As well as featuring Seth Troxler and the party in Paris, the 5th episode of REBELRAVE will also show an interview with a Japanese illustrator called Saeko, who didn’t want to be shown in the video.

I had to think of a way of showing her answering Anna’s questions, without letting the viewer recognize her face.
My initial idea was to get Saeko to film herself with a webcam, whose feed got projected onto a wall where Anna was standing. The outcome was pretty impressive (a huge image of Saeko’s face projected next to Anna), but I still needed to conceal the projected face.
It was at that point, when looking for live webcam effects, that I came across Quartz Composer, which is an amazing tool that lets you manipulate the video feed from your webcam.

I added some halftone effects to the video feed, after which I found out that I could also grab the information sent by the microphone. So triggered by the volume of the input audio I made the halftone effect increase and decrease.. The result got me jumping up and down in my bed: as usual it was something like 4am, and this is the sort of thing I do when I can’t sleep..

So now I had managed to achieve a fairly cool way of showing Saeko’s face, with the projection effect throbbing up and down depending on when she spoke.

Here’s some screenshots:

After being satisfied with all of this, I looked down the list of options in Quartz Composer to see what other goodies it may contain: mouse, keyboard and MIDI control! Perfect! I could now insert videos and images over Saeko’s face while she gave her interview, LIVE! No post production needed.
For example when she spoke about Damian Lazarus, I triggered a short video loop of him to flicker on. I also used this so she could talk about specific pieces of her work.

Here’s a screenshot of how the file looked like in Quartz Composer’s… hot!!!!

Well, now that REBELRAVE is taking its first steps into adolescence with its very own hot presenter (Anna Bosworth) and new format, I’ve decided it’s a good time to start saving clips that I can’t use in the final product.

It’s my second day on the edit of episode 5, which is the one that features Seth Troxler in Paris, and I’ve just come across a really funny scene that I can’t just throw away. We went to meet Seth at Sety’s top-floor apartment in the heart of Paris to film his interview. He was really intrigued by my name and kept saying it in full because he liked the sound of it, so here’s one of those times:

It’s been a few months that I’ve been trying to start up this blog, but I was never really happy with my [numerous] attempts of opening it up in a spectacular and fabulous way.

I’ve now given up on that, as I find myself in a not so spectacular nor fabulous situation. Which may bloody well be my golden opportunity to get this blog rolling. Let’s see!

Today is Sunday 10th of August, my mother’s birthday, and I should have landed in Barcelona about an hour ago to meet Crosstown Rebels’ female talent, Dinky. She’s going to be playing at Liquid tonight, along with Damian Lazarus and Pier Bucci, and I was meant to film the event, for the 6th episode of REBEL RAVE.

Instead I missed the flight by exactly two minutes, thanks to the brilliantly thought out Easyjet check-in queuing system. This was at 6 AM. My next flight is at 6 PM. So I’ve been sitting around on uncomfortable chairs for a few hours now, and it’s only just occurred to me that I can only laugh about the situation, especially after what I went through to prepare for the trip.

I don’t know how this happened really, but last night my friends and I decided to catch James Holden and Richie Hawtin at FieldDay festival, a great idea at the time! But I spent the whole evening with the niggling thought that I needed to get to bed early, as I would be waking up at 4:30 the following morning. The niggling eventually became stress and finally panic, when I nervously fell asleep at 3AM, after fighting the double-vision whilst preparing the equipment. Nonetheless I was up on time and got to the airport well in advance. Which brings us back to the beginning of this post and to the present.

I’ve just spoken to Damian about it, I think it’s a bit disappointing for everyone because Dinky and I were flying in early specifically to do a feature of her in some of the cool parts of Barcelona. I feel really bad for her especially, she’s had to get on to a flight at the crack of dawn for no reason at all…

Anyway, I’ve now managed to check in and sit on less uncomfortable seats, and I have been thinking of how we could do a piece with Dinky after dinner and before her set, or more importantly, where. I wanted to film in La Rambla, but it’s a bit out of the way from both the hotel and the club.

I’ve also arranged with a girl who works for Liquid to try to lead a conversation with Dinky for the camera, which should turn out to be quite interesting!