Archive for February, 2012

Obscure L.A.

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

A foggy day in Los Angeles Town. Click to enlarge

I’ve been told that my blog entries are too long to be at all popular, so I thought I’d put up this quick story.

It was foggy in Los Angeles on Friday morning, so I took the scenic route via Mulholland Drive to get to Burbank. The view from the scenic overlook was stunning, so I stopped to take a picture. I had to take off my helmet and gloves and get the camera out, so it took a few minutes to get ready.

While this was going on, a family of tourists rolled up in a minivan, brimming with road trash. They got out with cameras, looked downtown, and after a moment the kids whined, “Aw, you can’t see it.” They got back in their cars and drove off, not having taken one photo.

Who could blame them? We were both there to take pictures of something we don’t normally get to see.

The observatory rises above

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Targeted Graphics

Sunday, February 26th, 2012


The finished gallery. Click to enlarge. Animated version below

Most of the packaging elements I do for the Tonight Show are done either in the camera, or on the computer. For example, I did a series of tilt-shift filmed bumpers, a process whereby you use a special lens that gives you an incredibly narrow field of focus on longer distance shots, giving the illusion that what you are looking at is a tiny, scale model of the real world.

The corner at the Biltmore

I also have done a number of beauty shots around the city (particularly of LACMA), and we run a whole series I shot at the amusement park on the pier in Santa Monica.

And, of course, the titles I do are, for the most part, computer generated. I usually build the words in Maya (a 3D package), throw in some reflections of the stage or a fake lighting rig, animate it, then put the resulting animation over a background in After Effects, the compositing software we use. There are all sorts of tricks that I won’t get into, and at last count I had made more than 500 such titles.

While I wouldn’t have the ego to think that my work has been copied, I have noticed that there are now a number of similar packaging motifs on cable channels like Smithsonian and The Learning Channel. So I wanted to do something that would be interesting and fun to look at, and that would echo the themes we use on the show already: amusement park, tiny, interesting to look at. So I decided to create a series of real, miniature classic carnival arcade games, design and build them, and shoot them either in stop-motion or make them move on their own, and simply light and tape them.

All the parts laid out in Adobe Illustrator

I just finished the first one, a shooting gallery that has moving tracks of targets and fun bright colors. I went with this because I figured the tracks would be the easiest to automate, and since you face the gallery head-on, the whole thing could be designed in two dimensions in Adobe Illustrator, allowing me to get all the targets, interlocking gears and background elements sized correctly.

The big question was moving the tracks of targets. After poking around the workshop for different ideas, the idea was literally staring me in the face: we have so many bicycles hanging up in the garage, and the bike chain design, with a little modification, would work perfectly.

Detail of the assembled chain

Since our show goes out in a 16×9 aspect ratio, it made sense to make the dimensions of the gallery 16 inches wide and 9 inches tall. The physical targets would be incorporated right into the chain, which would make them stay within their track and rotate perfectly at the edges. There would be four different motions: a track moving left, a track moving right, rotating targets behind and two back targets that would rock back and forth.

Now for picking the targets. It wouldn’t be a shooting gallery with ducks, so I designed them first. I made some round, bullseye-style targets next. For the rotating targets I made some soup cans, and in the back would be an oscillating sun and moon. I had toyed with the idea of using the Tonight Show logo instead of the cans, and putting a caricature of Jay’s face as the rockers, you know, because the show and Jay are such easy targets in the press, but when I did a layout that idea seemed trite to me, so I went for a more traditional approach.

detail of the sun, the moon, and the cans

I started by cutting out a sample bicycle chain on the laser cutter. The holes in the chain were so accurate I didn’t need to use any glue, I just tapped them together with a little wooden mallet. And I found that there is nothing more therapeutic, after a long day of joke writing, production and commuting in Los Angeles traffic, then putting together a wooden bicycle chain. I highly recommend it.

a finished gear with  ball bearings

The chain worked great, but I would have to change my original cog design to something with a shallower bite, to allow the chain to wrap around the cog without drifting off. I also tried to have the cogs rotating on wooden pegs, but if there was any tug on the chain the friction was too much, and it made the whole assembly too hard to move. So Dash gave me some old skateboard bearings, and I put those in the hubs instead. They moved very smoothly and allowed for much greater pull on the chains.

dry fit of the walls. The braces at the bottom are temporary

As the finished gallery is too wide for the laser cutter’s maximum 14 inches, I had to make some of the wall elements in 2 parts. I separated the parts with a serpentine line that, when joined, was much stronger than a butt-joined wall (there is a “Rick Santorum is so conservative, he never uses butt joints” joke to be made here, but I just can’t).

I would have to do much of the painting of the parts prior to assembly, since everything is pretty crammed together in the design and there are plenty of tight spots. Johanna was instrumental in picking a lot of the colors, and luckily, our friend Tommy Hogan was in town on a visit, and he also lent his fine color expertise to the project.

I built all of the mechanics first, assembling them with the interior walls. The front picket wall and the back wall went on next. Rather than trust my calculations on the computer to be correct, I instead measured the angled side walls, which have precisely cut slots in them to allow the targets to rotate around the bottom and cycle back up on the other side.


the side walls go on. Note the wire brace clamps and the fancy masking tape

With the whole thing put together, I realized how complicated it would be to motorize the thing to shoot it. I was happy with the way it looked and I wanted to shoot it right away, so I took out the linkages and extra gears, and shot it in stop-motion. I slipped a piece of green paper behind each of the layers and shot all of the targets separately, so I could control the speed of each level when I composited it all together later in After Effects. Stop motion is very time consuming, but luckily my Canon SLR has a remote control, so I could move each piece and shoot the frame without having to travel across the room each time (I used a 100mm portrait lens, which has a near-perfect flat field of focus and gives very straight lines, and also makes the layers seem closer together than a regular 50mm lens).

After about three hours in my office, I had all of the elements shot. Another hour of compositing and coloring in After Effects, and the animation was done. Here’s a look at the finished animation:


10 seconds of pure viewing satisfaction!

I have already gotten a bunch of requests for other carnival games, like water pistols in the clown’s mouth, the stacked bottles and baseballs and so forth. I think I might make a left turn with this and also create some bumpers featuring the carnival sideshow, with acts like the strong man and the wild man of Borneo.

All this for 5 seconds of viewing pleasure, just after the commercial break. Comedy is easy, animated wooden carnival games are hard!

even the trash is interesting with a laser cutter

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Cutting Remarks

Friday, February 17th, 2012

I’m trying to finish my shooting gallery, but I’m having trouble getting my ducks… um… never mind.

A while back, I posted a blog about my CNC router, and while I used it for a number of projects, the thing kicks up so much sawdust that it’s just not practical to do a lot with it. In fact, the best project I did was to build a sawdust catcher, and although it works pretty well, you can’t watch the router in action, which is half the fun.

One of the websites that popularized the CNC router is Instructables.com, and twice a year they have a contest, where you submit your own tutorial on how to make something, and the winner receives a Zing laser cutter. This got me interested in laser cutters as a next step in my workshop: you can design stuff on the computer and it cuts out the parts just like a CNC router, but it doesn’t create any sawdust, it’s very quiet and you can make parts with incredible precision.

Cutting out gears and tie rods for the shooting gallery. The red laser is just there for aim

But Zing cutters are expensive (over five grand), so forget it. Until a number of article started popping up describing how to build your own. Just like building a router, right? Well, not exactly. In order to achieve the kind of tolerances you need, it has to be made from metal parts, and sourcing some of them can be a problem. Source them I did, however, and found I could put together a 40 watt cutter/engraver for around $1500. While that is still a lot, I can use the cutter to create practical graphical elements to use in the bumpers and packaging on the Tonight Show, and write the whole project off as a business expense.

When you make your own picture frames, you don’t  have to throw away the pictures of people who are more attractive than you that come with it

After a litte more research I realized that building one would take up crazy amounts of time. But in sourcing the parts, I found a company, FS Laser, that sells laser cutters for less than half the price of the Zing. They have their own software that drives the cutters and lets you engrave, too. That was good enough for me. I got the smallest unit, installed it in the garage and started cutting.

The Plexiglas logo. N.B., the wires outside the conference room window aren’t the only high tension around here

The first thing I did was to work with the Tonight Show logo. I wanted to get something on air to justify this thing as a business expense. Turns out, you can cut out Plexiglas very easily, and the laser polishes the edges of the parts as it cuts. I made a see-through logo and shot some bumpers with it. Very cool and easy, and it only took about a half an hour to create the Plexi element.

Here’s a little box with a top like a rolltop desk. 46 parts. The photo does not convey how awful the green color I painted it looks

I started designing things on the computer, sending them to the cutter, and putting them together. I bought some sheets of nice, 1/8th inch plywood from Anderson Plywood in Culver City and cut them down to sheets that would fit into the cutter. The laser leaves the edges of the wood dark, with a thin layer of sticky resin in some cases. Tuning the laser so that it cuts through with the proper power setting was tricky, but now that I have the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to think of an idea, design the parts and put it together in short order.

 

The best thing about it is that I have a machine doing all the hard work for me. The unit I bought is popular with serious model airplane enthusiasts, but I don’t have that interest. I’m not casting aspersions on the airplane guys, because, other than the Tonight Show stuff, the projects I’ve done are pretty pointless: A roll-top box; a cricket cage (to be detailed in a later post), engraved “Hunger Games” pins for Daisy and her friends.

Who doesn’t need a cricket cage? Pretty much everybody, I think

The kids have used the machine to cut out letters to paste onto posterboard for school projects. It’s nice having a signmaking shop in the garage when you have a Social Studies presentation due the next day.

 

Right now I’m building a model of an old-fashioned carnival shooting gallery. Last summer I shot a bunch of bumpers at the amusement park, and this will be a way to keep the theme going, but in a cool, filmic way. Everything in the model is made on the cutter, from the bicycle chain to the cogs, the targets and the ducks. The mechanics are all together and it actually runs, but when I shoot it I’ll probably do it with stop motion to make it look more interesting.

I also use it to make repairs and custom parts to put things together. I made a replacement joint for a broken bicycle stand, and a fixture to turn a Chinese lantern into a shade for a ceiling light.

This perfect repair to a bicycle stand was designed with an iPhone camera and a set of calipers

Who knows, maybe I’ll finally get a drink holder in my old diesel Mercedes? But that’s a discussion for another day.

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TiVo for Food

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

My sous vide rig. Note the extra plug after modification: Zap!

We have been cooking sous vide for a few years now, so I thought I’d write a post about it and describe some of the things we like about it.

First off, we do a lot of our grocery shopping at Costco. Yes, I still take the Vespa, and yes, you end up with a lot of extra stuff that you either have to freeze, or put in a vacuum sealed bag if you want to keep it around. Costco sells the Foodsaver vacuum sealer, so of course we got one.

Turns out, we’re halfway there with the sous vide.

For those of you who have never read the Times’ food section, or heard of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Napa, sous vide is a method of slow cooking food in a vacuum sealed bag in a (relatively) low temperature water bath. The term is French, and it roughly means “under vacuum,” and basically, buy sealing it up this way, you get the food to be in full contact with the water, without actually having it in the water.

We started out with a recipe for pulled pork, because the cooking temperature was high enough to do in the oven on very low – about 165 degrees. It was a pretty crude method, whereby you put the bag of seasoned pork on a pizza stone (with your digital thermometer probe sandwiched in between), and crack the door of the oven to keep the temperature below the oven’s temperature below the minimum of around 200 degrees.

As with most red meat recipes, the cooking time was long – in this case, 24 hours (it is not uncommon for restaurants to keep meat in the bath for 72 hours or more). But it was worth it, as the pork fell apart beautifully. We made a sweet sauce from the juice and had Hawaiian barbecue sandwiches on potato rolls.

We are health nuts.

Beef rib chuck after 48 hours in the water. I have spared you all the photos of raw meat, because I don’t have a setting on my iPhone that makes them look at all appetizing

I started looking into sous vide cookers, which are pretty expensive ($1200 for a professional controller, immersion heater and circulator), so I decided to go the less-expensive route. Weirdly enough, most of the equipment came from aquarium suppliers. One was a interval switch for a pump, another was a separate pump. The third was a tank heater, but as they take a very long time to heat up any amount of water, I opted for what are called “coffee heaters,” basically a burly wire coil with an AC cord attached. I plugged two of these into the interval switch, and regulated the interval so it would hit the right temperature.

The same beef, pan seared, deglaze and the juice reduced with a little red wine

This didn’t work very well, with the added bonus of, if you were doing it all in a metal pot, you would get 110 volts of household current running through your body if you put both hands on it. I realized that electrocuting my food wasn’t the answer.

Poking around on the sous vide forums, I found a company that makes lab temperature controllers, and they were packaging one of their units as a “sous vide special.” At 110 bucks, it was kind of expensive to still be experimenting, but they had instructions on their site for using the unit with a rice cooker or a Crock Pot.

I bought it, but found out that my Crock Pot wouldn’t work with it, since it had its own (crude) temperature controller built in. So I soldered in a new, direct lead to the heating elements and put a regular 110 cord on it. This plugs into the controller, and there are Crock Pot settings you can dial into it to keep the temperature within about a tenth of a degree at all times.

Wired, plugged in and ready, I cooked four pounds of beef rib chuck at 125 degrees for 72 hours, and it worked like a charm. As I was slicing it up for dinner, my friend Matt sent me an email informing me that the Sous Vide Supreme, and all-in-one countertop machine that made life easy for just 400 bucks, had just gone on sale. Oh well.

It was all for the best, since the Sous Vide Supreme has a very small water bath and you can’t cook a lot in there. The controller I use can be plugged into anything that uses an electrical element to heat stuff up. I bought an electric turkey fryer that holds ten quarts of water (or oil, if you’re frying), and you can prepare 40 chicken thighs in there, no problem. In fact, last Thanksgiving, we used the turkey fryer to sous vide the turkey first (dark meat for 24 hours, white meat for 2 hours), then dumped it out, heated up the oil and finished the turkey in the fryer, redneck-style. It was quite good, with the legs and thighs coming out almost like a confit.

Dash’s birthday dinner: butter the bag, herbs go in, wrap the skin around the chicken, insert into bag and seal

Now our crock pot and controller are like having a TiVo for food. On Sunday morning every two weeks, I’ll go to Costco and get some meats for 14 days. Since chicken doesn’t have the long cook times of red meat, I’ll trim, season and cook 2 meals worth of hot wings, or maybe do some thighs on the bone, ice them down when their done and put them in the fridge, still in the bag, until we’re ready to finish them. So on a week night, you just switch on the water bath, re-therm the chicken in the bag for twenty minutes, take it out and roast it on the grill or get a crispy skin in the pan in a little olive oil. The whole thing takes about 40 minutes and it is cooked perfectly.

Then we put in some beef, or our new favorite, rack of pork, into the bath for a few days. Pork is particularly good, because you are cooking it at the absolute lowest temperature for a long time, and never risk drying it out. The connective tissues break down and with the bone make a nice gelatin that is infused into the meat. Plus, after roasting it on the grill, you take a blowtorch to the bones before slicing them into chops (you can also roast them as chops) to carmelize more of the fat and dispel some of the (perfectly safe) pinkness. They are yummy.

Cheaper cuts of meat come out more flavorful and very tender in sous vide, but if you want to cook more expensive cuts, it still makes sense because you’re not taking any chances with it. You can precisely control the doneness of the meat, then sear the crap out of it to give it that delicious caramelization.

Cook that smashed chicken under a brick! You want that skin cripsy!

Finally, for Dashiell’s birthday last Tuesday, we wanted to try to replicate the recipe for Smashed Chicken at Campanile. Our server had told us how it is prepared (including the sous vide timing), so we bought a couple of whole chickens and went to town. The breasts came out perfect, with a very smooth texture and flavor that penetrated the meat, while the crispy skin was incredible. We cooked the thighs with the bones in the bath for a full day, then shredded them and used them on chicken nachos.

The finished Smashed Chicken. I have everything I need, except for a food stylist who can my my delicious food look good

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