Skill/Ability: Live Video Production

WhoWeAm is an online blog and research project, developed by the Imaging Research Center, that focuses on better understanding human behavior through aggregating contemporary scientific data along with documentary film making. It seeks to find common threads between our best scientific understanding and the reflected thoughts of individuals. There has been many iterations of this project over the last few years, and I have contributed to various aspects of production including media research, creative direction, 2D animation/compositing and most recently as a cameraman and lead editor. Some of the films I have edited are shown here, but additional media may be found at whoweam.com.

Playing Pericles: Shakespeare for Social Change, was a collaborative effort in experimental theater between the departments of Theater, English and the Imaging Research Center. As its grounding premise, the project explored notions of play and the role of imagination in guiding all production decisions. The undergraduate actors performed all roles using a variety of children’s toys, kneeling around a short table in front of a small audience. I was the Creative Director of the project and was charged with both designing and producing the visuals, as well as overseeing the process of chroma-keying live action with animation throughout the entire performance. The performances were filmed against a green screen and composited in real-time against these animated backdrops, which were dynamically projected onto a screen hanging above the actors. For the resulting performances, the IRC’s production studio was converted into a black box style technical theater. The performance ran for 3 days in May 2010. More information can be found here.

The Imaging Research Center participated in the visualization of the UMBC Campus Master Plan Update process and presentation. Using an extensive 3D model of campus which I help manufacture several years before, we created three visualizations: a highly rendered animation showing future buildings; video motion tracking showing future buildings in live video settings, and a cutting-edge augmented reality display of the campus to illustrate over-arching campus planning themes.