Why do scorpions glow in the dark? The title says it all, really.

Our friend Trond is a very responsible Green citizen. He even occasionally recycles UWOL Challenge themes! :) Although I have been recycling for many years, I found this round quite the challenge. In the end, while this video is quite different from Total Darkness (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/uwol-challenge-our-newest-contest/495087-uwol-20-total-darkness-mike-sims.html) I can see several similarities. In the spirit of recycling, I decided to revisit a subject I have covered here before. In σκορπιός (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/uwol-challenge-our-newest-contest/487902-uwol-18-mike-sims.html) I covered the arachnid Order in general. This video deals specifically with research done primarily by Carl Kloock (California State University) and Douglas Gaffin (University of Oklahoma).

Further in the spirit of recycling, I have taken advantage of Rule 5 and reused a couple of my earlier shots that I would not have been able to repeat during the contest time period. Neither is from UC20 or UC18. Long time players may recognize them from the Long Form. All can probably spot them from the shaky Bogen tripod I was using at the time. To make things more interesting, these clips were originally shot in SD (DV25). In the past I have used a variety of techniques to scale footage, including natively in PP and AE and with dedicated plug-ins like Instant HD. Here I used a new technique (new for me anyway!) that I like better.

The clip is rendered from a SD timeline as a series of bitmaps. I then write a Photoshop action to batch the scaling using a vector based enlargement plug-in (these are the sort of routines used to blow photos up to billboard size)- the one I am currently using is Alien Skin’s Blow Up 3. I also then add any other desired PS effects, such as the High Pass filter sharpening, before importing back into a PP HD project as numbered stills for further editing. These particular clips were then processed as “day for night” by adding a gamma adjustment and a slight blue color cast (see Purkinje effect) along with compositing of a strong vignette.

As always, critique, comments and questions are welcomed.

Why do scorpions glow in the dark? (http://vimeo.com/90248170) Our friend Trond is a very responsible Green citizen. He even occasionally recycles UWOL Challenge themes! :)
Made you work even harder this time, didn't I?
Let's see if I can make next round even more challenging, and of course unique. :)

Interesting creatures those scorpions. Didn't know they glow like that. Who need flash lights when you have a handy scorpion nearby.

Hi Mike

For obvious reasons I watched this one first!

I enjoyed your video - especially enjoyed the macro work.

Your story flows well, is concise and fits appropriately with the theme.

There are so many interesting theories proposed by people yet no one really knows the answer. The author of one paper I read on the variability of spider fluorescence made the proposal that UV fluorescence is closely related to UV reflectance and actually serves the same purpose as visible light– either to enhance the cryptic colouring (to make it less conspicuous to prey and predator alike) or to enhance its visibility (to attract prey/mates). I liked that theory too but who knows.

Hi Mike,
Well another super informative film! I love those close up shots, you nailed the focus & had me squirming a little in my seat they looked so good! Better you filming them than me. I don't have a lot of time for those sorts of creepy crawlies! I was a little undecided on the sound foley. While i like the fact you put it in, it did sound a little "off" to me. Overall though, the film was fantastic, thank you!!
Regards,
Bryce

Interesting piece Mike. Didn't know they glowed. Like Byrce mentioned the foley sounds on some shots gave me the impression that things where moving faster than they were. As usual I learned something from your video.

Gordon

Ummm... Don't make things more challenging on my account, Trond!

"Who needs flash lights when you have a handy scorpion nearby."

Yep. Just watch out for that "ON" switch in the tail!

Thanks, Marj. I am pleased you liked the close-ups. I’ve always considered you the master of macro. I’ve just had a thought and I need to do a literature search to see if anyone is working on this. It occurs to me that some organisms may be doing something akin to the multispectral techniques used by archaeologists and art historians. [For any unfamiliar with this I suggest you take advantage of On Demand and watch a recent episode of NOVA concerning restoring David Livingstone’s journal. He had run out of paper and ink and wrote on old newspaper with berry juice. They were able to find a wavelength at which the juice fluoresced but the ink was still visible. They took a second image at another wavelength with the ink visible but juice absent and inverted it before subtracting from the first image. Only the juice was visible.] Nervous systems are easily able to do signal inversion and subtraction. Perhaps some organisms with heightened acuity in narrow bands are doing the same for “camouflage-busting”?

Thanks, Bryce. Any deficiencies in the Foley are entirely my fault. It is very time consuming and I was rushed. A great deal of the added sound is missing. Anything below a certain amplitude was dropped from the mix in the final Vimeo compression (it’s there in the file I uploaded). I should have used a compressor to kick the quiet sounds to the middle. Also at thirteen seconds the voice sounds like there is someone speaking in the background. How did that happen? It’s not in the uploaded file. I would appreciate advice from any of you Vimeo pros.

Thanks, Gordon, I’m glad you liked it. I think everyone would have liked my first ideas better, though. I started to do a behind-the-scenes of a four axis motion controlled day-to-night timelapse (the Holy Grail of timelapse) but weather and logistics were against me. Then I wanted to do a How-to with my new high frame rate camera. I’m not good enough with the new camera yet to have pulled it off. Hence this video was done in a week.

Sorry, my mistake. The show I referred to above was titled “The Lost Diary of Dr. Livingstone” and was on Secrets of the Dead not NOVA. I apologize for any confusion.

Really enjoyed this one Mike. Hadn't come across scorpions glowing before, and I think it's a great use of the theme. And I agree the macro shots worked really well. Plus it was a good exploration of theories on the topic.

Hi Mike,

Great piece of work, well researched. You have edited it very well, making interesting using some Folley sounds rather than music tracks. Your voiceover was paced about right making the film an interesting watch right the through. We have a few colonies of yellow tailed scorpions ( escapes from boats) here in the UK, although they are not generally known about. They tend to live in cracks in in walls around some of our dockyards.

Thanks, Andrew. Several folks have mentioned that they learned something new. That’s always nice to hear.

Thank-you, Mick. Isn’t it amazing some of the exotics we can occasionally film close to home now-a-days? I saw some footage of those yellow-tailed scorpions that Mat Thompson shot a while back. The trap-door spider I showed on the UWOL forum earlier came here from West Africa.

A great deal of the added sound is missing. Anything below a certain amplitude was dropped from the mix in the final Vimeo compression (it’s there in the file I uploaded). I should have used a compressor to kick the quiet sounds to the middle. Also at thirteen seconds the voice sounds like there is someone speaking in the background. How did that happen? It’s not in the uploaded file. I would appreciate advice from any of you Vimeo pros.
I have experienced Vimeo dropping both audio and video quality, but never heard they introduce sound before.
After playing your film on different computers and both quality and crappy speakers, I am not able to hear any "speaking voices" at 0:13?

Thanks, Trond. I’m still hearing it here. It is more obvious with headphones. It’s no big deal. I would just like to know what I have done wrong!

. . . I’ve just had a thought and I need to do a literature search to see if anyone is working on this. It occurs to me that some organisms may be doing something akin to the multispectral techniques used by archaeologists and art historians .. . Nervous systems are easily able to do signal inversion and subtraction. Perhaps some organisms with heightened acuity in narrow bands are doing the same for “camouflage-busting”?

Amazing how you have connected the dots here Mike!

It would be fantastic if you could find out more regarding this possibility. When you do please keep us posted!

Hi Mike,

Well - I learned and learned!
Really excellent macro photography here, and the use of graphics fitted very well with the flow - I was a bit jerked by the cut to the mountain range at 0.37, but thats nit picking!
Thanks for a nice short - I really wanted for it to go on and explain more - my only experience of scorpions is of remembering to shake out your boots in the morning, to make sure you have no unwanted guests!

I'd love more info on how you get those nighttime macro shots, when you have the time- Thanks!

Marj- I think it is an interesting idea. It’s probably too interesting to be original. I’ll be at a large research library in a few weeks and I’ll see what I can find on the subject.

Thanks, Paul. All of the “night” shots were actually day-for-night. I dropped the gamma a bit and color shifted slightly to the blue to simulate the way our eyes see color in low light. I then added a vignette by first outputting a single frame of the clip and importing it into Photoshop. I then made a new layer and filled it with black and then lowered it’s opacity until I could see the original layer. I drew an oval selection with a large feather around the main subject and then deleted it from the second layer, turned off the first layer and adjusted the opacity of the second layer as needed. I saved the comp as a PNG with no interlace (I also saved as a PSD because frequently another attempt with altered opacity was required.) I composited the semitransparent PNG with the entire clip in PP. There are other ways to add a vignette but I like the amount of control this way offers. I used the same basic technique to add the “shadows” that the scorpions retreated to (see below). There is actually a lot of compositing in this one. For example, the shot with three scorpions is actually a locked down camera and three clips of the same scorpion in three places composited together. If you look closely you can see that the middle scorpion isn’t perfect because I accidentally moved the substrate a bit when I “encouraged” it to move to that position. Similarly, the opening clip is a composite. Lenses don’t achieve critical focus in the same place when a significant amount of UV is added to the scene. (Photographers are probably more familiar with the same effect on the other end of the spectrum in infrared photography.) Some of my lenses are much worse than others. I was using one of the worst offenders in the first clip. In that clip I had focused with the UV in the mix and the first part with no UV ended up very soft. Since the scorpion didn’t move, I exported a still of the out of focus part and in PS selected the scorpion and then deleted the rest. I used High Pass sharpening because you can be extreme with it without adding too many artifacts.- In PS duplicate the layer you want to sharpen (in this case just the scorpion on a transparent field). Add the High Pass filter to the second layer and drag the slider all the way to the left. The image will look gray. Drag the slider to the right until the outline of objects on the original layer begin to appear. Click OK and then change the layer blend mode to Soft Light. (You can add an incredible amount of sharpening to a video clip the same way by writing an action to do it to a series of numbered stills.)- I output the sharpened scorpion as a PNG and composited it over the out of focus part in PP. The second part of the clip (when the UV light was moved until the scorpion glowed) was darkened in the same way as adding the vignette above but with no doughnut hole and the composite of the semitransparent PNG in PP was ramped from zero opacity to full to “turn out” the light. Pretty simple once you see the trick.

I forgot to mention the other technique that I thought some of you might be interested in. The through-the-scorpion’s-eyes clip was shot through a ProVision PV2300 fiber optic borescope. The focus was adjusted so the individual fibers were in sharp focus and the footage was color shifted to simulate the scorpion’s blue-green color vision.

Thanks for all the tips and "how to", Mike.
Always nice to learn something new.

Hi Mike.
What a great film!
Really nice close up shots of some creepy creatures.
We don't have these scary monsters in Norway :)
The storyline is good and I can't find much to put my finger on.
Both educational and informative and editing is all fine.
Great job!

My pleasure, Trond. I have learned so much from you guys. My videos have improved entirely because of my desire to become as good at this as the rest of you. I’m always happy when I am able to share something with this group.

Thanks, Geir Inge, but watch out! As Mick pointed out above, they can show up in unexpected places. Kanskje de kan komme å invadere i Norge! (Probably, like me, they will never be able to learn to speak the language properly.)

This was a fascinating piece, Mike. Thanks for educating me!

And besides the glowing scorpion shots being pretty novel, I liked your research-based approach, coverage of the various speculations, and most especially, your mirrored day and moonrise shots of that narrow valley!

Some of these pieces (this one included) seem just a step away from broadcast-quality. I could easily see this being used as a classroom or museum educational tool.

Thanks for the kind words, Finn. That “last” step is a big one. I have a lot to learn. One thing I have learned is that when I am “finished” editing it is good to put the project away and think about other things for several days. When I return with a fresh mind-set I can usually see many small problems that I couldn’t recognize before which collectively really add up. The timing of these challenges often doesn’t allow for that.

Thanks, Geir Inge, but watch out! As Mick pointed out above, they can show up in unexpected places. Kanskje de kan komme å invadere i Norge! (Probably, like me, they will never be able to learn to speak the language properly.)

That was perfect norwegian Mike :)