Author Archives: David Gian-Cursio

Harpist Photoshoot

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My friend Aysha Gomez-Kureishi has recently decided begin offering her services as a harpist performing events in the San Francisco Bay Area (as events become a thing again). While I don’t have much experience working with two-legged models in photographs, we decided to see what we could come up with improvising a photo stage in her home office. Luckily, Aysha does have experience modeling, so she knew how to pose, and all I needed to worry about was lighting/staging, and camera placement. She and her husband also had several general ideas for shots and setups.

These are the photos that she chose to use on her website. She’s also posted some outtakes to her Instagram feed.

Virtual Sets and Educational Animations for UC Scout

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For the past couple of years, I’ve been working at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as part of a team producing video lectures for on-line classes in the Scout and University Extension programs. As my time there comes to a close, I wanted to post a retrospective summary of what I’ve been doing. Day to day, the majority of my time was spent assembling and editing individual lessons, though at one time or another I at least touched on all aspects of production, including filming, quality assurance, and asset creation.

As far as 3D work goes, while I did have the chance to produce short explanatory animations for various lessons, something I volunteered for in the first few days on the job was creating virtual sets for our courses. Our presenters were shot on greenscreen, and I though it would add a level of visual interest to place them in a realistic environment, rather than up against some sort of plain color or gradient backdrop. 

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Tech the Tech: The Tenth Planet in “World Enough and Time”

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Back in the 1960s, Doctor Who introduced the Cybermen as coming from a “counter-Earth” called Mondas, a twin planet of our own that had escaped detection as it orbited the sun exactly opposite the Earth. Mondas was flung into deep space when the arrival of Earth’s moon disrupted the balance between the planets, and the inhabitants gradually surgically altered themselves to survive the increasingly harsh environment, until they were cold, cybernetic monstrosities who strapped enormous engines to their world, intent on returning to their home star and draining Earth of its precious energy reserves. Mondas itself was depicted as being exactly identical to Earth (except upside-down1While upside-down, it is still rotating in the conventional way, suggesting that the Mondasians also consider “north” to be “up” on their maps. I’m not sure whether that means that, spatially, the planet was upside down relative to Earth and rotating in the same direction, or the surface was aligned the same way but was rotating backwards, like Venus . I doubt anyone gave it that much thought.), complete with humans identical to those on Earth.

There is no prize for finding the most scientific inaccuracies in that paragraph.
“World Enough and Time” and “The Doctor Falls,” the two-part season 10 finale of Doctor Who, revisited the Cybermen’s origin. While set on a ship either constructed by or commissioned for the people of Mondas rather than the planet itself, we do see a computer screen showing a display of the planet. At a casual glance, Mondas still appears to be identical to Earth (though right-side up this time2And still rotating in the conventional direction. Maybe they reversed the planet’s rotation when they attached the engines, like that episode of Futurama.), but the Doctor Who art department took the time to subtly modify the layout of the continents as a freeze-frame bonus. I’d hoped that the BBC’s Production Art gallery for the episode might contain a complete map, but, alas, it is not to be, and it seems unlikely the show will be revisiting Mondas anytime soon, leaving reverse-engineering the planet to fans like me.

First, I had to correct for the prespective distortion of the computer screen, so here’s the straight-on view of Mondas, in both Quicktime and GIF formats. Continue reading →

 

References
↑1 While upside-down, it is still rotating in the conventional way, suggesting that the Mondasians also consider “north” to be “up” on their maps. I’m not sure whether that means that, spatially, the planet was upside down relative to Earth and rotating in the same direction, or the surface was aligned the same way but was rotating backwards, like Venus . I doubt anyone gave it that much thought.
↑2 And still rotating in the conventional direction. Maybe they reversed the planet’s rotation when they attached the engines, like that episode of Futurama.

Rogue One Meets Doctor Who (Temp Score Found?)

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The score over the climactic sequence of “Rogue One” always reminded me of something. I tried laying over “The Life and Death of Amy Pond,” from the end of the Doctor Who episode “The Pandorica Opens,” and the pacing and tone matched pretty well. I suspect it may have been the temp score for the sequence.

You can see the waveforms for both tracks here; the film track, “Your Father Would Be Proud” is on top, with “The Life and Death of Amy Pond” is on the bottom. Also, I did slightly adjust the speed (about 1% faster or slower, I can’t remember) of the music so it would hit a couple beats slightly more precisely.