Mission Statement (woohoo)
So I’m headed back to grad school to research 3d imaging and display technology. I’m mainly doing really sciency stuff (like using digital holography to identify microorganisms). I used to do a lot of video stuff but have been out of the loop for awhile but wanted to do a project I could do on my own pace and that would also help me learn more about 3d imaging and would be fun at the same time.
The idea for this project came out of boring meetings where my mind would wander. I’ve always loved Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit song – it’s one of the trippiest thing out there. It wasn’t long before the idea of the best acid trip soundtrack merged with the idea of making a 3d (technically stereoscopic, but we’ll get there in due time) movie. The 3d method I’m employing here is the old school Red/Cyan glasses approach. The glasses work so that only Red color passes through the Red filter and Cyan light passes through the Cyan filter. By slightly offsetting the positions of each eye’s image, the seen image can be altered to appear at different depths.
Back on track… I had the perfect acid trip song… I had the perfect acid trip viewing method… I just needed the perfect acid trip visuals/storyline. Alice in Wonderland is obviously the primary influence of the song, but I’ve never been much of a fan of the material (what can I say, the movie scared me as a kid – I was a wimp!) and it’s been done a lot (there are many cool YouTube videos of various Alice imagery set to WR). Playing a video game one day, it hit me! Mario! Mushrooms make you bigger, mushrooms make you smaller. Fits the source. Plus, many have accused the game’s wacky setting and characters on a high high high Miyamoto. I also liked the idea of working with video game sprites. There are many great user groups out there who have done a lot of work with sprites, so I hope I can make this video within a couple of months.
That’s it for now. Yup, I’ll probably be using this rambling style for the whole of this blog so I apologize if you find it off putting. Hopefully I can put together a fun little video here and the coolest thing is if my efforts can inspire some people to say “I can do much better than that schmuck!” and back up their words with awesome videos.
Enjoy!
-Bobbo
