Weirdly morphed Leadbelly photo "sings"
I was searching for Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on YouTube and stumbled across this video. They tried to make a photo of Leadbelly sing the words to the song using some weird morph animation technique. The result isn't just entirely unreal, it's completely freaky.
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Did the creator intend this to be so Lynchian?
Like a lost episode of Clutch Cargo!
Better than I expected. I thought it might be one of those horrifying animations featuring humanly-drawn lips that disfigured "shorts" of talking animals in the 40s. Gods, I hope none of those survived the studio garage sales.
This is really beautiful. Thanks! I'll definitely have to try this myself!
I can also imagine a really cool--and creepy--video for a song made using this technique! Still photos of the band members themselves could be used, or photos of other people/other bands (or babies, animals, statues, famous paintings...) It wouldn't be too hard to make a still photo of a guitar player appear to be "playing" the guitar either.
OK, Mona Lisa and Billie Holiday, here I come!
Might have helped more if the pic were of a more neutral expression to start with. Also, where are the eye movements? Almost no blinking, and no looking around or emotive expressiveness. Oh, well, its a start, I guess.
One huge problem is he doesn't blink. I was in a software seminar that got onto the topic of software controlling an image of a CGI human as an interface to users. The first draft of software the lips moved in sync with the voice synthesizer, but the eyes never blinked.
It freaked out the users
The next rev, they made the eyes blink at semi-random intervals and for semi-random durations, and users didn't have nearly as bad of a reaction.
Looks like one of those rubber-covered robots at Disney World.
I'm pretty sure this was made with a program called "Crazytalk" from Reallusion. You import a still - a drawing, real person, whatever - then use their tools to map the picture onto a basic 3d face shape. Then when you move the mouse around, the head "follows" it, and when you click the mouse button it blinks. When you import a soundtrack, the program analyzes the phonemes in the audio file and automatically contorts the lips to fit. It takes some clean-up to make it match sometimes, but it's a handy tool for machinima.
It's so lifelike! In that it's like they stole his soul, stuck it in a video, and it's trying to communicate the horror it is now undergoing.
This one is good for the live performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htMwu3hF8_E
It's got Pick a Bale of Cotton (after 1.5 minutes), one my Leadbelly faves!
Actually, Schick, the razor company, had an application on their website that did exactly this -- I assume it was the same program. Users could upload their pictures (or, in my case, pictures of their cat), and get a bizzaro-weird 3D "movie" of the picture, complete with turning of the head, mouth opening and eyes blinking.
The site now seems to have disappeared, but there's a (pretty dumb) video of it on YouTube here.
That aside, this is a great recording. I can't decide if I like it better than the Skip James piano version I have.
Can't sleep. Leadbelly will eat me.
The idea is pretty cool.. I imagine the effect would do better if the backdrop wasn't a grid of dots. It really steals from the illusion.
Plus, the blinking thing.
Doesn't take away from the song however, which is one of the best ever.
Xeni beat you to the concept, but that one is notably weird.
Neat effect - My favorite version of the song is Nirvana's acoustic MTV version. I thought for years that Leadbelly wrote this song, but I heard a few years ago that he was the first to record the song, which was sung as a folk song for years before he sang it. I have yet to confirm this though.
#4 nosehat,
Leave Billie alone, you sacrilegious scamp!
I love the concept. I reminds me of LBJ ordering pants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoNkwsAeXG4
To be fair, in the actual film footage linked to by Cupcake, Mr. Ledbetter keeps his eyes pretty fixed.
"Where Did You Sleep Last Night" is also known as "In the Pines" or "Black Girl."
My dear departed brother John used to collect versions of this song, the creepier the better. He would have loved this. (And used it to freak out the squeamish.)
re you sure this isn't how Dubya's sound bytes were done?
I always loved the Louvin Brothers' version of "In The Pines". (Not to mention their epic murder-ballad, "Knoxville Girl".)
@ Anonymous (#8):
Yeah, it's got to be Crazy Talk, the lips moving during instrumental sections is a dead giveaway, but I think it must be an older version. The latest one's use of blinking is quite a bit more natural and/or irregular.
It's a cool program, if a little slow and clunky. Easy enough to use, with a range of expressions to jack the creep factor through the roof.
I fuckin' LOVE Leadbelly. Cool.
Video removed due to copyright claim...
Mirror anyone?