52W: W6/7 - A Pirate's Workout

February 16, 2023

I decided to centralize my posts on my own website according to POSSE principles.
The original post is on Substack here: https://52weeks.substack.com/p/week-6-and-7-a-pirates-workout

The last 2 weeks I created an elaborate 20 minute pirate-themed workout video on the roof of my house. It took heaps longer than I thought - so I’m counting this a 2 week project and taking a few days break before week 8.

Tools I used:

  • ChatGPT - to generate the first couple of pirate-themed exercises. After that it was more fun to invent them myself (with help from Christian)

  • A Jolly Roger flag, hung with lots of tape (against 30-40mph winds)

  • A rooftop

  • An ambiguous leftover leather Halloween costume

  • iPhone 13 mini + tripod - for filming and recording the violin

  • Online interval timer - to keep me on track while filming

  • Final Cut Pro - editing the footage

  • Davinci Resolve - color grading

  • Figma - editing graphics to import into Apple Motion

  • Apple Motion - for custom timer overlay, titles, and video effects

  • Violin (played by Zander) - to the tune of ‘Spotted Pony’

  • Ableton Live (via James) - to turn the simple violin recording into the epic opening soundtrack

  • Stable Diffusion via Playgroundai.com - to make the floating-head pirate

  • A vocal mic + audio interface - to record my voiceover

  • D-ID - for the audio lip sync

Process

As seems to be the trend, this week’s project ballooned in scope as I got excited and wanted to add more and more ideas. Initially, I had planned for a ‘chill week’ and a very low investment project. I asked ChatGPT to give me 3 workouts - a HIIT, a Yoga, and a dance - in the theme of pirate.

Here were my first prompts:

I want to create 3 pirate themed workout videos, each 20 minutes long. There will be Yoga/Pilates, HIIT, and a dance class. Generate me the workout plans, including timing and exercise names


these moves are boring. make them original moves that I wouldn't see in any other workout videos getting better. 


make them 50% weirder and harder

And the output:

Yoga/Pilates:

◦ Warm-up (5 minutes):
▪ The Sea Serpent: Pretend you're a sea serpent, wriggling your arms and legs and making serpentine movements
▪ The Treasure Map Hunt: Crawl on your hands and knees, searching for a treasure map on the ground

◦ Training (10 minutes):
▪ The Swordfish: Hold a plank position, while waving your legs like a swordfish swimming
▪ The Squid Stretch: Get into a downward dog position, and pretend you're a squid reaching out with its tentacles
▪ The Ship's Wheel: Stand with your feet hip-width apart, holding your hands out like a ship's wheel. Rotate your hands in opposite directions, feeling the stretch in your back and arms

◦ Stretching (5 minutes):
▪ The Lobster Claw: Lie on your back, lift your legs and arms into the air, and pretend you're a lobster with your claws open
▪ The Net Cast: Sit with your legs spread wide, and pretend you're casting a net, reaching towards your toes with your hands

It looks like a menu at a fine dining restaurant, but the exercises themselves weren’t terribly inspiring. I had a few day lull after this, wondering if this week was going to be a flop.

My enthusiasm was revived after a freeform movement play session with my housemate Christian; we spent an hour finding weird ways to move around the house and experimented with a bunch of new pirate moves. The flag arrived the same day.

Setting this up in 30mph winds was a challenge…

The time had come to film it. I’d narrowed down my exercise list to a tight 20 mins, added them to an interval timer, my costume was ready, my facial hair painted on. The day was perfect, sunny, and clear. Against my better judgement, I decided to wait until later in the day for a more flattering light. The light was good, but the wind picked up to an Antarctic Gale. As you’ll see in the video, I decided to plough ahead anyway. It was cold .. and my phone, bag, flag, and gear was all in danger of flying off the roof (I lost a pair of scissors into the abyss).

After the ordeal of filming, I eagerly replayed the footage to discover that my clip-on lapel mic fell off in this process. I had no audio…

I was impatient to get into the post-processing, so instead of re-filming it, I decided to overdub the audio. This gave me the idea of a floating head - and another chance to incorporate some new AI tools.

First I needed to create an avatar of myself as a pirate. Easily done with Stable Diffusion (I used playgroundai):

Next, I uploaded the images and recorded audio to D-ID - and I had the pirate avatars lip syncing with 80% realism.

There still be some uncanny valley..

You’ll see in the image above some overlays on the screen. These I made using Figma and Apple Motion. I found SVGs of a map and a wheel, cut out a lot of the details I didn’t need, then moved them over into Motion to animate. Super streamlined! I did the same with the opening title image and a cannonball. I also found a free Treasure Map font for the text.

Left, downloaded images. Right, my edits to import into Motion

I also wanted a unique soundtrack to add to the video. It just so happened that one of my housemates loves playing old Irish fiddle, and another is a pro at Ableton.

Warning - the song is an earworm

After several more hours of voice recording and audio + video editing, I finally had the video finished. There were still some timing issues with the music and a few cuts in the opening credits, but I had to call it done at some point or I’d be jumpin’ overboard meself. Yarrr!

Learnings

  • Video editing takes a long time. I’m still learning the tools, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism

  • There are infinite media creation and manipulation tools that work well together. Importing concepts between software is awesome!

  • Losing the live recorded audio felt like a huge bummer at the time, but it sparked a fresh layer of creativity, exploration, and play

  • Ad-libbing / commenting over the top of a video of myself is weird but hilarious

  • Having amazing talented housemates to rope in to the process is a big bonus

Next Steps

  • Debut the film to the house as a live workout

  • Play around further with voice generator tools - like Eleven Labs

  • Get some new pants

  • Part 2 - Space cowboy workout?