New Rapper T-Pain music video...How was this shot?

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DVX100Shooter

Veteran
A friend just told me to check out this new T-Pain music video where there is no movement from anybody the entire video. Everybody appears to be frozen while the camera most likely on Stedicam is floating through capturing the shots. Everything is frozen including a shot of some people throwing money at a dancer. The money appears to be frozen in mid air!! I wanted to know how something like this is shot and/or edited! Whatever it was, it was a cool effect.

Towards the end you can see the shadow of the camera on someone's face as it crosses them. All i could tell is that it had a mattebox but couldn't see any other details with the shadow. There is a commercial that plays before the actual video but the link is below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDiw1RmM7XE
 
DVX100Shooter said:
A friend just told me to check out this new T-Pain music video where there is no movement from anybody the entire video. Everybody appears to be frozen while the camera most likely on Stedicam is floating through capturing the shots. Everything is frozen including a shot of some people throwing money at a dancer. The money appears to be frozen in mid air!! I wanted to know how something like this is shot and/or edited! Whatever it was, it was a cool effect.

Towards the end you can see the shadow of the camera on someone's face as it crosses them. All i could tell is that it had a mattebox but couldn't see any other details with the shadow. There is a commercial that plays before the actual video but the link is below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDiw1RmM7XE
Click to expand...

In this case, the camera is on a Steadicam most likely; the entire path is planned to the T, and essentially everyone stays as still as they can. You can see at some points people are moving slightly, but the effect is sold with the cameras movements masking the shaking of any people. The things floating in the air are 3D done with 3D tracking. (Things such as smoke, confetti, or champagne being popped). There are a few cuts that are seamlessly placed throughout as well by someone or something crossing the camera.

edit: Here is another method and similar look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aExsSH9Q5k
 
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I think if you look closely you can see that the actors are just standing stilll... am I wrong? I could swear I can see them moving just the slightest bit. I assume they added the "floating" objects in post.

Edit: Marc beat me too it. I was about to watch it again to see if I could see movement or if I was just insane :p
 
It's funny - there are at least 3 places where I either saw the shadow of the operator, the Steadicam, or the telltale "one square shadow, one round shadow" (mattebox and operator's head). Beautiful operating though!
 
They did something like this in Heroes where they used a motion control rig and took two passes, one for a clean background place and another with the actors being supported by rigs which were painted green. That's a pretty good approach!
 
A while back Philips made a 'frozen time' scene to show off their 21:9 TV. Here is a link to the scene as well as a nice behind the scene look at how it was all done.


-Andrew
 
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