Tired: finding desktop artwork / wired: picking Zoom backgrounds

May 3, 2020 9:07 PM

So you're trying to spice up your video conferences and looking into custom backgrounds (Zoom tutorial; Microsoft Teams guide; Skype guide), but what image to pick? Studio Ghibli shared 8 suitable movie backgrounds [via Spoon Tamago and Mltshp], or you can get official Star Wars scenery [via Mltshp]. Or you could browse through One Perfect Shot, a Twitter account from Film School Rejects [also via Mltshp]. Or get artistic and pick up something from the The British Museum's “major revamp” of its digital collection, with nearly 1.9 million images free to use for anyone under a Creative Commons 4.0 license [via Open Culture, who link to more interesting and educational resources; via Mltshp].
posted by filthy light thief (29 comments total)

To be clear, there's nothing different from desktop images (of old?) and video conference backgrounds. The new thing is that many people are now more interested in picking some interesting images for video conferences, and to cater to that trend, some companies are sharing high resolution background images, where they might have shared movie stills with more action in them.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:10 PM on May 3, 2020

Any opportunity to get an image that isn’t just a dang photograph is a welcome one. I think the actual challenge now is investing good video backgrounds. You need something that
• Loops
• Doesn’t have motion that would upstage the current speaker
• Has most of its activity on the periphery of the screen so that your body doesn’t block it.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:07 PM on May 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

My favorites are these ones from Public Domain Review. Go to your next meeting from a Hieronymus Bosch Garden, an Ernst Haeckel forest, a sci-fi spaceship, an expedition dinner table or more!
posted by archy at 10:23 PM on May 3, 2020 [13 favorites]

Star Trek Online has also released backdrops. I'm particularly amused by the Enterprise-D background.

It almost makes me wish I had a reason to make video conference calls. Alas, I still must be physically present for my own job.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:57 PM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think the actual challenge now is investing good video backgrounds.

Heh. You could try a James Benning film, like Ten Skies or 13 Lakes, which are 10/13 stationary shots of different skies or lakes, or get daring and go with his RR which is a series of stationary camera shots of railroad tracks that show a train enter the shot and travel completely past leaving the shot as it started.

For a shorter meeting maybe try Michael Snow's Wavelength which is a slow camera 45 minute zoom shot across a room or for a long meeting befuddle 'em with his La Région Centrale "three hours long, composed of seventeen shots of an uninhabited mountainous landscape. Between each take, the screen is black with a white X in the center. In the beginning, the camera moves to capture its surroundings with slow, continuous gestures. Over the course of the film, the movement crescendos as the camera spins rapidly"

And on and on, there's just so many great options. Whatever your meeting needs might be avant-garde cinema has you covered.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:10 PM on May 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

Caveat: to use most of these, you need either an advanced enough computer or a green screen....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:00 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

I found some travel snapshots from Europe in 1988 that I thought were pretty fab, but all anyone remarked on was the fact that there were crowds at places like Versailles. Versailles, people -- the Hall of Mirrors! Look around and be amazed! Of COURSE there were crowds!
posted by wenestvedt at 4:43 AM on May 4, 2020

I haven't had to worry about Zoom conferencing yet but I feel like the ultimate hack would be to capture the backgrounds of other participants in the chat and use those.
posted by ardgedee at 4:43 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Found some good ones on reddit.com/r/zoombackgrounds
posted by mysterychef at 5:36 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Unfortunately, Zoom's sysreqs for using a background are kind of stiff. Neither my wife's MacBookPro or my iMac qualify.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:40 AM on May 4, 2020

Apologies for the self-link, but: if you’re of a unixy bent, I made a tutorial on how to create a an animated background that slowly pans across large images over the course of a meeting.
posted by mhoye at 6:04 AM on May 4, 2020 [8 favorites]

My boss used a video of the room he was in for his background. Halfway through the conference, another copy of him walked into the room and started doing things in the background.

I've considered driving to my place of employment, getting a photograph from the sidewalk outside the building, and using that.
posted by Hatashran at 6:29 AM on May 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

For a while my boss would take a screenshot of himself and use that as a background so it would look like there were as a silent doppelgänger of himself looking over his shoulder. Then he would iterate with screenshots of that screenshot, multiplying himself steadily during a meeting until we were all reduced to gibbering at the eldritch horror. Someone else on the team then took a zoom background of the cosmos and used their skin tone as the green screen so it looked like their body had imploded into a hidden starscape contained within their hoodie.

And that was just for a weekly project status meeting.
posted by bl1nk at 6:30 AM on May 4, 2020 [8 favorites]

also, if you like the Ghibli backdrops, but also want to rock the bookshelf credibility angle, there's always borrowing photos of the Studio Ghibli Museum's recreations of Hayao Miyazaki's studio
posted by bl1nk at 7:06 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have a weekly Zoom chat with some friends, and the first time one guy got up to go to the bathroom and left his camera on, we all screencapped his screen and when he came back we were all sitting in his living room, which rapidly became the penalty for going off-screen and people got wary, so we were forced to start screencapping with each other IN the screen and then popping up Person A in his living room as Person B's background. And then Person C would screencap person B's background and appear with A and B, and so on, until we'd all Zoomcepted each other and everyone's background was just a mashup of everyone else's heads in varying degrees of blurriness.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:17 AM on May 4, 2020 [14 favorites]

My personal Mac can only handle still image backgrounds for my weekly meeting with isolating bandmates, but my work Mac is newer and can handle 1280x720 video loops as backgrounds. Today's.
posted by emelenjr at 7:26 AM on May 4, 2020

I've considered driving to my place of employment, getting a photograph from the sidewalk outside the building, and using that.

Before we locked down one of my colleagues had the foresight to take pictures of all of our empty meeting rooms from the perspective of the built-in cameras.
posted by mhoye at 7:33 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Caveat: to use most of these, you need either an advanced enough computer or a green screen....

My not-good-enough computer became good enough once I upgraded to the latest version. I’m not saying it’ll work for everyone, but it’s worth a shot if your client is old.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:50 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

gotyourback.space (courtesy of the above subreddit) has some nice ones.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:01 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

My boss used a video of the room he was in for his background. Halfway through the conference, another copy of him walked into the room and started doing things in the background.

I've considered driving to my place of employment, getting a photograph from the sidewalk outside the building, and using that.

I wish I could remember which twitter person taught me this one, but I love it: If the person you're talking with leaves the frame to get something, take a quick screenshot of their zoom window. Then you can put yourself into their room. I'm right behind you!!!

ETA: Just saw ardgedee said it too
posted by Mchelly at 8:19 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, I've generally been using this one
posted by Mchelly at 8:22 AM on May 4, 2020 [6 favorites]

I have attended a few not-work-related meetings on Zoom. After my Community Garden Friends alerted me to seeing my running bra hanging on the hook behind me, I added a Zoom background. It's a picture of the pyramids of Giza that I found online. I'm going to get myself a Pith Helmet next time I'm at the Pith Helmet Store (in the Pith Helmet District of my city) to fully complete the look.
posted by Gray Duck at 8:49 AM on May 4, 2020

I haven't been able to use zoom backgrounds because my laptop is apparently not fast enough and the walls in my apartment are approximately the same color as my skin, but if I could I'd be trolling this tumblr for suitable pictures.

Well, that or the lasers 80s school photo background.
posted by ckape at 9:07 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

From Matt Hunziker (@matthunzi): Yes, I have an empty shot of the BA Test Kitchen you can use as your Zoom background.

Four more images of the Test Kitchen.
posted by Lexica at 9:35 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Lego Ideas have an activity on this topic currently running.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mchelly: Meanwhile, I've generally been using this one

Next level: animated version (with a smoke alarm and the sound of burning), one of more than 100 animated backgrounds from Air Inc.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've considered driving to my place of employment, getting a photograph from the sidewalk outside the building, and using that.

Google Street View! Done!
I've been using a stock photo of 'sunlight streaming through grapevines' as my background. I have been telling people I am at 'the vinyard...on the island.'
posted by sexyrobot at 2:05 PM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

All you folks really need is a background that accessorizes properly with your cats.
posted by mightshould at 3:53 PM on May 4, 2020

I thought the Zoom background feature was so cool, I ordered a green screen. $30. Totally awesome. I like using my own pictures, but the idea of me walking around in the background of me is pretty cool.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 4:38 PM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]