(Drum roll)
Greetings children, Captain Disillusion here and,
boy, do I have a fun topic for you today!
Some might think this one's for the birds,
but when it comes to the world's largest living bird, I say we better catch the early worm!
(Laugh)
Check out this insane video of ostriches skiing the slopes like pros!
What?
My mind is getting blown harder and harder with every inrun, every takeoff and every knoll!
How'd they do it?
(Smash)
I'm pretty sure ostriches can't be trained to ski.
But even if they could, why would a ski resort let you put one on a ski lift?
Let alone endanger... (Fades out)
(Piano music in background) Man, YouTube used to be cool...
Seriously, when those three guys started YouTube in their garage in 2005,
it was about something real.
Then Google bought it, whenever that was, and has just been running it into the ground ever since...
It's like, stop making improvements that make this the best video sharing platform in the world
and focus on what really matters.
Ensuring that every single subscriber sees every single thing I post, every single time!
Is that so much to ask?
I mean, just because people now subscribe to hundreds and hundreds of channels
doesn't mean we need to employ some sort of
"algorithm" to curate the avalanche of content in their massive subscription feeds...
And we should definitely not give them the option of overriding this algorithim with a single button.
Oh, I hate that bell so much!
(Fades in) -that video absolutely must be fake but,
to figure out exactly what we're dealing with,
our first question should be:
"Just, where does this video come from?"
It's actually one of several promotional spots created for
a campaign called "Japan Snow Project".
In an attempt to revive the country's dwindling snow leisure market in 2004,
the three major transportation carriers responsible for access to ski resorts
(Japan Railway East, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways)
teamed up to sponsor this light-hearted series of ads,
which borrowed the already popular ostrich character from the previous year's campaign by JR-EAST.
The videos were produced by the Tokyo-based creative agency "Tugboat"
and filmed by the Tohokushinnsha Film Corporation under the supervision of Hideyuki Tanaka,
an art director with a strong background in... CGI character animation.
Now, it's easy to just file this under "it's CGI" and move on to the next viral video
but that kind of attitude doesn't really help us become more... (Fades out)
The thing that no-one seems to understand, because they don't know about
the button I have that shows all the charts,
is that the videos of some of my fellow content creators
are being recommended less and less.
It's that damned algorithm!
What else could it be?
It's the only thing that's been changing recently
according to... well, not YouTube but,
anecdotal evidence from my fellow content creators.
I know what hasn't been changing.
Our viewers.
Good old, unchangeable, predictable, simple-minded YouTube viewers.
They don't have the capacity to grow, to evolve their tastes towards something objectively better and
reshape the trends of media consumption.
So they certainly don't need to be included as a variable in my complicated theory
about how the youtube algorithim is designed to [BLEEP] over me and my fellow content creators!
(Fades in) ...and of ourselves.
So, were these ads possible to make with the limited visual effects technology of 2004?
Well, that wasn't exactly the stone age.
Harry Potter 3, Spiderman 2, The Day After Tomorrow, The Aviator, Hellboy, Alien vs. Predator.
All came out in 2004
and all employed some form of placing CG models into live action environments.
Also, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Japan Snow Project, which ironically may have been filmed in New Zealand,
relied heavily on a visual effects technique known as
"Rig Removal".
It's an entire specialty in the craft of digital compositing.
Erasing props, structures and people from live action shots.
It can be as simple as covering up things that have been filmed at a stationary angle
with unobstructed moments in the footage,
or as complex as building a 3D replica of the environment and handpainting
missing background details.
After filming real skiers perform, maticulous rig removal was the
first step in the Snow Project visual effects process.
With clean background plates the filmmakers could now, theoretically,
put some other computer generated character in the stunt performers place!
But in order to animate this new character in a realistic way,
they first needed to re-create the motions of the camera and the performers in 3D.
To do that, they used motion... (Fades out)
My fellow content creators are being slightly affected by a temporary problem
and I need to take action!
I should complain...
...to my viewers about this very relatable problem.
Maybe a dramatic threat to delete my channel when I reach 300,000 subscribers?
Which, because of my reputation for being goofy and ironic with my viewers,
the rest of the world will totally understand as a joke.
That's it, as soon as I'm done here, I'll make the video that finally-
What the-?
Someone beat me to it!
Who is this "Pew Die Pie"?
And where does he get off?
50 million subscribers?
Oh, boo hoo, cry me a river.
Here's what I think about your millionaire problems!
(Fades in) ...point, the exact camera angles and lighting are locked in
freeing the artists to focus on animation.
But even so,
these "animated" ostriches are just a little too real, aren't they?
How did a small tourism promo achieve such natural feather simulations,
when even the most groundbreaking feature films of the same year
struggled to realistically depict that type of overlapping action?
The answer might be hidden in plain sight.
Intercut with the hero shots of the ostriches doing stunts,
are cutaways of them casually hanging out with other skiers.
In this group shot, a person convincingly pats the ostrich's body.
This very brief angle at a picnic table shows complex shadows
from the ostrich's torso and wings falling on nearby objects.
This would be extremely difficult to fake and unnecessary for such a throwaway moment.
And in this scene of the ostrich trying to fit through the ski lift gate,
he visibly pushes the railing,
the feathers interact with it
and the tail realistically bumps into the person behind.
And finally, a small imperfection,
perhaps the only imperfection in the entire series,
is visible.
Part of the shaking railing below
remains frozen.
It's a rig removal patch, hiding what was really there.
But why would only the area below the torso be hidden?
Unless this ostrich torso, with it's flapping wings and complex feathers,
is really there.
You know, like a puppet!
Or a realistic partial costume, perhaps
custom-made by one of a number of
special effects makeup companies
specializing in animal anatomy.
Come to think of it, real ostriches are a bit bigger than they appear in these ads.
But the torsos of these would seem to fit nicely on the shoulder area of a human performer.
And help the geometry of what happens in many of these shots make a lot more sense.
With this major visually complex part of the character taken care of in the photography,
the rig removers only need to worry about erasing the performer's limbs,
the match movers have a nice, large object on which to track and solve the motion
and the animators only need to add solid-textured heads and legs to the image.
Which is exactly what they did after
capturing detailed reference images of a real ostrich in a studio
and using them to texture an animated 3D model.
Hey, I never said it was easy.
But as usual, the most convincing effects came from combining the practical
and the digital.
As viewers, we might be familiar with any one technique... (Fades out)
Oh, looks like I'm not the only one poking fun at that guy.
Some people are being unreasonable though...
Whoa, okay, that article just called him straight-up racist.
That's over the line.
I'm starting to rethink my tweet.
And now my recent inexplicable influx of gamer fans
are turning on me.
Perfect.
I hope they never find out the only video games I've ever played are
Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, Back to the Future and Portal 2
When will this year be over?
In the end, these ostrich clips accomplish what
few viral ads and no OK Go videos other that first one managed to do.
Impress me.
But now I'm afraid it's time for me to go, kids.
Remember, love with your heart,
use your head for everything else.
Captain Disillusion!
Whoa, girl, whoa!
Hi ho, catchico, Away!
(Laugh)
Maybe beating the YouTube algorithm isn't up to me.
And if I just keep making stuff,
to the best of my ability,
at a pace I'm comfortable with,
my audience will seek me out against all odds.
And enjoy every silly moment because
it's just binary data.
On a website owned by a company
based in a country on a continent of a small planet.
It could all be gone...
Like that.
(Click)