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Basic Green Screen Background Effects

May 6, 2012 by Raul Colon

RIMG0006-e1336264972900 Basic Green Screen Background Effects

This guest post was inspired when Bianca Estrada (@biancaest) shared with me what they had created for the videos @PayasaAgapita & Che Che are creating. We set up a time on a saturday evening and we quickly set up the green screen at my office. The lighting was not the most appropriate so feel free to blame me with the effect on the video.

Here is Bianca’s guest post and explanation ^Raúl

Creating a video using green screen is very easy, and you can achieve it with a very low budget.

I manage Payasa Agapita’s projects and events. I like to innovate and create funny skits using technology.  Our inspiration to use a Green Screen emerged from creating videos for Payasa Agapita.

Why Use a Green Screen Background?

Making videos is fun, but each time we create a skit for a video, so many ideas come to mind which translates into different scenery. Recreating scenery each time we film is something difficult to achieve on a very low budget. At the same time, I do not want to limit the space or environment to one place because my wish is that each video offers something completely different.

iMovie

I use iMovie for video editing. This software is included in my Apple computer and I didn’t have the intentions of using another software without verifying what iMovie could do. And yes, iMovie works with Green Screen without installing anything else. Thank you, Steve Jobs!

Items you will need

RIMG0005-1024x768 Basic Green Screen Background Effects

– Any video camera: With capability of transferring files to your computer. Avoid using VHS, please!

– Neon green fabric: You can find it at any fabric store. You don’t need a specific green, just try to get it as close to the color as the one in the picture.

– Good-looking actors: Ok, if you are not as lucky then any person can participate 😉

– Mac computer with iMovie ’11: If you are using a past version, the instructions may be a little different for you.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Hang up the fabric and try to avoid light reflecting in the back of the green screen. You can hold it with tape depending where you will be using it. I held our green screen fabric to the wall with tape. Don’t worry about folding marks; it won’t be noticed in the final work. Just avoid hard shades.

Regarding clothes, actors should not wear green. (editor’s note: or anything close to Green as I did in our intro video) If so, you will have problems during the editing process

Having said that… Let’s film!

Thanks to Artifex creation for the background picture.

 

Editing and Final Product

As I said previously, these instructions respond to iMovie ’11. At iMovie, click iMovie > Preferences and then click on “Show Advanced Tools”. That allows more functions within the software.

1. Look for the picture that will substitute the green screen. I recommend a picture with no people because when you insert the clip, it will look strange that some people move and others (the ones at the pic) are frozen. It can be a park, a lounge, a beach, or anything you might need.

2. Place the picture at the video-editing space of the software. Give it more time than the overall clip duration.

3. Drag the green screen clip and drop over the picture, at the beginning of it. It will show you some options and you will select “Green Screen”.

The green screen effect is done and you can see it. Later you can modify the beginning and end, include other things in your video or crop something. But regarding the green screen effect, it is done.

Hope you have fun creating videos at “different places”. Included is a video with Payasa Agapita and Che Che that was filmed using green screen.

 

Filed Under: Featured, Guest Posts Tagged With: Bianaca Estrada, Guest Post, Payasa Agapita

Facebook Security by @tommyismyname

June 6, 2011 by Lucilla Feliciano

Screen-shot-2011-06-06-at-11.09.09-AM Facebook Security by @tommyismyname

Guest post by @tommyismyname.

This is post 6 on the Online Privacy Please! series I am writing to share my thoughts on issues of online privacy written by a good online friend @tommyismyname.

Personal security online has been boiled down to one of two vague threats: either someday your future employer will find that embarrassing photo from three years ago and decide not to hire you, or Advertisers will sell your information. Let’s be realistic and look at the real risks involved here.

Facebook is a very public place, and even with high security settings on your profile, you are still either putting self-incriminating information online, or you aren’t. If you take a moment to realize that Facebook people and real people are the same people, you’ll also realize there are some folks you can trust with all your information, some you can trust with some of it, and some you can’t trust at all. The best rule to follow is that if you don’t want your information to be in anyone else’s hands, don’t put it on the Internet. That being said, this is the Age of Sharing and people have come to expect a certain level of sharing (or Over sharing in many cases) that includes updates on our thoughts and activities, pictures of our family members, food, vacations, you name it: it seems like everyone expects to see everything.

But.

This is your decision to make.

Your information is yours, sharing anything with Facebook friends is your call.

Set Your Own Parameters

On October 31, 2010, my 7lb 8oz. son was born at 9:30 a.m. Within 90 minutes, my fiancée and I both had requests -no, demands– from friends who wanted us to post pictures of the little guy on Facebook. We’ve had actual arguments with family members over our choice not to post his photos online. We have become so accustomed to over sharing to the point of dissention when someone chooses not to provide information. My feeling is that our son may grow up to be a private kind of guy who doesn’t want his picture everywhere, or he may not care, but either way my role is to protect that choice for him until he can decide for himself.

Our way of thinking isn’t for everyone, but I share that story hoping that it will encourage you to consider the implications of putting your information, or someone else’s, on Facebook. With lax security settings, a picture can be shared to the far reaches of the Facebook universe. Substitute “photo” with “work history” or “home address” and you start to understand the need to think ahead about what you truly want to make available to the world. (The Facebook Privacy Policy is an enlightening read.)

Once you’ve decided what is and isn’t fit for public consumption, update your “Privacy Settings” and “Account Settings” (both located in the dropdown menu on the top right of the home page, after you log in) accordingly. They can work in tandem if you pay attention to what you’re doing. For instance, you might add your phone number and adjust your privacy levels so that only your Facebook friends can see it.

Adjusting Account Settings

Under “Account Settings,” you’ll find tabs where you can enter basic information and set preferences on the way Facebook contacts you. In order to control whether this information (like your phone number) is made public, you must then make appropriate changes to your Privacy Settings. Account Settings tabs are as follows:

Settings is where you would put the most basic information like your name, email address, etc. Networks is where you could originally affiliate yourself with your university, and now includes work networks as well.

Notifications allows you to permit or decline additional alerts when something happens on your facebook. You can get an email, text, or both for almost any reason that involves you. The list is extensive, so if you permit all of them you could potentially receive hundreds of “extra” alerts per day.

Mobile is where you enter your phone information and control if and how Facebook uses the information to contact you.

Language is very simply a choice of your primary language.

Payments is important if you choose to invest real money into virtual games, apps, or services offered through Facebook

Facebook Ads is complicated and seems at this point to be a preemptive setting. Facebook doesn’t currently allow third party advertisers to use privately owned images for advertising purposes, but in case they decide to (hint, hint) you may decide now whether they may share it with no one, or just your friends. Additionally, you may update the permission for using your name in social actions here. (Insert here a screencap of ad example from this link http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?ads&pane=social)

Adjusting Privacy Settings

Once you have entered the basic information and preferences here as well as on your profile (things like your hometown, family members, workplace, birthday, and so on) head on over to the Privacy Settings page. Privacy settings are deceptively easy to update; with the click of the mouse, you can make all of your personal information, photos, and wall posts public to:

Everyone, which really does mean everyone with a Facebook account. If a potential employer searches Facebook for you as part of a background check and your settings allow everyone to see your profile, nothing will be held back from their perusal.

Friends-of-friends, which means anyone that any of your friends is friendly with on Facebook. So that still could be your potential employer, that guy you turned down for a date, or your best friend from fourth grade who you haven’t seen in twenty years.

Friends, which means those folks with whom you have sent/accepted friend requests.

Facebook has a “Recommended” set of privacy settings which mixes all three options to allow some information to remain between you and your friends, and things like your photo and status updates to be visible to everyone. “Custom” and “Other” settings work together to allow you to add exceptions to rules. This is my personal favorite, as I can allow my friends to see my contact information except for those folks who I know would abuse the privilege.

The “Privacy Settings” page is also where you will be able to adjust permissions for applications, update your list of blocked users, and review Facebook’s explanation of its privacy controls.

Why Applications Matter

Applications come in the forms of games, tests, quizzes, and any number of other interactive activity. They are owned by third party companies, crafted to run on the Facebook platform, and in order to use them you must allow them varying levels of access to your information. Applications do let you know what they are looking at when you first use them, and you have the option to accept or decline the use of the application if you don’t like what they’re planning.

Alternatively, you can accept their “required” permissions and then change it to suit your privacy preferences. Or, if you find an app has pulled a bait-and-switch (as some will) and started spamming your newsfeed or posting on your wall (as a small number have done) you can remove them via the “Privacy Settings” page. You can review the apps you use and adjust the access levels for each individual application. You can also remove apps that you don’t use anymore in order to stop them from continuing to access your information.

Protect Your NewsFeed

If you have information that isn’t fit for 100% of your facebook population, you have a couple of sharing options available to you.

Let’s say for example that you don’t particularly want potential employers to find your status update remarking on your crazy weekend in Cabo. Before hitting “submit” on the status update, click the tiny image of a lock next to the submit button. This allows you to customize the privacy settings on that single post. You can set it to “friends only,” or, if it’s your grandma you hope to protect from your wild ways, you can choose to show it to everyone but her. (And your mother. She doesn’t want to know.)

Going a step further, let’s say you had a batch of pictures from the trip that you’d like to share with the twenty people who were there, but not the 400 people on your friend list. Facebook Groups have been restructured to be their own sub-network. You can create a group by adding the people who were on your vacation, post those photos to the group, and the pictures will only show up in the newsfeeds of the folks in the group. It’s quicker if you have a large, but exclusive, group of people to share with. Facebook groups also have three different settings

Public: Anyone can search, join, and interact in the group with no restrictions.

Private: People can search, but must request to join the group.

Secret: Only the person who created the group initially knows it exists. All members must be invited. Does not appear in the search and only exists to it’s members. (recommended option for that Cabo trip, family photos, or sharing semi-secure information)

A Word About Advertisers

In the introduction to this entry I mentioned the strange threat of advertisers using your information to sell to you, and it’s 100% likely that that is happening, but not in the way you think. Your likes, interests, and demographic information is how advertisers reach you on Facebook. An advertiser on Facebook doesn’t see “Mary Smith from Washington, DC, likes CareBears, Gummy Worms, and has a family of five.” Instead, he figures, “Anyone who has a family probably needs life insurance,” and targets his ad for the general population, specifically anyone who has entered family information or “liked” certain family-related pages.

Some folks are bothered by the concept of targeting based on likes and interests, but I think it’s great. I’m more likely to be shown an advertisement for a product or service that truly applies to me, and that’s fine. With me.

It’s fine with me, and I hope it becomes fine with you, because we have the ability -the power, if I may be so cheesy- to protect our information to whatever degree we see fit. Share everything with the world, share nothing with anyone, or find a happy medium: the most important thing to know is that you have the choice, and that you can tailor your usage to the degree that you see fit.

 


This is post was created by tommytwitteravatar-211x300 Facebook Security by @tommyismynameOnline Marketing Strategist Tommy Walker.

If you have questions, leave a comment here or keep the conversation going with Tommy on Twitter at@tommyismyname.

Filed Under: Featured, Guest Posts, Online Privacy Tagged With: Confidentiality, Facebook, Online Privacy, Online Privacy Please, Social Media Risks, Threats and Risks, TMI, Too Much Information

Happy Birthday Daddy!

April 23, 2011 by Lucilla Feliciano

Happy-Birthday-Daddy Happy Birthday Daddy!
Daniela trying to hold the card in her hand.

Today Raul celebrates his 31st birthday. We just wanted to take the time out to say that we love him very much and appreciate everything he does. He is a great father to Daniela and loves our dog JuanGa.

Daniela can’t write because she is only four months old, but her smile lets Raul know, that she loves him very much.

So please join our family in saying Happy Birthday to Raul.

Filed Under: Blog, Family, Featured, Guest Posts Tagged With: Happy Birthday, Raul Colon

“Killer Ads”

January 25, 2011 by Raul Colon

guest post by @slayerkun

222172471_e8280f9593_z "Killer Ads"

Since last month, many things have been happening in Puerto Rico.

The University of Puerto Rico strike has continued and crime is rampant.
This has become our reality, many of us down here, often ignore this, but it is getting out of hand lately. It concerned me so much that I  to took the time to write this.

I choose “Killer Ad” as the title because that is literally what I want to address. The media in Puerto Rico should stop “advertising” crime. Apparently crime here is so glorified that it needs to be in the front page of every newspaper.

Media people of Puerto Rico, you need to stop disrespecting people. You are showcasing criminals on your front page, as if they were some kind of hero, anti-hero, or who knows what.

Yesterday’s newspaper highlighted a horrible crime with an even more disturbing headline. It was so morbid that I will not repeat it. But the newspaper that wrote this should be ashamed of it self. Unless their objective is to glorify crime and incite hate there are a many more things going on on the island, than putting the spotlight on that type of trash.

On december they had a deadline that read “26 deaths to reach a 1000”. instead of reading this as a news headline, I interpret it as an invitation to meet the goal of 1000 deaths. An incitation so powerful that exalted the fact that we were about to reach 1000 murders as if we were proud of this. I know is these things are happening, but do they really need to put this stuff on the front pages and also include morbid headlines.

The incitation between the letters is an excellent medium to insert and idea.

We all know an idea is a powerful force.

This is not a crusade against the media or nothing like it, but we should be sensible to these things. Right now I consider that our society needs a lot help ,we are so the detached from life that we choose to ignore whats happening.

The media people in Puerto Rico should stop profiting from this, selling death in 2011 shouldn’t be a topic. Its morally wrong. We know that sick individuals, exist, but should we give them the exposure they are getting.

Crime is not a road to stardom; newspaper front pages  should include a positive touch every now and then, instead of spotlighting the obituary. We have the power to get a message across, a message where we can demand change. Sometimes I take my time to discuss this things with my friends. But never have I sat down to take this to another level.

If you have read other posts I have written about they are aligned to marketing, and this is no different, but this aspect of marketing is a wrong one. And we need it to stop, and the best way too do this is to stop supporting establishments that expose us to too trash.

Should we throw the trash away, or should we keep it?

How can we get the message thru to the media that we are tired of their morbid antics?

To learn more about the Author feel free to follow Dwight on twitter @slayerkun

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Politics, Puerto Rico Tagged With: Politics, Puerto Rico

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