Best DVX100A Settings for Koyannisqattsi type highway POV

GraBird

GraBird

Member
I need to do a fast nighttime sequence from the POV of a car driver, with the lights rushing by in a continuous stream, so a 20 minute travel sequence gets compressed to 20 seconds.

If you've seen Coppola's "Koyannisqattsi" film, you know what I'm talking about. Car commercials have used it too.

It has to be smooth flowing, so I'm not sure if the time interval technique will work, or do I just need to get 20 mins of footage and speed it up using Adobe After Effects?

Are there settings I can make on the DVX100A to keep the shutter open and give it that blurred effect, or is it better done in post?

I use the full Adobe post suite of tools, not quite a super-expert yet, but I know my way around After Effects and am well past the beginner/intermediate phase.

Any guidance or tips to how to create this effect, either using the camera or using After Effects in post, would be greatly appreciated! (And of course, if you've got a sequence to show which used those techniques, that would be spectacular!)

Thanks! :beer:
 
Hmmm... like THIS?

That's Drew's fantastic timelapse work, and he's a member of this forum, but he use's a still camera for those (you can PM him HERE for tips maybe)

If it were me, I'd set the camera on a steady car rig, shoot a half a stop brighter than usual, as flat as possible, and do all the mojo in post. This will give you the most to work with, and the possibilities are endless in AE.

my .02

-brown
 
You get those light streaks by picking a really slow shutter.
I shot this with the slowest possible shutter in 25p, looks cool if you speed it up (without any frameblending to keep the "p" ...

shibuya.jpg
 
Thanks! Yes, that clip is EXACTLY what I want to do. (Same with Moebius's shot.)

I'll drop my shutter speed down for starters, and will experiment with those settings in AE7. Why "definitely color grading" though?

If you have any specific settings to use for each effect, it will go a long way to helping me out. I love to experiment, that's how I learned, but I tend to spend an entire weekend experimenting, then have nothing to show for it... maybe getting actual post work done for about 5 seconds of footage.

I'm desperately trying to finish post on my first feature and it's killing me how long it's taking to get things done. Not at all difficult, it's just the learning as I go part that's taking forever. (Which has been great, but just really, really slow. And inevitably, I'll learn something new and better and then I go back to footage already finished and rework it to make it even better... which I seriously need to learn to resist doing.
 
Yeh, the only trick is to lower your shutter speed as much as possible. What's the lowest on a DVX100, 1/6th, maybe? Good, but not as good as the HVX at 1fps with nearly a full second exposure. Then, speed it up in post.

There used to be an awesome plugin out there do simulate slow shutter speeds. Can't seem to find it now, but there is this RSMB plugin.
 
If you can hire a dslr you'll be able to get better results as you can open the shutter for extended periods (eg. 10 secs) and the streaks of car lights will be long and intense. You need a dslr with an intervelometer though.
 
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