"On The Lot" - Stop Time Effect?

Chris Messineo

Chris Messineo

Veteran
How in the !@#$% did they do that in 24 hours?

I know you can do a great film in 24 hours, but how in the world did they get that good of an effect in that time? I would think the rendering alone would take too long. It looked like they were all doing post on Apple laptops.

Any idea what software would let them do something so professional and so fast?

Chris
 
from the clips they showed there was no green screen involved. Seems like a bunch of roto work. That kid must have some fast fingers.
 
Matty_g said:
from the clips they showed there was no green screen involved. Seems like a bunch of roto work. That kid must have some fast fingers.
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The one that gets me is the first one with the cloths hangers, they move behind them and you can see threw the middle, how did they pull that off with rotoscoping alone, it might have had to been a combo?
 
Rotoscoping can be removing the traced footage too, not just animating it. It's often used to touch up green screen footage, where objects go outside the green area, etc.
 
While initially I too was blown away by what seemed a miracle of an effect within the time constraint, I later gave it some serious thought and realized how they did it.They gave away the secret when they were showing them film it.

If you remember they were pointing to the screen and saying something like, "Will that composite right?" When they next showed the screen he was moving through the shot and then stopping when the hangars filled the screen.

So what they did was film the shot with them throwing the hangars and ran that footage up to the point where the hangars were to freeze. They then grabbed that last frame and roto'd (or whatever you want to call it) out everything but the hangars (just on the single frame).

Presumably they continued filming the scene, but now the hangars are on the floor, out of frame. They would then simply have to comp this remaining footage with the single roto'd shot of frozen hangars.

The second shot was wide enough that you couldn't see the hangars in great detail. So I assume they roto'd a hangar from a clear shot, then just rotated and comped it in where they wanted it.

If you re-look at the other shots you'll see a similar effect employed there as well.

Simple, but clearly effective. Quite creative especially considering the time constraint. Makes it appear they pulled off a miracle :)
 
Larry,

To do what you suggest, wouldn't they have needed to cut when time froze, otherwise how do you hide the hangars falling to the floor? And I don't remember a cut there (although I only saw it once, so I could be remembering wrong).
 
Larry your suggestion wouldn't work because if they kept filming in the same shot that they threw the hangers in and roto'd the hangers at that one moment, technically there would be lots of gaps in the background footage that they "continued to film." As the next few frames progress the hangers would start falling to the ground as anything else would if you threw it, BUT the hangers are still covering up parts of the actors behind them so you can't simply roto it and stick it on top.

I'm sticking with my idea that they filmed 2 seperate takes, one throwing and one of them acting like they threw it, merging the takes together, and rotoing the first 20 something frames ot w/e up to the freeze moment. It would take some time but if you think about it the jumble of hangers are a bunch of straight lines for the most part except for a few exceptions.

Think of it as if they threw a simple ball and NOT hangers. You shoot a shot of the ball being thrown exactly where their hands swiped and just shoot the ball, shoot a take of them whiping thier hands in that spot but not throwing anything, roto the ball and merge the takes together and freeze the ball a w/e frame you want while rotoing up to that point so after the freeze point they can move behind it. The ball is simpler but its the same concept.

- Kyle
 
Chris Messineo said:
Larry,

To do what you suggest, wouldn't they have needed to cut when time froze, otherwise how do you hide the hangars falling to the floor? And I don't remember a cut there (although I only saw it once, so I could be remembering wrong).
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There is a cut there. If you look closely, you can see a jump right at the second the hangers freeze. Watch the guy. He does a little weird jump that looks to me like a cut in the footage.

But I think it would have been pretty doable to roto one hanger and then replicate it, rotate, scale, etc. To me, that's the fastest way.

Or, it really would have been nothing to shoot one hanger against a green piece of paper right there in the shop, or outside, or anywhere, and key it in, then replicate it, rotate, scale, etc.

But overall I think someone who knows AE could do that shot within an hour or two. But they would have to come in with that knowledge and already know how to approach this. No time to experiment.

But I have many doubts about the "24-hourness" of these "24 hour" films...:)
 
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