You want that when?

So I was editing this hour long special at work, it was a multi-camera outside broadcast (but shot inside) with 8 cameras and about 20 different talent. We were told to order our graphics package in house, that is all the titles and bumpers etc. And we thought that the Super straps were being worked on as well. A Super strap is a graphical device that places the 20 odd names of the speakers appear at the bottom of the screen, super-imposed over the video (hence Super strap). Of all the things to fall through the cracks I really didn’t want it to be that.

But that’s exactly what happened 😦

So I decided that I had enough time during the screening of a draft of the show (about 1 hour) to knock them up in Blender 😀

I grabbed a text file list from the producers email and pasted it into a text object in Blender. I separated the name/role pairs from each by a couple spaces. I then animated the list to roll up in front of the camera from first name to last. 20 names in 20 frames. This meant that i got back 20 separate names as individual frames. But I couldn’t track the names per frame, thats ok it was a rushed job.

However…

… there’s always a catch. The artwork finally came through but just the background strap. It was a wavy ribbon that I had to fit my text to. So I added a lattice to the scene and twisted the text up to fit the strap. Bang re-render and replace in 5 minutes! which was mostly file handling time.

Then we have to show it to the supervising producer… she was not impressed. In fact she did a spit take and big guffaw. I don’t think she was on board for the ribbon. So I knock up another version while she watches the rest of the show. By the time the playout is over both the supervising producer and the line producer turn to me and suggest that I fix the supers again. Sure I say, I’ve already done that on a copy of the project and here they are… please sign off so we can go to air. Ahh Blender you’re a gem.