Rock The Casbah
Time to Make: 1 month
Principal Roles: Designer, Developer, Writer
Environment: C++
This is a video created using techniques discussed from the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics in ACM. This video was developed using C++, Photoshop, the GIMP, and FFMPEG. Working in a team of 2, we worked to develop a concept that was similar to an effect seen in REM’s Imitations of Life. The effect uses a 30 second movie clip (played forwards and backwards) that zooms in and out on different aspects on the video to tell a story of a birthday party. This video tells the story of the RPI Pep Band playing one of the songs they are most famous for, Children of Sanchez. It also tells the story of select individuals from the Pep Band and what makes them unique, and also a part of the whole band. The video is rendered out at a lower quality for the web, but please take a look at the fully rendered video if you get a chance.
In retrospect, this was a massive undertaking. There were many times where we had to take enormous effort to build tools that would allow us to work on each frame of the video, one at a time, in order to build the effects which we wanted to. At other times, we had to constantly remember the settings for FFMPEG in order to get the best quality from our images. While it was a massive undertaking, the overall project was fun, as it taught me how to work with these technologies, but more importantly, how to better use a video camera for artistic and business purposes.