Recognition is important.
Whether you're breaking barriers
or riding the coattails of an Internet superhero,
at the end of the day,
the winner is still the biped holding a trophy.
What words are actually etched on that trophy
is not as relevant as you might think.
Take for instance the case of the totally niche and obscure
reality competition, The Great British Bake Off.
Its brand of congenial elimination
of aggressively plain-looking amateur bakers
worked well in its native United Kingdom.
But when it came time to import the show to America,
a lot of cultural translation had to be considered.
These are two countries divided by absolutely nothing in common.
In the US they don't like it when a drama series is titled
that word.
And in the UK they get all weird
when you tell them your autograph costs two pounds.
But even after two bastions of progressiveness,
PBS and... Netflix,
made the brave choice to air the UK version in America,
there was still a problem.
A certain gentle food brand
owned by a series of conglomerates
tends to be touchy about its intellectual property.
They once forced a small business owner in Salt Lake City
to change the name of her bakery
so that it doesn't diminish the brand value
of this corporate icon.
[CD]: Yo, I thought your name was Poppin' Fresh.
Whoa man, what the hell?
[CD]: I'm sorry!
They also happen to hold a trademark
on the term "Bake-Off" in the United States.
(And any future conquered planets, in perpetuity.)
So you see, there's absolutely no way
and TV show could be called "Bake-Off" in America.
The title had to be modified.
And modified it was,
in the graphics packages...
In the editing...
[audience cheers]
And even by having the hosts
perform an alternate take
of each episode's opening sketch.
Whoa...
But hey, that doesn't change the substance of the show.
The human moments, the skills on display,
the thrill of competition,
the name on the trophy... well, no.
That part did have to change, too.
In an amazing feat of visual due diligence,
the show title etched on the glass cake stand
presented to the winner in the final of each series
is meticulously replaced
in the early episodes for the US audiences.
Look at that.
And that.
And even that little bit there, wow!
It's a real testament to...
corporate pedantry, I guess?
I don't know. I hate this.
I hate that someone had to put effort into
something so utterly pointless!
But such is the life of a visual effects artist.
Sometimes you're asked to solve strange problems.
So let's see how we might deal with a similar one,
in the unlikely event that it were ever to happen.
The first task is of course to track the motion
of the object containing the infringing design.
If there's enough detail, we might be able
to do a planar track.
But all the transparency will likely keep throwing things off.
And planar tracking just blindly mimics
the distortion of the surface anyway.
3D object tracking might be a better approach.
But getting a decent solution from a handful of points
on a small, barely-moving flat plane
is almost impossible.
Unless... you know their exact coordinates
in relation to each other
and the camera lens' field of view.
Yes! We're in!
Now there's nothing we can't put on this plate.
All that's left is to get rid of the existing design.
And here the shoddy engineering
of the human visual cortex gives us an advantage.
Because it will be busy perceiving the newly added element
we only need to give a hint of the background
visible through the glass.
So using a copy of the original design as a matte,
let's just blur things a bit...
And bam!
No infringement intended.
Oh my gosh. It's like a dream.
What can I say?
I've always dreamed about this and now the dream has come true.
Dreams do come true!
But I'm not dreaming anymore. I'm wide awake.
I'm Capta--
I can't wait to get home and get some sleep.
And dream!
♪♪