Best Gift Ever

[Noedig]

Below is the first video I've done using the Canon 7D after using an HVX200 as my main camera.

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Shot using a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens.

The thing I'm most pleased about with this video has nothing to do with the 7D, but is the AE work I did on the verses at the end to make them look highlighted. None of those verses were highlighted in the original footage.

The thing I'm least happy about with the video is, since I don't have access to much for lenses I had to scale the verse shots waaaay up to fill the 1280x720 screen I was outputting to. It helped that I shot in 1080 but still... it resulted in less than sharp images.

Anyway... I enjoyed using this camera and am looking forward to other projects with it.

[Jim Klatt]

No prosthelytizing.

[Noedig]

Sorry... that was not my intent. Does this video break that rule? I realize the forum rules say you can't discuss religion... but does that also mean you can't showcase work you've done which may have a religious message? It was not posted to start a religious discussion, but rather to show work I did on the 7D.

[jonE5]

Im no longer religious, but i can appreciate the work here, and it does look good. Good job, what did you use for a white box, or white area at the beginning?

[Simon Höfer]

Posting a video like this is normally fine. Until a discussion starts and then it gets shut down :D

Video is looking good. Especially the highlights. Didn't look like AE to me, means job well done! Congrats :)

[Noedig]

The white background in the first two shots are simply a white sheet I used for the remote control car shot.

The first shot wasn't done with the 7D... it is simply an iStock image of a gift on top of a frame grab of the remote control car scene (before the car arrived of course). Using AE I added a bit of a fake shadow under the box to make it seem like it's sitting on the sheet and added the dolly... then I just slide the istock image out of the way and moved right into the remote control car shot.

[Noedig]

Simon... thanks for the comments.

The reality is the shots are so quick few people would be able to notice issues unless they slowed it down and went frame by frame.

Here are the before and after images.

Original footage from camera
http://muddyrivermedia.org/files/u2/original_shot.jpg

After AE
http://muddyrivermedia.org/files/u2/AE_output.jpg

I shot it in 1080... output to 720 but that still meant I had to scale the original footage almost 230% to get the closeup I desired. Not the best idea but it's all I could do with the lens I had. I was pretty sure that it would look fine in post for my needs.

The only other stuff I did to the original footage was mess around with the levels and add a cooling filter in AE. The highlighter was simply yellow vector paint with a 50% opacity and a multiply transfer mode. I did have to mess a bit with feathered masking and corner pinning to make the highlight layer match the verse lines when the pages were being turned.

While I have enjoyed using the 7D so far... nothing compares to the enjoyment I have tinkering around in AE. Simply a lovely program.

[davidpula]

Baby Jesus would definitely approve of this commercial.