Talkin’ Bout the Weather
As Mark Twain once remarked, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The exception is David Vinson, who does a lot about the weather all year long. Founder of Vinson Studios in Atlanta, Vinson distresses, warps, collages, and generally twists twisters in dozens of graphic sequences for The Weather Channel season after season.
Vinson began his broadcast career on a Quantel Paintbox at the Weather Channel in 1996, but opened his own studio in 2000 and now has an extensive roster of clients including: ABC, NBC, CNN, TNT, DirecTV, CN8: The Comcast Network, Russell Athletic, Ted Nugent, Philips Arena, Georgia Pacific Television, and most recently, the Atlanta Hawks. Anyone who has seen his work for any of these clients or who views his reel at www.vinsonstudios.com will see why Vinson’s work is in demand.
Unlike many graphic designers who discovered a career in motion graphics through computers, Vinson is a classically trained artist who spent many years working with traditional materials before jumping on a computer. He studied art in the United States and abroad to earn his BFA and was introduced to computer graphics while learning to set type on a classic Mac. This collision of art and computers helps explain Vinson’s layered design sense—half seamless visual effects and half multi-leveled collage drawn from many influences. But long before computers were on the scene, Vinson developed a passion for movies and visual effects. Like most American kids, he was enthralled by the early work of Lucas and Spielberg. “When I was nine, my dad bought me the illustrated screenplay to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I studied the special effects plates near the back of the book. I was always asking myself ‘how did they do that?’
Today, Vinson designs illusions of his own and recently met the challenge of emulating Hollywood feature effects on a TV budget. The project was a series of cross-promotional spots for The Weather Channel and 20th Century Fox. The package, designed for Extreme Weather Week, promoted The Day After Tomorrow, the 2004 summer blockbuster starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. The project began with a poster made for Tomorrow by BLT & Associates, a West Coast design team. “TWC Creative and Marketing came to me to take the poster and produce a spot that would closely match the poster,” he says. Vinson, a major user of Adobe After Effects™, decided to create the 3D elements in AE 6.5’s 2.5d space rather than full 3D software such as 3ds Max or Maya. “I built 3D scenes of flying over the ocean and completely demolished towns facing the horrific effects of massive flooding. All of the water originated as live elements, which were then stitched, retimed, and color corrected in AE. Instead of using a camera, I parented all of the elements to a 3D null and created a hinge for the tilt up. Only a few additional particles were created and comped in to give the work a more over-the-top feeling. I used the tried-and-true Particle World plug-in for the locked off elements, which were then placed on cards [2.5D layers] in the scene.”
Vinson has also created a raft of other motion graphics projects at his Mac-based home studio, which is capable of providing anything his clients, big and small, require. Recently, he traded in his four G4s for a single G5 Dual 2Ghz with 4GB of RAM. Previewing is done on a 23 inch Apple Cinema Display; a Medéa VideoRaid RTR 720GB Array via an Atto UL3D card is used for storage. “The key to my system is my baby: a DeckLink,” Vinson says. “It was the last 1.0 card when the 2.0s came out, ordered from ProMax. This card has never let me down! Friends ask me why don’t I upgrade the card and I reply, ‘Why should I? My 16-bit RAM previews are flawless. My realtime 10bit color correction in FCP is flawless.’”
Vinson’s pipeline is simple and all 16-bit. Input begins with Final Cut Pro™’s batchcapture to log shots. These end up on the Medéa RTR or Huge Systems array (at The Weather Channel) as 10-bit files. Vinson makes progressively refined rough cuts of a project before doing any compositing, including getting client approvals for timing and the choice of shots. The G5 allows this to be done at the highest quality. “All of this is done full res as I work on short-form work, so there is no need for me to proxy the shots. I then export reference movies to an After Effects 16-bit project. All pre-renders are 16bit After Effects projects. All pre-renders utilize Microcosm’s None16 codec [from Digital Anarchy]. Solids for masking, etc. are rasterized to minimize the banding effects. Final file is rendered to the None16 codec and then exported as a 10-bit Blackmagic file for output to tape.”
To preview all the work accurately, Vinson uses a Sony or Ikegami monitor in FCP or AE. Lately, Vinson has been using the added functionality offered in Blackmagic’s recent driver updates, namely the QT Video Out using QT Player Pro. This saves a step because previewing can be done without opening FCP while still having realtime preview on a monitor.
Vinson’s career is the fulfillment of what desktop video futurists were promising in the early 90s: the emphasis on the artist, not the facility. In the now rapidly shrinking facility paradigm of old, clients bought the ability to use powerful systems in expensive edit suites. The operators in these facilities were always touted as the “hot” Paintbox or Quantel artist, and many of them were. But in the real world, for instance illustration, clients choose artists based on a portfolio or from illustrators annuals or even art shows. Clients’ access to artists was not artificially restricted because of the economics of facility hardware. Today, clients have a hundredfold more artists to choose from, thanks to After Effects, Combustion, Macintosh, and Blackmagic Design. Competition is fierce, but only a few artists can master both the technical and even the deadline stress that goes with being an artist/engineer.
Vinson has his own take on being independent. “I remember getting a quote for a Discreet Flint three years ago. I could spend $110,000 on one system, or for $30,000 I could buy four Mac systems, all fully equipped with storage, I/O, Wacom, the works. Why should I put all of my money into one system when I may be on a job where I need to bring in additional talent? I don’t like the idea of sitting in an artist’s lap so we can share a Flint. I have actually seen plenty of post houses that have multiple shifts just so they could have their four artists share the two Infernos they had. Why not have a system for each artist? Plus, look at the number of large facilities that have shut down and how many smaller shops and independents have sprung up over the past five years. It’s all about empowerment, quality of work, and quality of life.”
David Vinson’s Seven Reasons for Buying a Blackmagic Card;
- Gives the power back to the artist! A starving artist can now afford to do what big-money post houses could afford when deck control was built into the card. Now there’s no need to lose a PCI slot or your sanity keeping up with which deck control card you’ll need.
- Embedded SDI audio. Need I say anything here? OK, I will. Keeps cable clutter to a minimum and makes monitoring a snap and setup extremely easy across platform card and codec; lets the artist decide if he likes his icons on the left or the right side of the desktop.
- AE RAM previews: even in 16-bit they work without a hitch.
- QT Player VOut: now preview your BM 10-bit QTs without having to use FCP or wait for an AE RAM Preview just to view a rendered spot in NTSC.
- RT color correction in FCP. It’s great for me to get the basic color grade for all of the shots right after ingest. Then I do all of my subtle color work in AE.
- RT dissolves, etc. in FCP.
- Grant Petty [President of Blackmagic] is just a swell guy! What company, especially in this industry, has a leader that will handle customer requests and technical support directly without hiding behind an 800 number and seven layers of automated menus? I remember my first call to Grant was in 1998 from The Weather Channel (don’t tell them the long distance call to Australia lasted over an hour!). I was inquiring about the D1 Desktop. We were beginning to use AE as a supplement to our Flint work, and we needed video out. Unfortunately, we bought Targa 2000 SDX cards instead. Things have definitely changed for the better these days.
