OC VIDEO - HOW I MADE IT

Mon, 28 Oct 1996 22:54:38 GMT
Source: Paul Vigay (by way of Erik Beckjord)
To lists, from Paul V.:

(note, if this seems all a bit much, I have been under the weather, under attack by Grasshopper Warbler, and under funded, so the messages re this important video have piled up.)

For those who haven't seen it yet, I have produced a computer generated version of the video sequence. For those who don't know me, I've been researching the crop circle mystery for the past six years and work as a professional computer programmer, partly in the world of computer graphics. I have produced graphics and effects for video and TV.

For reference, and for those who haven't seen my version, I visited the field later in the day, after creation and filmed some ten minutes of footage on a Hi-8mm camcorder. This was for my own research and reference. However, subsequently, when it was revealed that JW had filmed the event, I viewed his video and declared it a hoax (I won't go into why as I've already reported on this), but still some people seemed to insist that it was genuine and that it would be impossible to fake such a video. To this end, I decided to produce my own version, entirely using computer graphics and animation - just to see how difficult it really would be. Being a computer programmer I was able to write my own animation software, as I couldn't find any suitable 'commercial' software. This may be one reason why people say it can't be done.

I took a sequence of footage from my original 8mm tape and digitised it into the computer to obtain a static colour 'scan' of the field in question - in broad daylight and containing the completed crop circle. I then darkened the video to make it look like early morning. This was easy, using a standard 'grey' fade set to approx 85% fadeout. I then re-scanned this into the computer. I then 'painted' out the crop circle using a paintbox package, so as to obtain a field with no crop circle in it.

Having obtained a 'blank' field in the computer, I then wrote a small program to take a real-time video source (my original 8mm tape) and do a circular fade of the computer image with no crop formation. I did this in three parts to replicate the JW video. ie. the main circle appears, then the outer circles and finally the pathways. The computer handled all the animation sequence here and I recorded the output onto VHS tape. I recorded onto standard VHS tape and not professional tape so that the graininess of the copy would make the end result look more authentic. This gave me a VHS video copy of the crop formation appearing in the field. I now needed to add the balls of light.

Adding the balls of light was the easiest job, again, having written my own computer software. I played the VHS tape of the crop formation appearing (in approx 3 seconds) through the computer and whilst it was going through the computer I moved the mouse around the screen to trace out the movement I wanted the balls to take. I could edit the path if I made mistakes. The computer stored the mouse movements and allowed me to re-play the sequence, substituting a 'ball of light' for the previous mouse movements. I then re-played it and edited it until 'I liked the result'. At this stage I could also edit the fade between video and computer, to make the balls of light seemingly grow dim or brighter depending on position. Again, I replayed the sequence in the computer until I liked it. When complete, and I was happy with it, I then re-recorded the whole thing back onto VHS tape - being careful to simulate the correct field information in each frame (this is manually controlable on my computer system).

The whole sequence took me just under three hours to produce from start to finish, and includes camera-shake and camera-movement to follow the balls of light around the field - which the original JW video did not. In all, I was reasonably pleased with it, and I could certainly produce a better version given a longer time. I deliberately rushed it because I wanted to see just how quick it would take to produce acceptible results.

Free copies of my 'computer created' version are available by sending me a blank VHS tape and return postage. Only PAL versions are available.

A full report and analysis of the original JW video will be in the next issue (number 11) of my Enigma magazine (see my web page, below, for selected articles from previous issues).

|aul - using ANT Marcel v1.09

Acorn Archimedes Programmer/Consultant and Paranormal Investigator
WWW homepage: http://rainbow.medberry.com/enigma/index.html

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