Behind the FL Sim-GT intro video

Before I even started a race, I had to decide what the race highlight videos would look like. Since I wanted the the blog to have a decent following, creating an impressionable brand for it was important. An intro spot was part of this. As with all sports broadcast on TV, network video and marketing departments consider this as well. You see it in the flashy network title graphics preceding a broadcast, which remind the viewer where they are tuning in.

With online content, viewers don't usually need reminding due to page titles, website addresses and one's own discretion which brought them to the content. However it's important to create a memorable impression upon the viewer, especially in video. With YouTube and the array of social networks, content of the 21st century has an ever growing audience. Connecting with just a handful of viewers then opens the doors to that audience.

Watch in high quality or HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCaqOsrM9BQ

By far the most challenging facet of creating the video was not the technical work, but fitting it within 15 seconds. I knew anything over 20 seconds was pushing it, so the extra 3 seconds (00:18 total) allowed me to squeeze in a bit more "punch". I used the 31st track from the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts IV, a series which is licensed for non-commercial use. The Ghosts album series and The Slip (free) are all used in FL Sim-GT videos.

I had found the stock fire footage on my Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 7 CD. While I'd never used stock footage before, it definitely set the tone for the video and helped me get on track.

Original stock fire footage, without color/contrast correction

In the beginning, I took the Flying Lizard Motorsports logo and added a couple filters: gaussian blur + brightness & contrast + HSL adjust. This gave it a similar look to the fire as it subliminally flashed before being revealed upon the Porsche paintjob.

The logo soon withers away with the fire, accomplished by using a "Min & Max" effect. This kind of melts the logo away over a couple seconds. Very nice way to fake as fire or even an ink bleed effect. The standout segment of the intro is when the Porsche comes into view in slow-mo, then while jetting off the rest of the scene turns  grayscale and blurs. In the film industry this might be accomplished with a combination of a CGI model upon digital green screen, but this wasn't easily possible in the simulation unless I changed every track texture to bright green! The method I had to use while simple in process and much less work, was still laborious.

Since this shot was roughly 1.3 seconds in length, it's amazing it worked at all. Every other frame required a mask in the shape of the Porsche. Since the angle of the car changed ever slightly as it moved away, this meant I couldn't simply resize the shape as the car got smaller. I had to do the grunt work, and made 7 individual masks.

These were overlaid upon a duplicate of the video segment, which was greyscale. The black mask revealed the color duplicate only within it's shape, and the effect came alive.

I didn't keep track of how many hours I put in exactly, but my estimate would be roughly 18 to 24, over the course of 2 days. 80% of the work was done in 1 day. Checkout some of the project screenshots below for an idea of it's scope.