Eddy Bee

Meet Eddy Bee, a professional musician who has been writing and performing his own music in bands and as a solo artist since the 1980s. When he created his second CD, “Looking Back” this year, Eddy recorded it entirely on his own, played all the instruments himself and mixed it in his home studio. To coincide with the release of the CD, he created music videos for several of the songs, his first foray into video production.

As Eddy explains,

“I had never worked with video before, but just like my CD, I wanted to do it all myself, so I delved into the video world and started doing research, scouring the web, reading product reviews, learning about the craft, and visiting forums. I eventually built up a decent video editing suite and augmented it with a variety of effects plugins, including many from NewBlueFX.”

As Eddy worked with video, he found it to be such an enjoyable and creative medium that he branched out into other video projects ranging from family videos to documentaries. Says Eddy,

“As a musician, my stage name is Eddy Bee. But as a video producer, I use the name Nekujak. This way, I can keep the two worlds separate, at least in my own head.”

For his first music video, “Takes Me Back,” Eddy combined present-day footage with old 8mm film. Explains Eddy,

“It was a fairly straightforward edit, but there was some 8mm footage that I needed but didn’t have. So, I took some contemporary footage and used the NewBlue Film Pro plugin to give it an old 8mm look. The effect was very convincing and worked well in the finished video.”

Takes Me Back

The second music video proved to be much more ambitious and challenging for him. Explains Eddy,

“It was for a funky song with a driving beat called “Walk In My Shoes”, and I wanted to create something that was fast-paced, vivid, colorful, visually engaging, and dynamic. “

Eddy shot all of the subjects against his makeshift green screen setup, which he says was decent, but not perfect.

“There were some small wrinkles in the screen and the lighting wasn’t completely even.”

Eddy tried several chroma plugins on the market with disappointing results, then found NewBlue’s Chroma Key. Explains Eddy,

“Chroma Key delivers all the necessary adjustments in one effective plugin. The softness and shrink adjustments are invaluable to help with nasty edge issues, and the color sensitivity controls made all my uneven lighting problems go away. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to get a good key with very little effort, especially considering my less than optimal setup.”

After resolving the keying issues, Eddy tackled the video’s look. He wanted to define the look of the lead singer during the song’s choruses, since this is where the viewer first encounters the singer and the song’s key message; it sets the tone for the rest of the video, and reflects the song’s attitude.

Initially, he experimented with established film looks and similar approaches, but none were right. Then, just for fun, Eddy started playing with CartoonrPlus from NewBlue Paint Effects, and the possibilities unfolded. He hadn’t originally considered CartoonrPlus because he thought it was only good for delivering strictly illustrative looks, but when he applied it to the lead singer and made subtle adjustments, he discovered some very evocative lighting, saturation, and contrast effects that fit the song perfectly. Eventually, Eddy arrived at a setting that conveyed the appropriate mood (See Example 1). After that, the other elements started falling into place.

Example 1

He applied a variation of this look to the flute player during the instrumental part (See Example 2).

Example 2

Although Eddy never intended to use a straight cartoon look anywhere in the video, when he applied CartoonrPlus to the guitar, bass, and keyboard footage and experimented with various settings, the results grabbed his attention.

“It looked so good that I just had to use it. The video actually starts with the cartoon bass player - the sharp lines and bright primary colors immediately draw the viewer in and it just looks really cool and unexpected ( See Example 3). I’ve actually had several people ask me who drew the animations!”

Example 3

As the project came together, Eddy found himself incorporating more and more NewBlue plugins. He gives two reasons: First, NewBlue’s straightforward interface encourages him to easily experiment and define a desired look, and second, NewBlueFX provide a vast assortment of image effects that not only stimulate creative ideas, but are flexible enough to achieve a wide variety of interesting and unusual looks.

Eddy says,

“After the project was finished, I went back and did an inventory of all the effects and transitions I had used, and was astonished to discover that I ended up using a total of 13 different NewBlue plugins in the project! This certainly wasn’t planned on my part. These plugins simply provided the necessary flexibility, range, and variety to get the right combination of looks and effects in my video.”

In addition to Chroma Key from Video Essentials II and CartoonrPlus from Paint Effects, Eddy also used:

• Metallic, which gives the dancers and the “Oh Mercy Guy” a vivid duochrome look that compliments the other elements in the video, yet allows them to stand out on their own.

• Film Pro, which created a softly flickering noir look that provides the right contrast between the two singing parts in the video.
• DuoChrome, ActiveCamera, ColorEQ, & Dream Glow, which adjust the motion, look, and color of the video’s background clips. Eddy wanted to make these clips as colorful as everything else in the video, but not overshadow the singer. DuoChrome and ColorEQ perfectly achieve this objective while ActiveCamera provides a nervous jerky motion to the clips.

• Ghost, which Eddy applies it to the shoes that step across the frame to give them a shiny other-worldly look using the Ice Sculpture preset.

• Zoom Blur & Posterize, which transform a conventional animated starfield into glowing bursts of streaming light.

• Color Swap & Halovision Plus, which create the glowing red tendrils that appear at the edges of the frame in the song’s bridge by using blue plasma bursts. Initially, Bee tried several different color swapping/correcting plugins, but they introduced various artifacts or simply didn’t look right. Color Swap effectively turns the blue plasma into red and Halovision Plus adds the right amount of glow.

Eddy is already at work on his next music video, and it contains a nice assortment of NewBlue plugins, as well.

“Quite a few NewBlue plugins have become my favorite ‘go to’ plugins for just about any video project I work on. From functional get-the-job-done tools like Chroma Key, Noise Reducer, and Color EQ to more creative effects like CartoonrPlus, Metallic, and Film Pro. These plugins offer an easy no-nonsense interface, tons of usable presets, highly flexible controls, and they simply deliver satisfying results. Nowadays, when I open my plugins palette, I’m immediately drawn to the NewBlue selections, because that’s where I usually end up finding the right tool for the job. I guess the other hidden bonus in all this, is that these plugins are fun to use! I’m often pleasantly surprised by the possibilities they generate, and if I let myself, I can spend way too much time happily playing with all the dials to see where they take me.”

To check out more of Eddy Bee’s work, please visit www.myspace.com/eddybeemusic.