D90 Motor Drive + Twixtor Trailer Inspired by Matthew

Pirata

Pirata

Well-known member
I saw Mathew's awesome motor drive film and I just had to try it for myself, the images look so beautiful. I decided to make a quick trailer for a film we are developing using the same technique. About 2,300 Jpegs went into this one. I also wrote the score as usual, which is on iTunes now by the way. :)


I have the H.264 1080p file on exposure room which you can download if you have an XR account

http://exposureroom.com/rend

Also here on Vimeo

http://vimeo.com/3149239

rend.jpg
rend.jpg


:dankk2:,

Akira Wing
Site: http://www.akirawing.com
 
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Kooool!!!!

I think you definitely outdid me there, great shots, grade + Slow movement. Excellent edit as far as audio cues and movement.

I'm sure you're also feeling the intense joy of grading the ultra sharp and non-aliased 2k stills...
 
Wow! Would time remapping look horrible when using this technique? I just cant afford the twitor plug-in at the moment..and am very inspired by this type of shooting!
 
Pretty freakin' sweet. If only combing hair in real life could look that cool. I know these were 2k stills, but just think what a really nice clean 1080p codec at 24fps could generate with this type of camera.

What I'm trying to understand is, how did Twixtor generate such smooth looking motion? Is it because there are actually less frames due to being shot at 4.5 fps? Or is it that you were already moving slow in the first place? So maybe a combination between those two factors? And finally (sorry for all the questions), how long was the render time in Twixtor?

Nice music too. The operatic voice sample was great and fit the piece like a glove. Does that come with the program or was that from a sample pack you purchased?
 
You need to try this with a nikon D3 - thirteen FPS on 2k size I think - it looked very 'private ryan' - Ill have to try again with the shutter at 13th or 25th (nearly 26th)

One word of caution, shutter rated at 150 000 clicks

I did 13000 over two days trying this !

It is lovely to work with proper files

Why cant we just have a 25FPS Raw shooting DSLR with all the controls

It will come

S
 
Yes, I was also thinking about the shutter life connected with this method. Maybe if the continuous speeds of entry level DSLRs improves, those bodies could be considered disposable in the service of this great look! Someone had a thread on here experimenting with the 21 fps burst mode of the Pentax K20D (which used the sensor shutter to save your mechanical shutter), but that only lasted for 5 second takes. Would be great if that burst buffer gets usefully enlarged...Nice experiments :beer:
 
WOW! actually stunned me. was expecting, something nice, but, WOW!

just waiting for a little cash to get the d90 and everything i've been seeing here has made me a believer. very interested in the actual steps to create that video as it's just amazing.

thanks for sharing!
 
Rubbersquare said:
very interested in the actual steps to create that video as it's just amazing.
Click to expand...

Same here. So far we know that Twixtor was used for the slow down, so that seems like a necessary tool for this. I heard After Effects mentioned. Can we use any old NLE, or do we have to have After Effects?

A step by step would be much appreciated if possible.
 
Nektonic said:
Same here. So far we know that Twixtor was used for the slow down, so that seems like a necessary tool for this. I heard After Effects mentioned. Can we use any old NLE, or do we have to have After Effects?

A step by step would be much appreciated if possible.
Click to expand...

step-by-step seconded. :dankk2:
 
Thanks for watching everyone and also for he kind words. I am thinking of making a quick video tutorial on youtube for doing this if I have time at some point since it's much easier to show how it's done than to explain in writing but here goes:

Basically I just set the camera to take 4.5fps by holding the timer switch on top of the D90 and using the back wheel to select 'H', this sets it up so when you hold the shutter down it runs the motor drive. I also set up the timer to take 9 frames at a time if I were shooting myself from a distance for some very quick shots. It's tough shooting yourself with shallow dof, had to use an object where I'd be standing and then replace myself with it. I did have to purposfully move pretty slowly in shooting to get enough frames for twixtor to work with otherwise you will get a lot of morphing/tearing. I set the Jpeg capture to 'small' in the menu so I took only 2k files since they're only 1mb each. Once I had all my shots I used the Nikon transfer wizard to import all files into a folder.

I opened Vegas Pro 8 and File>Import Media> select the first image in the sequence and then checked the box below to import as a sequence. Click ok and you get a dialogue box to input your desired framerate etc.. in this case 23.976.

Vegas creates the single image sequence file. Drag into the timeline, do a rough assembly, crop it to fit 16:9, Render as uncompressed AVI @ 1080p or whatever your preference.


Import into After Effects, New Composition, input neccessary file info la dee dah. import movie file. If you have Twixtor (After Effects Plug-in) just apply the effect to the video track and slow the speed to 10%, set the proper source framerate in the twixtor perameters as it defaults at 29.97. If you don't have Twixtor you can use Timewarp in AE, thought not as good as Twix it does a decent job too and if you're really careful shooting and editing later you can get some good results with that too as I tried that method first. Another thing that you need to do is right click your source footage in AE in the project bin and select 'Interperet footage' > 'Main' then at the bottom of the settings box that comes up put in '10' under 'loop' since your file needs to be 10 times as long if you slow it down to 10%. Then in the timeline drag the end of the clip all the way out.


Once it's all done I rendered as uncompressed AVI and then brought it back into Vegas and used both the original high-speed source video and selected only the slow motion stuff that twixtor did the best job with to edit them together for ramping effects and what not...

The color grading was done in Magic Bullet Looks and then I added a small amount of film grain. Title sequence I did in After Effects.

As far as music goes I've been working intently at making a living as a film composer for the last 5 years so I have a vast library of my own work I can stick on projects like this. Most sounds are from sample library plug-ins. I use Word Builder software to program consonants and vowels and create all phrases for choirs (can program them to sing just about anything) once I have my music written and patched in Sonar/Sibelius/Pro Tools etc... Then the usual mixing/mastering etc... go to my site http://www.akirawing.com if you're interested in more tunes.

I had a lot of fun making this.

:dankk2:

Cheers,
Akira
 
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Rubbersquare said:
is there a way to download the file?
Click to expand...


You should be able to download the 1080p H.264 file below the description on exposure room once you make and log into an account. I'm also going to upload this to vimeo tomorrow as soon as my weekly 500mb limit resets for anyone interested.
 
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Matthew Bennett said:
Kooool!!!!

I think you definitely outdid me there, great shots, grade + Slow movement. Excellent edit as far as audio cues and movement.

I'm sure you're also feeling the intense joy of grading the ultra sharp and non-aliased 2k stills...
Click to expand...

Oh man, I love it. Just makes me hungry to shoot on Red all the more right now.
 
NJ3118 said:
Wow! Would time remapping look horrible when using this technique? I just cant afford the twitor plug-in at the moment..and am very inspired by this type of shooting!
Click to expand...

You can also use Timewarp in After Effects. It does the job, though not quite as well, if you're halfway careful with shooting and editing you can get good results.
 
Nektonic said:
Pretty freakin' sweet. If only combing hair in real life could look that cool. I know these were 2k stills, but just think what a really nice clean 1080p codec at 24fps could generate with this type of camera.

What I'm trying to understand is, how did Twixtor generate such smooth looking motion? Is it because there are actually less frames due to being shot at 4.5 fps? Or is it that you were already moving slow in the first place? So maybe a combination between those two factors? And finally (sorry for all the questions), how long was the render time in Twixtor?

Nice music too. The operatic voice sample was great and fit the piece like a glove. Does that come with the program or was that from a sample pack you purchased?
Click to expand...

Twixtor does a really good job of producing new frames by creating masks with moving objects and following them, if there are enough frames for it to work with it creates a nice smooth animation between them. If not you'll get a crazy warping effect. So moving slow to begin with really goes a long way in getting this effect. Render time for all the shots was about 40 minutes.

All sounds used in the composition were from sampler plug-ins yes.
 
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