
The zoom effect was acheived by using a 3D camera looking at a single polygon with an AVI texture... Nice eh?!
References
I thought I'd explain a few of the references, in case you're interested...
The video is about a website called "b3ta" which can be found at [1]. It is a strange place, full of strange people.
Scene Breakdown
Opening titles
Simple Blender stuff this... A bit exciting with the particles at the end there...
Browser
This was a simple Caputre of a real browsing session using some screencap utility I've long since forgotten.
Messageboard
Lots of memes from various newsletters and one or two oddballs from the messageboard when I write this. THE QUO!!!!!
Living room
This is Becky shouting me to stop surfing and to snap back into reality. MAny textures from our real living room.
Beach
Becky throwing my laptop into the sea. And the telly for that matter. Sailing on the good ship fizmez.
The b3ta hotel
I sneak Becky into the B3ta motel. Does she know that this is b3ta? The eyeball zoom gets me every time.
Dream time
Me dreaming this video. All sorts of meme weirdness. One thing I like here is the two/three pronged forms you see at the beginning. But you see them in 3D! how veird ;o)
The full list:
- Optical Illusion forks
- Weebl (Of Weebl and Bob fame)
- Stickman ninja
- Foul stench of death perfume
- RedEx
- No-hands and Fluffy snowflakes start
- Red and Green (Green WINS!)
- Man milk or Moo milk?
- Pop-up killer
- Argh!! THE FEAR!
Creation
With advice from Becky, I create the "creation" (a symbolic representation of this video).
Originally, this was going to be in a room full of people (Brazil-style), but the thought of all that modelling got the better of me. In the end, I didn't even create a room. Thought it was best to stick with the three main characters (computer, David and Becky). I'm especially fond of the way the glitches in the zoom sync with the music and how the characters just appear when needed :o) The "creation" (spinny particle thing) took AGES and still doesn't live up to what I was hoping for - the colours are too washed out. Watch the fingers moving over the keys and clicking the mouse. I spent far too much time of that :o)
Message board
The item is posted onto the messageboard, as it was in real life. The ending was changed to show that we'd been creative in another way too - in real life, we found out that Becky was pregnant with our first child just as I was working on the last scene!
When the video was finally posted to b3ta, I got kinda depressed as it rolled off the end of the board without anyone really noticing. Also, my submission for the video to be in the newsletter came back with a "well embed it in a web page and we'll think about it" response. This got me down too. So I did as requested and Becky and I went on holiday to Paris. We had a good time, but my project was over and I was feeling very low, despite the good news about the baby.
When we got back from Paris, the b3ta newsletter was out and it contained a link to "You'll Never Leave". I felt elated. In the end, the video was downloaded over 20,000 times. All that hard work, worthwhile!
