Another "How to" thread

[Chris Johnston]

I'm doing shot planning for something I will be shooting in the month or two and I'm trying to figure a way to incorporate a couple "trick" shots.

Here's what I'm wondering. I'm looking to get 2 (or at least 1) seperate shots thyat are REALLY slo mo. (much like the one on the trailer for sherlock holmes where the bullet goes by him slowly)

Unfortunately I have to use my own equipment so no budget to rent a Photron or Typhoon or any other high speed cam.
One thing I came across why researching was this...

Anyone ever try this? The effect seems to work awesome but there is relatively no subject movement. I get the impression this wouldn't work so well if the subject was moving, but then again, I don't use AE that much.....

 

[AtticusLake]

So, he seems to be saying, basically, that you can capture footage at 8fps (using a still camera) and use time remap with frame blend to interpolate frames and get super slow-mo.

Well, if all you have is a stills camera, then his tutorial shows that you can do pretty cool things with that... actually his results are quite amazing... but if you're working with video, then I think you can do more. Since we both have FS100's, we can capture 60 fps; then the frame blend would need to create fewer interpolated frames, and it will look better.

BTW you don't need After Effects -- Premiere Pro 5 and up has both time remap and frame blend. Right-click on a clip in the timeline to enable frame blend, it's disabled by default. However I would recommend getting Twixtor if your budget allows -- it does the same kind of thing as time remap + frame blend, but will do a better job.

The key points in his video are really about the kinds of things this works well with, and how to shoot them for best results. But I wouldn't feel too constrained by that -- after all, what you need to shoot is what you need to shoot. Just bear in mind you're not going to catch bullets (or anything fast) unless you have a camera that actually has a high enough frame rate to actually get enough frames of the subject to work with. Also, shooting on plain backgrounds may help -- experiment and see what works.

Here's what I would do:

• Shoot as fast as possible
• Use the highest shutter speed possible (but some folks recommend using a slower shutter speed, so maybe experiment)
• Import into Premiere
• Use time remap to stretch your clips, with frame blend enabled on the clips
• Get the free demo of Twixtor, and try that
• Compare the two and decide whether Twixtor is worth it
• Maybe try some other free demos, like Boris Optical Flow, too

I basically did that and bought Twixtor. Also with Twixtor, you have the option of doing more manual work to really clean up the results. I've never done this, but it's nice to know the option is there:

http://philipbloom.net/2011/12/06/twixtor-2/

Hope this helps!

One thing: read the manual with Twixtor. Because PP plugins can't change the duration of a clip (unlike time remap, which is built in), there's a certain amount of prep work you need to do. It's not a big deal once you know about it.

 

[Chris Johnston]

Yep, I did some more research and a little more though about the mechanics (and math) and I think you're right. (I obviously don't do a lot of SFX)
Might be a lot better to shoot 60 fps and deal with that footy vs the camera at 8fps.
Thanks for mentioning the optical flow....I have BCC 8 which has the optical flow plugin. (I thought that it only came with red) and no budget for twixtor.
I did a quick test with optical flow and I think it will do exactly what I want.

PS. I wasn't attempting to capture bullets flying by , that part would be composited in AE. Just looking to get some nice SLO MO at as high a speed as I can. (That still looks good.)

 

[AtticusLake]

... I did a quick test with optical flow and I think it will do exactly what I want.

Excellent! Yeah, I tried Optical Flow a while ago, and it looked pretty good... for my specific test, I thought Twixtor came out slightly ahead, but of course if you already have it, that's great.