Eye 2.0

Ahoy mateys,

As mentioned in the last post, the original take of the eye close-up was too unstable to use, so I've had to rerecord it. I found this Joby adjustable tripod thing I have laying around, and arranged the most professional camera setup you've ever seen in your life:

(Yes, I took a snapshot of a camera. THAT MIGHT CAUSE A PARADOX OF SOME KIND.)

Reasoning behind this mess of a setup:

• 3DS box to raise the camera to a reasonable height, so I don't have to damage my neck to catch the eye.
• Tripod to avoid shaky cam, as previously mentioned.
• Computer to playback the original clip, as reference for when to blink etc.
• Plectrum wallet, broken mobile phone and loose change because I don't have enough pride to clear up to take a snapshot. 

So, what does it look like now? Compare the first version (up first) to the second version (1:19) - 

There are still some problems - there's still some unwanted movement, though this is down to my head rather than the camera (it's nearly impossible to keep my head still for a minute straight) and I do blink out of place at times (this is a problem with my eyes in general - they're more sensitive to light than they should be, to a point where every optician I've ever seen has had difficulties examining them as they close whenever they use their little torch thing...). I don't think that's too big of an issue though; in the original clip it looks like the eye movements were improvised to meet the comfort of the person in the shot, so if they rerecorded another take of it, it would probably have looked different.

Comfort, however, is not something I could describe the filming process as; the version in the video is probably the fifth/sixth take of this I did before I got something even close to usable as everything else was slightly out of frame - this means moving my eye somewhat in sync over and over and over and over and over etc.. I now have a headache. Fun.

I did find out a way of avoiding the out of frame issue after a while, though - remember how last year I made numerous jokes about how I like Apple products because they're shiny? Turns out the shininess has a practical use. In MPEG Streamclip, the viewer is black before the video is playing; I was able to see the reflection of the screen on the camera in this black box, which made it easier to line my eye up, before tapping space to start the playback.

-HM.