How did they do this? Everything is rewind, only the singer not

He sings the song backwards. That's my guess. That's how Coldplay did it for "The Scientist." They took it line by line, and he memorized it backwards, and he sang it that way, so that when it was reversed, it was right. Notice his motions are a little odd as well. It's because he's moving backwards.
 
It's gotta be greenscreen, at least for some shots, because the backgrounds going in and out of slow motion, while he is staying at regular time.
 
Backwards? There's no backwards there that I can see. Some good rotoscope work, but that's about it. Might also be a sandwich composite like we used to do on optical. Shoot two passes on the same negative both at half the exposure required so that we could get a print that combined the two. Easier on the computer.

But I'd have to defer to a VFX person for sure. It's good work to be sure.
 
jasonthewho said:
It's gotta be greenscreen, at least for some shots, because the backgrounds going in and out of slow motion, while he is staying at regular time.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I didn't get past the 1:00 mark at first glance because it sounded too much like a techno "OMG" to me.

The parts where he's at normal time with the crowd time remapped has to be chroma keyed.
 
RE: shooting it backwards and him singing it forwards, check out the video for "Drop " by the Pharcyde, directed by Spike Jonze. They had a linguist write out the lyrics so that the words they were saying would make the correct mouth shapes in reverse. He wrote it out phonetically and they memorized it.

RE: What Perrone Said, it doesn't look backwards but rather the crowd is at variable speed and he's in realtime. Probably what they did is shot a plate of the crowd on a Moco rig, then shot Usher and composited the two.

If you look at 7s, there's a shot of the hall empty and then ghost of a crowd flashes. That re-inforces this theory.
 
Yep, that's what my money was on. Simple (or not so simple) composite. Though very nicely done. I'm betting there is some layering going on two because at some points he's actually covered by some folks, and in front of others.

I also thing we see some instances of him moving at double speed ore more (basically as fast as he can) while the dancers in the background are going as slow as they can. With the time remap in post, when he's moved to normal time, they are slowed down to 1/2 to 1/3 of their normal rate. That technique is as old as it gets.

It's cool to see something like this. A bit of creativity and imagination instead of the same old same old.
 
Hi Guys,

haha.. I have seen 100 times this video. It's so cool. I just wanted to discuss here diferent ideas.Thank you :=)

Humm.. Do you think that we could use greenscreen on some scenes to get a similiar look?

Layer 1: People dancing (Slowed down maybe to 30%, running backwards) / Background
Layer 2: Singer dancing (Keyed, normal speed) / In Front

I think that the Light setup for the singer on the greenscreen is very important to match after the 2 layers.

Maybe I should by a slow budget greenscreen to test this very nice effect. The director should discuss this thread with us.. haha
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-dvTjK_07c#t=02m03s

The clips where the crowd dances in slow motion, Usher is just rotoscoped in. He's pasted into the foreground. And I think a few of the shots could be better: 2:15 & 2:25 look horrendous.


The end (the stuff after the 3 minute mark) looks incredible. But focus on Usher in those moments where the worst rotoscoping is done and you'll clearly see how they made the video.
 
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Hi Knox,

thank you! Let's see.. Maybe I will make a test in future and post it here.

Thank you guys.
 
Message me when you do! I'd love to see your first tests! I'm a little rusty on my rotoscoping too. We'll make an event of it. :)
 
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