POST 34: IDEAS JUST KEEP COMING

    I  made a short test with camera movement, and like the new 3D console, though I will need to  pile a few props on top, but now, the opposite wall looks very bare when the camera pans around the room. So since I have made this pit into a storage and prop room, I built some wooden shelving all across that wall.
  Now, what to put on these shelves? I just had that crazy idea that since the theatre was right next to a full working farm with a lot of animals, and there was a need in some plays for a "Shepherdess" to have sheep to look after on stage, and a sheep dog, may be a few goats, and lambs, the stage manager and set decorator was also an amateur taxidermist... Why not? So every time they would eat lamb at the Trianon, he would skin it carefully and stuff it! Same for chicken, ducks, pigs, piglets,the occasional fox caught in the henhouse, may be a wolf or two to go with the Red Riding hood...
   He also was an odd man(like me), and came up with a few fantasy animals, Griffin and such. Furthermore, he was a friend of Fragonard, and keenly interested in anatomy.
   I am not talking about Jean Honoré Fragonard the Painter, but his less famous cousin Honoré Fragonard, a French Anatomist living at the time who was Professor of anatomy at the Veterinary School from 1765 to 1771, and came up with a method for preserving dissection specimens(they did last, and can still be seen at the Musée of the Veterinary School at Maison Alfort near Paris). He was expelled from the school in 1771, "as a mad man", but continued working in his home producing specimens for the Cabinets of Curiosity of the Aristocracy in the 1770's and 80s. His Horse of the Apocalypse based on a Durer print horseman of the apocalypse
is pretty well known:

   So the idea may be a little farfetched, but it is entirely possible that our set designer knew him and had a keen interest in anatomy, as some of the Titled Courtiers did. He could have collected specimens of various animal fetuses on the farm,snakes, lizards, and other oddities, and preserved them pickled in jars... His collection could have been somewhere in the pit under the stage...
   I am a surrealist in many ways, and have built my very own cabinet of curiosities, including pickled stillborn piglets, dogs, cats, etc... I am also an admirer of a Czeck Animator named Jan Svanmajer, who made a number of very strange animated movies, the best known being "Alice"(available on Netflix, and highly recommended).
   In this movie, the fall of Alice in the hole is representing by an elevator going by shelve after shelve of odd collections and specimens preserved in jars. So I thew in my very brief little Hommage to Svankmajer in between the two parts of the Offertories, as the camera goes down from the stage into the bowels of the theatre...

Post 33: Seems Like a Crazy Idea?

  Well, it seems like a crazy idea to spend a whole day building a 3D console, but I believe it's worth it. At this point, the Basement has very little in terms of 3D objects: doors, sets, that's it. I feel it needs a fairly good size beautiful 3D thing I can pan around.
   I had some pictures of some beautiful Yellow and Green Italian Marble Fireplace mantels, which I use in the Basement Set, but they look flat from the sides obviously, and I cannot turn the to always face the camera as I do with Paper Dolls and other small objects:

    The Green one is too ornate to build in 3D with after Effects. I need something more  like a console, with simple shapes. A Google search turned up a bunch of good stuff, two of them real possibilities. One is an Antique Faux Marble Italian wooden Console:

   The other is a Yellow Marble Mantel very similar to the one I already had, BUT with a front view and a three quarter view, which allowed me to cut it up in pieces with good image definition:

   Each piece was saved as a separate image, and put back together in 3D in After Effects.

   By late afternoon, it was assembled in 3D and looked pretty good(almost like the real hing actually):

   I dropped it into the basement, but it actually doesn't come out looking so three dimensional after all. 

   To make the best of it, I may have to use a few virtual lights to get some shadows...

 What I have done to try and lighten the load on the computer is breaking up the entire huge 3D composition for the Whole Theatre into it's major parts: the Introduction, the Theatre, the Stage, and the Basement. Inseams to make things easier.

Post 32: Basement taking shape

  I rendered the Dies Irae one more time last night after more corrections and adjustments, and thought I had the final version, but then there is still a split second glitch at the end! It never ends...
  In the last couple of days, I have been putting together the basement of the theatre. I made a mistake sizing the walls, that ended up too long, so I added an extra small room to it, and am now considering bringing a staircase down from the stage...
  I am debating whether it would look better to take the camera down a staircase, or just lower it vertically down though a trap in the floor(which would also save me having to build said staircase...).
   I applied an adjustment layer with curves to darken the mood and increase the contrast, in order to create the illusion of low candlelight without actually using multiple points of light in After Effects, and it sort of works pretty well. So much so that I am going to try the same thing upstairs in the theatre.
   The final camera view is going to be  5760 x 1080 pixels, but to see what I am doing better building the basement, I am working on a 5760 x 5000 canvas, which explains the near square image:

  It is beginning to look pretty good though  and so totally different in mood and look from the pretty blue and gold theatre decor that it will come as a nice counterpoint in the second part of the Offertories.

Post 31: Where am I ?

   Up bright and early as usual, and the computer still has at least an hour to go churning out the rendering of the Agnus Dei, which ends the Program, with its long list of credits going back to Louis XIII...
  Last night while I was doing my 3 required hours of daily reading, I rendered what I hope to be the final corrected version of the Graduate.
  Since that prevents me from using After Effects, but the 16 processors are not quite going full blast,

I can answer some emails, and write the Blog until it finishes.

   I was a little desperate for a while when the computer slowed down to a crawl working on the second part of the Offertories, but I seem to have found the issue, and am back working as normal.

  It is the 15 minutes movement in two parts for which I rebuilt Marie Antoinette's little Theatre at Trianon.

   In the first part, the camera flies around a near empty theatre, from the backstage the balconies and back. I have struggled with the second part, and tried to figure out what to do, I have no inspiration from the music, as it it my least favorite part of the Requiem.

   My first intention was to turn Virtual Lights and Shadows on in after Effects, and recreate the candle lighting of the period. That would have required dozens of points of light, each creating a separate shadow.

 I started doing it, creating a big chandelier,  a ramp of stage lights, and reflector lights hanging behind each set and around the sides of the stage. First, I used images of flames, and created a sequence of a man lighting the big chandelier after it was lowered to the floor. I went as far as creating a movie of a candle flame burning so the the candles would flicker realistically if I offset the movies out of synch. It looked good, but when I got past 3 dozen lights or so, the computer started getting bogged down with all the calculations required as I added more lights and turned more and more shadows on. Also, each candle movie made it slower, and when I tried to make each of the dozens of virtual points of light flicker, it  was becoming so slow O finally realized my ambitions were too high , even for my "Uber Machine"...

   So I am going to have to use the flat even lighting, and use an adjustment layer on top with the Curves, Exposure and Hue/Saturation Effects to "fake" it and modulate the lighting. 

  The first part is still rough, but is basically done, though a lot remains to be adjusted.I considered rebuilding the attic above the stage with all the wooden wench machinery, but that would be another huge job and time is now limited...

  I finally got another idea for the second part of the piece a couple of days ago, and that requires building a full basement under the Stage.

   That is the pit into which the sets are lowered through slots in the floor of the stage:

 

  My two sets of "décors", the trees and the kitchen, are already built and fully workable. All I had to do is add a dirt  floor and four rough brick walls to complete the room. But then I started thinking it would also have been a storage place for old sets and props of all kind, and I started filling it with stuff. I modified one of my paper puppets to make him a stage worker.

   It is beginning to take shape, and I hope the limited number of objects will allow me to do the lighting I had hoped for upstairs:

POST 30: HALLELUIA

The work was still as sluggish on the old machine, so that told me the problem was with the Composition. I finally figured out that a sub Composition was at 25fps, while the rest had been restored to the original 24. Also, the candle flame movies slow things down. 
  Things seem to be back to normal, let's just hope I don't get any more Kernel Panic Shutdowns as I was getting a few days ago, that may have been the cause...
   I am busy building a basement for the theatre under the stage,where the sets are lowered through the floor, that is slowly turning into a darkish storage room with a bunch of props...

Post 29: Damn Computer

   I just bought that Accelsior PCIe super fast card and it works fine for rendering. But for the last two days, it has been painfully sluggish working on the After Effect composition of the Theatre. I can't figure out why. I am watching the processes going on using Activity Monitor and trying to figure out what that QT32 Server is that seems to be eating up so much processor power... The speed tests are good, I built the Directory with Disk Warrior, I repaire Permissions, I cleaned out everything not need to make space on the disk, I cleared the AE cache, nothing seems to help!
  So for the moment, I am back working on my slower old machine...

Post 28: Pretty much all the Work Remaining is on the Offertorium

    Six of the Sequences are now pretty much finished, except for a few minor glitches here and there. I will be rendering all night.
   The remaining one is, of course, the longest (15n) and the most complex, with the full 3D "Théatre de la Reine".The first half is well advanced, but I and having a bit of a hard time with the second half, in part because I don't like this section of the Requiem much. The voices seen too hight, shrill, and get on my nerves...
   Also, I am realizing the computer has about reached its limits, and is getting slower, so I won't be able to turn on lights as I was planning to do to get some mood lighting rather than the flat even lighting I used in the Gallery Walk for the Pie Jesus.
   At some stage, I had been toying with the idea of building the attic of the theatre with the rafters and all the drum winches and ropes, as well as the Basement where the sets go down. I had decided it would be too much, and was going to use low candlelight for the second part of the Offertories.
   Since I cannot turn on the candlelights, I  reviewed my options, and decided that since the sets already go down into the basement, I might just as well add a floor and four walls and make it another room to take the camera(and the Spectator) into the bowels of this charming little theatre...

Post 27: More of the Same...

    I do hope the ticket marketing department considers filling the unsold seats (if any) with young people that would not otherwise get a chance to see the show, either because they wouldn’t know about it, or because they couldn’t afford the regular tickets.

   I actually wish we could have a special additional afternoon performance of the Requiem, and bus in a concert hall full of school children. Food for thought...

  Classical music IS an acquired taste, and one has to be exposed to it early. I am afraid we are losing the younger generations to smart phone entertainment on demand, and I am glad we now have in Carlos a conductor who is keenly aware of the importance of getting involved with schools, having himself grown up in the justly famous El Systema of Venezuela. 

  I strongly believe that having images supplementing the music of the Requiem would really appeal to youngsters, and THIS IS OUR CHANCE, our ONLY chance actually, at least until another crazy artist devotes him or herself to doing this kind of thing again. Because, let’s be realistic, the ASO can’t afford paying somebody to do it: this show is really worth over $50,000…

  I sincerely hope everyone enjoys this show, and would like as many people as possible to see it, because it may not happen again for a while. I am getting old, and this was a huge drain on my energy and time for a whole year. I probably wouldn’t have it in me to do it again, if I was ever asked...

  

Post 26: Trying to get as many people as possible to see the Requiem

   I noticed that in the Season Program, the Concert was listed as BEETHOVEN FIFTH SYMPHONY. Granted, it is much better know than the Requiem and the ASO probably believe that it IS what sells tickets. But there is really nothing new there, I have heard it a thousand times. It’s a great standard piece of music, a mainstay of the Repertoire, and I am sure Carlos will give us a fabulous performance of it. 

   But I feel the Requiem with Projection really IS the Special Event of the Night, the Creative Thing that has not been done before, and might have deserved a little more visible billing. And the season program only reaches the people on the ASO mailing list anyway. Are we not trying this “stunt" to pull in a new younger audience, to modernize the image of the ASO?

   One thing we talked about Sunday night after I mentioned the above to my friends after testing the show on them was: "What can we do to let more people know about the show?". Each one will definitely post on Facebook and tell their friends, but what more?

   How can we let as many people as possible  know that something new, exciting, unique, and hopefully wonderful is going to happen on April 15 and 16. Only two nights and it will be gone forever. 

  We need to reach out to the community at large, especially the “OUTSIDERS” that don't attend ASO Concerts, especially the younger crowd of Millenniums, the Music Video generation, the compulsive multitasks, the rock concert goers, that I believe will be more drawn to the Symphony by an AUDIO VISUAL performance like the Requiem than by the Fifth. We should even reach out to the school children who are the future audience.

   If the show is not sold out, is there any way to fill the rest of the house with young people from local universities and schools. Fifty to Eighty Bucks a seat is way too steep for a lot of these young people anyway. 

  The Fifth will draw the older conservative crowd and the Season ticket holders for sure. No surprise there, it’s a sure bet. But could we not try to promote the part of the concert that is truly innovative to a different younger crowd, the one that does NOT have season tickets, does NOT go to the ASO web site, does NOT follow it on Facebook yet, may never have been to an ASO concert before, may NOT have ever heard of the ASO, and possibly even think Beethoven is boring and classical music is for a bunch of elitist old folks…?

   I am not knocking Beethoven here, the 5th is great music, it was revolutionary in it’s time, but that was 200 years ago! I actually grew up on that music 50-60 years ago, I know it very well, but frankly, I have heard it so many times already that to me, the Requiem IS the exciting part of the evening. It is rarely performed, it is beautiful, historical, meaningful, and as far as I know has never been done before with a full length hour long dedicated projection. And I am not saying that out of ego or of pride, nor because it is my work and I spent a thousand hours working on it. I would be just as excited about it if somebody else was in my shoes, and would not miss it for the world. 

   There are conservatie people out there that will come primarily to hear the Fifth, and will hear AND SEE the Requiem as an add on, that they may or may Not like. But then I believe there are also A LOT of people out there that don’t give a hoot about the Fifth, but might come ESPECIALLY to see the Special Presentation of Cherubuni’s Requiem with VISUALS, because it is new, modern, hip, cool, inovative, exciting, different, and a World Premiere, in Birmingham, Alabama of all places...

   Please don’t mind my rant. I always speak my mind, no matter what, and sometimes get a little carried away. You have to understand I have invested myself heavily creatively and emotionally in this show, having spent over 1000 hours and a whole year of my life to produce it .

Post 25: Test Run with Friends

   We had friends over for dinner Sunday night, and I asked them to look at the show as it was and give me some critique, as well as check it for mistakes, jarring things and spelling errors. Sometimes, one gets  involved so closely obvious mistakes are not noticed.
  They seemed impressed with what they saw, but did find a number of spelling mistakes, which I set out to correct yesterday. That of course gave me the opportunity to fine tune a few things, remove a few unnecessary things, and add a few new ones of course. Ideas keep coming...

  I rendered the revised Dies Irae last night, only to find when I watched it this morning that I had made a spelling mistake in the one word I had added! The R key is next to the T key. I never ends...

Post 24: Working on the Dies Irae

    I found some great images to use in the Requiem. The problem as always is to find high quality images in hight definition. Things have gotten much better since the days when pictures on the internet were something like 400x800 or less. It has become common for people to post stuff straight our of their camera. Still, amateur pictures are often badly framed, badly lighted, and badly exposed, and I am looking for the best possible images. Also, I need mostly images shot straight on, and many pictures reshot at an angle. Furthermore, my canvas is a huge 5760 pixels wide, and images that big are hard to find.
  So in a way, the project has been influenced by my lucky finds. 
   Different sequences require different approaches. Some I work on in a linear way from start to finish. Others, especially the longer ones, I work on in sections. That is the case with the Dies Irae. I did the beginning linearly, but am now working on "snippets" that will be joined later wit transitions.
  For example, I knew I wanted to do a section on the famous "Martyrs of Compiègne", the whole convent of 16 Carmelites that were guillotined together on July 17, 1794, one of the very last days of the "Terreur". Georges Bernanos wrote a book, and Francis Poulenc an Opera about them. The youngest was 30, the oldest 80. My pickings were slim, nuns didn't get their portrait painted very often, but I am putting together a short hommage, and an also doing a section on the treatment of other "refractaire" priests and nuns that refused to swear allegiance to the Republic when the Churches were taken over and the convents closed.
  I am also doing a small section on Madame du Barry, born Jeanne Bécu, courtisane, and long time Favorite of the former King Louis XV, also executed towards the end of the "Terreur". 

Post 39: Back to the Dies Irae!

  As a way to keep myself going 12 hours a day, I have to change movement  periodically, and work on all at the same time. Some people would probably prefer finishing one, then the next, etch I just can't work that way, as everything I discover working on one might be used on another. I prefer the back and forth approach, and find it gives the ensemble more unity.
   Talking about unity, the Dies Irae stands apart, and I waited quite a while to tackle it.  I then came up with an idea I pursued for quite a while, an kinda put aside because of concerns some people might laugh... Not allowed during a Requiem.
   I started working with another more sedate idea, but my heart was not into it. So I showed the first draft to a few trusted friends, and they thought it wasn't funny, and I should pursue my first instinct.
  So I re opened the file in After Effects this morning early, and have been cutting things,out,  adding new ones, and moving stuff around. I am at the same time simplifying and adding new complexity.
  In particular, I decided to add some "tricoteuses". Rather than explaining, I will give you the Wilkepedia Link.
  I found of course caricatures of the nasty ones

but also a wonderful image by Greases of a young sweet adorable "Tricoteuse Endormie"(asleep)

     I should be able to use it to good effect...

Post 38: Things are Good

   I really like the new machine a lot. Even though"on paper", the tests only show a 50% increase in speed, rendering goes a lot faster, and working with it much faster.
   I have nearly completed the Agnus Dei, with a long list of "slightly wacky" credits, including the Kings, the Philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment

 the Revolutionaries both American and French, etc... Even the Founding Fathers!

  I am well lease with last night's rendering, which took a mere 5 hours, with no more than a few bugs and hiccups to correct.   
  I came up with pretty elaborate individual background for each credit, even though they will show only a few seconds. I particularly like the picture of Carlos I tinkered with in Photoshop to go from this

to that:

I also did a little Hommage to my Dad 

and one to my Mom:

  I think my sisters will like these...

Post 37: Faster Machine, I think...

   Well, the new Accelsior PCIe card arrived in two days, and immediately went into the top slot where my old Apple Hardware Raid Card had been sitting unused. I installed the latest version of El Capitan, which went very fast. I only installed Photoshop, Bridge, and After Effects, the "OLD" Quicktime 7 Pro, the VLC player, plus my usual utilities: DiskWarrior, What Size, Clean App, Black Magic Speed Test, CineBench, Matrox Power Desk.
  I plan to reserve this new machine named ACCELSIOR for heavy lifting, and leave it as uncluttered as possible to avoid font and software bugs.  
      I am not getting the maximum 820 Mbits/s speed they claim(up to), and am a little dissappointed in that I was hoping for at least 700, and am only getting about 655Mbits/s...

  But then, that's "on paper", and when it comes to actually working at full def, and especially rendering in After Effects, things seem to go a lot faster. 

   I have a month to send it back if I am not satisfied anyway. We will see how it goes in the next few days...

Post 34: Hoping for a Faster Computer

    Since I have been doing these projection shows, I have been on a quest to make my computer faster, and faster, and faster. It is never fast enough, and since I am coming up with more complex 3D constructions and more complex animation all the time, this is a never ending quest.
    I started by buying the fastest maxed out 2.4 Ghz Quad Core MacPro in 2010, with four 1TB Hard Disks, 2 of them in a Harware Raid  0 array using the the top of the line Apple Raid Card, and 32GB of RAM and the best ATI Radeon Graphics Card .  With the Monitor, that was a $10,000 machine back then... I did the two PTTR Shows with that machine and the 30 " Apple Cinema Monitor in 2011 and 2012.
   Then I wanted to run 4 x 1920x 1080 monitors, and added a second matching Graphics Card. That worked for a while, and I did the first Light Dreams Show that way. But I had rendering times of 17 hours on some sequences, and the 3D work I was playing with was getting more complex.
   I then wanted to have HDMI Video in and out, so I added a Black Magic Card, and live video processing required more power. The very fast 200 or so Mb/s read speed I was getting didn't cut it.
   So I struck out hard, and replaced the four 1TB hard drives with four 412GB SSD's from OWC, and the two Radeon Graphic Cards with two faster GPU NVIDIA QADRO K 5000.
 That was an expensive update, that I chose to do over buying one of the new Tin Can MacPros. I am not sure it was the right decision. There was a substantial increase in speed to over 400Mb/s, and the GPU on the Graphics card allowed Ray Tracing. I was disappointed to get only 400, I had hoped for 600 or even 700 Mb/s. The problem is the bottleneck of the SATA connections, and of the Apple RAID card. I switched to Software RAID, and the speeds remained the same.
   There was a way to get faster, using the then new OWC Excelsior PCIe based card and put it in my RAID card slot. It has 2 SSDS in a Raid 0 array, and PCIe is much faster than eSATA, possibly allowing speeds of up to 820 Mb/s....I wanted the biggest one of course, and that was another $700, so I put it off...
    I am finding now 5 weeks away from the show that I am still getting bogged down with long render times  on the more complex sequences of the requiem, . So and I don't like to waste time. So, after talking to a rep that told me I could return it if I was not happy with the new speeds,  I just decided to order the 960 Gb Excelsior Card:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

     I am very excited, and can't wait to get it in a couple of days and see just how fast the machine gets! 820Mb/s would be a dream, but I would be happy with 700Mb/s...
  I will have to install a new system on it, with minimal software to avoid bugs due to interferences, just the software that really needs these high speeds: After Effects of course, Photoshop, and later Isadora and Resolute Avenue. 
  I will keep you posted!
   

Post 33: Back to the Agnus Dei for a change

   The Offertorium is well on the way, but Marie Antoinette's very complex "small theatre" is quite taxing for the computer, and myself as well, so I am "taking a short vacation" from it to work on the last movement, the Agnus Ei and Communio. That is the one I rebuilt Versailles for out of "virtual paper". 
  The Opening section was done a long time ago, as well as the animation "demo" for the first castle built by Louis XIII. I am now making the rest of the buildings emerge from the ground in various ways and with various camera angles and focal lengths, going from a telephoto for the first "small castle" to a wider and wider lens going further and further away as the castle grows exponentially through the reign of Louis XIV from this

to this

  The final movement is about 7m 30 s in length, and full of energy, but with a constantly changing tempo, where quieter lyrical moments slowly increase to faster and louder moments. This is repeated three times with the same words. 
   First, I have to decide how much time to devote to each stage of the construction, and animate the emergence of each new building either next to or over existing buildings.
  I would like the pace of it to get faster and more frenetic toward the end. But I have to deal with the fact that unlike most symphonies, the movement does not end "with bang", but rather IS a succession of three short crescendi for the Agnus Dei(which is a little strange since the words are : "Lamb of God, would who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest")and ends with the Communio, which is very slow and quiet("May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord,

with your Saints forever, for you are kind.

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them, with your Saints forever, for you are merciful").

   I also would like to include "credits" as part of the video, rather than after like in a movie. The video simply cannot continue with no music. I am using quotation marks because they not belike "regular credits", but rather "tongue in cheek credits" that are part of the story, thanking all the historical "actors", and all the players involved in the making of the wonderful objects and buildings of the Golden Age, and of the show itself. These would run over the Communio.