Welcome to 187mph.
6:15 a.m.
I am creating an entire video piece (and writing this blog post) in less than four hours… while timelapsing the whole thing. We’ll see how this goes… I am already self-conscious about the camera going off the background! I’m taking a picture every 12 seconds… when I compile this thing at 6 pictures per second, It should make the timelapse about two minutes… here we go.
6:40 a.m.
Alright, as you can see from the beginning timelapse, things are starting to come together more quickly than I imagined. I started off with a video that Emily took passenger-side in a Cadillac in Memphis with her mom… the consistent pace and straight course of the video make it adaptable to look like a train ride, which was my goal. I had to edit out a few frames, but nothing terrible.
I have been working on my latest audio/visual film for what must be hundreds of hours. Having a four-hour deadline is a very strange experience so far! I’m already starting to get nervous. What if my computer can’t record my live performance?
Also, where did my puppy go?
6:45 a.m.
My blacks aren’t black enough… my whites aren’t white enough… my pixels are too blocky (that’s what I get for upconverting this video… taken on a little digital camera!) I want this piece to be suitable for projection on a huge scale. Fixing this in this program could take awhile! Also, I seriously need to go find puppy…
7:07 a.m.
Excuse me, but I need the blog space to start writing my controls down. Once I get things where I want them, I’ll be playing/recording this piece’s effects entirely live.
MIDI map: Template 35
DMX-X: Levels adjustment on main layer
DMX-B: Right-side hurricane of color
DMX-G: Photo layer
DMX-R: Black and White
Key map:
A: Exposure
S: Brightness/Contrast
D: Blow
F: Video Painting mode
G: RGB Shift
7:24 a.m.
Alright, ready for my first test run. Saving everything in case I crash this thing.
Also, puppy has been found. Asleep. Surprise.
7:32 a.m.
That went pretty well, but my transitions were a little abrupt and the video was a little jittery. I’m going to change from on/off keys to knobs that control levels for smoother transitions. I’m also going to close everything I can on the computer to allocate the resources to this program.
MIDI map: Template 35
DMX-X: Levels adjustment on main layer
DMX-B: Right-side hurricane of color
DMX-G: Photo layer
DMX-R: Black and White
Vid1/R: Exposure
Vid2/G: Shift RGB
Key map:
S: Brightness/Contrast
D: Blow
F: Video Painting mode
7:50 a.m.
Bam! Take 2 was exactly what I wanted. Time to switch programs to Adobe Premiere to start prepping it for bigtime. Unfortunately that usually means creating the project in Premiere, saving it, then restarting my computer… like I need to warn the program what is about to happen… (when you don’t have a ridiculously top-of-the-line computer and you push it like I do, you deal with these little quirks…)

Performance finished… thanks Resolume.
7:55 a.m.
OK we are back. Breaks are always worth a puppy timelapse appearance (in case you miss it, she’s circa 1:20 in the video, you can see the little furball in the corner)
I definitely want to adjust the brightness and contrast of the piece and get the colors more saturated. Premiere has really great brightness and contrast controls so I am using those and the RGB Color Balance to crank each color channel. While the first preview renders, I am going to transfer this blog post onto willcopps.com!
8:14 a.m.
Getting there! I sped the movie up 2% to compensate for some of the jerkiness I got from realtime recording it to my hard drive. I also did a little more contrast work to make the blacks really stand out. While the preview renders, I’m editing this post…
8:36 a.m.
Alright, we are already exporting for Blu-Ray! Two hours and twenty minutes. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve finished anything in two hours and twenty minutes! haha.
8:42 a.m.
Time for Premiere to render the files: two hours. Sheesh! Time to give the camera the thumbs up and stop the timelapse.
8:58 a.m.
Timelapse exporting! This thing should definitely make the four-hour deadline.
9:20 a.m.
Alright, we are going live! I’ll be submitting the piece to a festival later tonight. Hopefully it’ll be selected and you can see it there!
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As the Northeast corridor adapts to embrace the high-speed future of transportation, “187mph” is a look into a future of bullet trains speeding through the ever-sprawling urban landscape. The piece plays off the interplay of great speed and a dense landscape by combining still-image snapshots and full-motion video: emulating a passenger’s ability to only process parts of a high-speed ride.