Baby Jesus just spoke his first word

[P3nT4gR4m]

It's gotten a bit complicated. In case anyone still gives a fuck - this is what I'm trying to get my head around here.



the Baby Jesus Show (sounded like a good idea at the time)

[Jenne]

This Baby Jesus Show stuff is srs bidness, Silly.

You're raising our expectations, you know.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This Baby Jesus Show stuff is srs bidness, Silly.

You're raising our expectations, you know.

I see my tactic is working - Lay on the hype til they shiver with anticipation...

...then fire up the disappointment and bask in the hate.

[LMNO]

Hey, didja get the tracks I sent?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Aye - didn't u get my email?

[LMNO]

Lemme check.

[LMNO]

Nope.


PM it to me.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Nope.


PM it to me.

I'll be home in 25mins. Chances are I forgot to hit send/receive before I went to bed last night.

*edit* done - check ur im

[P3nT4gR4m]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KMK1BJ9HSw

LMNO - He's like free THX!

Thanks dude

[P3nT4gR4m]

It's sunday 28th Jan 2007.

I've got a headcold. I'm sitting at my pc enjoying waves of hot then shivery, a pallid, sticky sweat has permeated my entire being. I'm reminded of Crowleys description of the holy oil in Book4.

There are 9565 frames in the video of my lips I recorded yesterday. So far I've done 1701 of them. Moving 5-10 frames forward, till the shape of the lips is completely different to the mask then moving the mask, 1 point at a time til it matches up. If I'm lucky, when I move back through the frames I've skipped, the mask will follow the lines of the lips as they move, due to a process called 'tweening'. When the little bastard has got a lot to say this is never the case and you end up having to edit each frame.

I'm watching freezeframes of my own lips, saying things I wrote a week ago, but I just can't get away from seeing the little baby. I'm watching my own mouth and hating the cartoon character that's stolen it. Do I really want to go through with this? Is the shit even funny? Or, as some shitty little insecurity demon, all but beaten to a pulp, in the darkest recesses of my brain, keeps telling me; "Nobody is laughing with you asshole! It's a stupid pathetic, home made animation of the most tedious script ever penned. Those people who keep saying nice things about it are your friends ffs - their job is to encourage you and be extra fkin nice about every stupid piece of shit thing you do."

I give the little bastard another kick in the ribs before shutting off his incessant droning. I try to remember how funny I found the shit a week ago when I was writing it. Back when the words were just popping into my head and I was cackling like a madman, writing them down as I heard them for the first time in the solo dictation thing that is the creative process. Before I'd read it, again and again, making tweaks and shit that had ceased to make any kind of coherent sense to me about wednesday. Once something is done my objectivity flys out the window. The text is just black shapes on my monitor.

The baby Jesus show, when I watch the final cut, will make me laugh about as much as my best friends funeral. I'll have heard every joke a thousand times. I'll hate every line, the way it's delivered, I'll despise every stupid video effect, the lame animations and background effects. To put it bluntly, when I watch this it will suck! It'll probably suck more than anything else I have ever watched. I'll watch the Baby Jesus Show before anyone else in the whole world and I'll know just exatcly how much it is possible to hate it.

When I started this I was doing it for me. I'd bought a camcorder about 6 months ago and it'd hardly been out its bag. I had the idea for masking lips, talking then superimposing them on some dumb baby's head meme I'd come up with. Sometimes I just want to play with this kinda stuff and see what it looks like. When I saw him roar like the MGM lion it was exactly like I had imagined it would be, all wrong and kinda creepy but funny at the same time. I got excited! Note to self: Maybe lithium is the answer after all. Inspiration struck and my train of thought derailed into daydreams about a whole 10 min show with the little bastard I'd created ranting and raving.

Most normal people would prolly have thought "dumb idea. Thats too much work that I don't have a clue how to do." Most normal people woulda understood what a stupid proposition it was for joe fkin bloggs with no experience or training in this kinda stuff to produce something like that. To be fair tho - most normal people wouldn't be watching a 3 second clip of a baby roaring like a lion, pissing themselves laughing, knowing that they did that. Who the fuck am I trying to kid? I left the rank and file of most normal people somewhere between conception and birth, as far as I can tell. I'm not most normal people, I'm super idiot, flying through the web of possibilities that most normal people choose to ignore. I take a bite of any pie I see in any sky and 9 times out of ten it's a nice munch.

So It began with the words "I'm going to do this" and the notion of "I can't" really didn't play much of a part in it. Turns out it's easier than it looks. Funny it usually does. But fuck me is it ever boring. Next time I'm using facepaint to paint a thick green 'al johlson' circle round my lips then using chromakey technology to automatically isolate the mouth.

Yeah, I know, "What the fuck do I know about chromakeying?", right? Well I might know next to fuck all at this point in time but I'll tell you what - I'm gonna do it anyway.

[Triple Zero]

you go silly! umm cheer up?

i can imagine the jokes and the lines getting fucking tedious if you're gonna hear them 1000s times over

but i just wonder, as i've said before, see if you're going to put so many hours in it, why not spend a few of those hours on some research for finding out a way of doing this easier?

the chromakeying sounds like a great plan, and is going to save you loads of time, how about -- if not only for taking your mind off the endless tweening/masking for a while -- make a tiny teeny testrun with chromakeying for i dunno, a 5 second clip, and see if it'll be much easier or not?

that's what i always do whenever faced with a repetitive task. i'm a computerprogrammer, and repetitive tasks are not for humans but for computers/robots. when i see a repetitive task, i'll stop and think until i find some way to have a computer do it for me.
even if programming the thing takes me more time than just getting on and doing it.
and even if i'm sure i'll never ever use the program aftwards.
basically just because i'm not gonna numb my mind for that, because i'm lazy, because it sharpens my mind and generally cause it's more fun like that.
sure i can understand what you said before, doing a repetitive task can be therapy, can be meditative, but only for a while
(after that while, the meditative thing is probably also good, but only if you're it for the sheer meditation concentration practice of it and not for the end result, because that's the moment you've past and go crazy )

also a few things:

- when chromakeying make sure the lighting is bright and clear for best masking. you can change the contrast to match the baby's lighting after you've applied the masking.

- does the lip-mask not have a "feather" option? one that fades the outline of the lip into the baby's face? if you use that you can probably cheat and use a wider mask that doesn't need to change as much.

- there must be other ways of doing this easier, except for chromakeying and feathering.

- how long is your video?

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm actually quite happy about this. I was just kinda showing everyone the inside of my head. I reckon the c-keying is a goer but right now I know I can get this out the door by sunday if I keep doing what I'm doing so I've kinda committed myself to it. Sunday is important to me - that's the target I set. I like hitting targets. A lot of the time I'll do what I have to do to make them. This next 4-5 days is what I have to do right now and, if it turns out to be the road through hell I think it is It should be interesting. Tedium is my biggest fear and you know what they say about facing those.

[LMNO]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KMK1BJ9HSw

LMNO - He's like free THX!

Thanks dude

Heh.  Looks good.


Remember Silly, clever subversion is really hard work.  Don't give up the fight.

[Suu]

They have officially blocked Youtube at work. My existence is now meaningless.

[LMNO]

Join the club.