Tal Yarden: Multimedia Ringmaster
100 Hours of Video
After the storyboard stage, Yarden created and assembled the individual video components to be used during the production. “For all of the Ring cycle productions combined, my crew and I will have shot, captured, edited, animated, and programmed over 100 hours of video,” Yarden says.
The images include video clips taken from Van Hove’s previous Ring operas, new footage shot expressly for this production, and computer-generated content—some of which is derived from the online virtual world Second Life.
Yarden and a colleague created some of the Second Life video using their own avatars to stand in for the actors. “We created outfits that match what they wear onstage, to some extent,” he says, “and I captured video from my MacBook Pro to the Mac Pro using a Black Magic Intensity HDMI capture card.”
Once Yarden had gathered the video assets he needed, he used Final Cut Studio to test out different options and quickly change elements. “Final Cut Studio was essential to the work I did,” he says. “With these multichannel videos, I worked with multiple tracks so I could line up or synchronize images. I turned tracks on and off, and varied the opacity to see how the visuals would work together. And as I modified the color settings and effects, I could easily drag the same attributes to other clips on different tracks.”
Setting It in Motion
The last step was to assemble the final composition using Motion. “It’s a great tool,“ Yarden says. “It’s hard to imagine completing this project without Motion. I used very few effects here, but every video needed to be correctly sized and positioned to match up with the screen placement in the video wall design.”
Motion’s built-in tools provided both speed and flexibility. “I’ve discovered the joys of drop zones—these are in the object menu,” he says. “If I decide that a certain clip wouldn’t work on one screen and I want it on a different one, it's very easy for me to replace it by dragging another clip and dropping it on the old one. Motion automatically replaces the new footage in the same place, with the same coordinates.”
For Götterdämmerung, Yarden created a 1920 x 1080 HD master, inserting a mask showing the entire screen wall as a locked layer, then adding a layer for each individual screen. He positioned clips wherever he wanted on the template, ultimately rendering the final product as a compressed master.
“To get a lot of content onto a small drive at HD resolution, we have to compress it, but we still want it to look good,” says Yarden. “With Compressor, I can do that. And when I'm not working in traditional screen ratios, I use Compressor to create a custom setting. It also allows me to create other kinds of custom settings and actions, including re-timing, gamma and saturation adjustments, and batch rendering of multiple clips.”
Complex Serving Made Simple
Yarden shipped the finished master to Stijn Slabbinck, owner of Fisheye, a Mac-based Belgian multimedia company. Using a Mac Pro and a custom application he wrote, Slabbinck cut up Yarden’s video masters as individual QuickTime clips and reassembled them so the images would display properly across the screens.
Throughout the opera, a single technician uses a MacBook Pro backstage to control the network of 16 Mac mini computers that work as video servers for the 66 screens in the array. “During the performance, it’s just one person pressing a button on a MacBook Pro,” says Yarden. Each Mac runs Fisheye’s show-controlling application, Syncbunny, to serve the video to various screens at the appropriate times.
Yarden sees a real technical advantage in using Macs to control and serve video onstage. “It makes sense to go to Mac for that part as well,” he says. “It's just a natural extension to what I’m doing in the creative process, and there's a very fluid movement anytime I'm making last-minute changes in clips or things like that. I just know it's going to work.”
Götterdämmerung wraps up a three-year commitment for Yarden to design video for all four of Van Hove’s Ring cycle operas, and he’s looking forward to working with Van Hove and Versweyveld on future projects. “I’m really fortunate that I get to collaborate with the directors from the conception of the production,” he says. “It means that my video work is very deeply integrated into the piece at every level.”
As new projects present further opportunities for technological envelope-pushing, Yarden’s past accomplishments demonstrate that he and his Macs will not only rise to the challenge, but exceed expectations. “We’re always testing the limits of technology and what’s possible, and looking for new and interesting ways to work with it,” says Yarden. “I taught myself every computer skill I have using Macs, including numerous graphics and video programs. Macs have always given me the feeling that I can figure anything out.”
