Experimenting with Poser Video
 

Below are some little video clips of my experiments using the Poser program. These are not finished or refined in anyway, just experiments. In most cases as soon as I saw something was working I would abandon it because new ideas were constantly coming into my mind. I put them here simply so that other Poser fans might get some ideas and inspiration. Most are preview renders and not very hi-res.
1. Take a Chance on Me by Abba
In this little clip using a song by Abba I was trying an effect I saw long ago in Canadian film board film called "Pas de Deux" in which dancers left "trails" of themselves behind as they moved. I used video made in Poser and then composited in Premiere. I simply put the same video on a number of layers in Premiere and then staggered the start point of each layer several frames behind the upper layers. This gives the "trail" effect. Unfortunately I forgot to put the Poser video on a blue background so I had to use chroma key in Premiere instead of bluescreen. That makes it kind of fuzzy, but I learned that in future, if I intend to composite, always change the background color to pure blue. (Warning: for the "body factory" background some nude figures are shown).

 
2. Mimic Test with Dylan Thomas Reading "Fern Hill"
The new Poser 7 has a lip synching module built-in, which I haven't tried yet. I made this test with the "Mimic" program. One gives the program the location of the cr2 file for the figure, a wave file of the words spoken, and a text file of the words. Then mimic makes the mouth move to the words. It isn't perfect but it works. In general the movements tend to be a tiny bit late. I have found in other video experiments that the mind likes to see an action a frame or two earlier than the sound.

I have the whole video planned in my mind and it would be beautiful so I hope to get back to it. In the background would be scenes with boy figure of what the poet is describing. As the poet goes speaks his poem of reminisence he would gradually grow young until he matches the the age of the boy figure, and then grow old again in the last verse.

 
3. Dracula tests
Here I had an idea which I still think was a good one, although it would a huge amount of time: "illustrating" old time radio shows using Poser figures and Mimic. This is a tiny test using Orson Welles' radio production of "Dracula." I got the soundtrack, clipped a couple bits and used Mimic to make the figure talk. As usual, as soon as I saw it would work I went on to my next idea. It would take months to do the whole show and require more than one person, but it's still a cool idea for someone to try.

 
A few tests
These are from way back, before I even got started using Poser. They were made in Bryce when I was learning that program. I tried to get an airplane to take off and fly around. Also testing car movements.