"On The Lot" - Stop Time Effect?

Erm, I don't see the difficulty, its a simple straight comp,

this is my stab at it:

Two shot

Shot 1
Background footage, actors filmed predend to "hit" imaginary hangers (actually nothing is on the table)

Greenscreen shot of hangers being hit (approximatly in the same fashion as with real shot 1). Filmed at same POV and camera angle as shot one.

This is comped ontop of shot 1 and frame slowed downed and frozen.

Shot 2

simple comp.
 
Looking at the shot again a cut can clearly be seen with some continuity errors when the time actually stops. That means they did a shot of them throwing then a plate shot of them in the same position when he wanted to freeze time (which they messed up slightly but the jump isn't that apparent). So they did a take of them throwing them, then a shot of them standing in the same position as the place they chose to freeze time, roto'd the footage ONLY for the freeze frame and placed it on top. Simple job, not done perfectly but they pulled it off.

Theres ur answer folks, 1 frame roto, 1 take throwing, 1 take without hangers matching the actor positions for take 1, taking the throwing shot with the actors up to the freeze point, rotoing the hangers, and placeing behind the roto the 2nd take they did of no hangers but just the actors.

There we go, everyone's cup filled lol?

- Kyle
 
It's not a terribly hard shot to pull off, and you can definately see where they tried to cut the two jumping takes together. It's just a simple matter of a locked camera and since everything is "frozen in time" you just need one frame roto'd out. The camera hangers are easy to roto and since it's a long shot it looks more realistic. In the next shot with the woman running or whatever, they didn't do the best job of roto'ing it out...you can still see the original background in parts of the woman's hair when the two actors walk by.
 
Lmfao. I knew there was gonna be a HUGE discussion about this.

Dude, he just took a simple effect and roto'd. The box was also roto'd. He stood it on a podium and knocked it over, recorded it, then placed it back into the scene.

As Kyle explained, there were just multiple shots taken of the areas where time needed to be frozen.

All in all, the guy knew what he could pull off in a certain amount of time, and he pulled it off well. Goes to show: don't do something, in a competition, that you can't do well.
 
they didn't have enough time to green screen and if they did, they would talk about it.
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huh? I would have thought its quicker to GC then roto ALL Those hangers...

I can't see why placing a GC material on a locked down camera shot, a card board or even draped fabric Just behind the table and box would do the trick, then just shot the hanger being knocked over (with green gloves on!) :)

If they had a monitor on set, it would be simple enough to just draw the outline of the figure of the actors where they where using a felt tip or non permanent marker pen, then they could move them to about the same place.

Like Kholi said its a fairly basic effect (done well though).
 
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I doubt they used any green screen at all... Looks to me like they used cleanplates and rotoscoping to achieve this affect..
 
Watch the employee been already frozen, there is obviously a cut when the hangers froze. Simply freeze and object extraction. The actors are not even in the same pose/place after the cut. I would give a 6 out of ten.

EDIT: Due to the size of the hangers it would be difficult to crop them from the frame (SD resolution), so they might be stills taken in various position, or even some 3D hangers falling. I see no motion blur on the objects whereas the shutter speed doesn't look high enough to stop motion blur. They might as well be fake.
 
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Yes! DVXuser completely rules.

This is where they should be taping. This is where the magic is. Right here in DVXuserland. It could be called, "On the Web".
 
Brandon Rice said:
It's true, the films in the DVXuser fests are eons better than anything I've seen on "On the Lot"
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Compared to "On the Lot" DVXuser fests are also eons longer. Spyfest was introduced RIGHT after DramaFest, and that was like 5(?) months ago.
 
I would not support this beast "on the lot" any longer. Quite frankly i am insulted by all of the recent companies that have been devaluing the efforts of us filmmakers by degrading our work to nothing more than parlor tricks. "Fox" will (hopefully not) make millions upon millions of dollars, showing content that took millions of hours to create, that they got for free by convincing people that this is anything more than a lottery!
 
ProjX v2.0 said:
Colin Minihan, coincidentally also from Vancouver, did the same effect in this music video:
http://colinminihan.com/thesetmusicvideo.mov
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You suck. Hook, line and sinker.

Can anyone post the link to the stop animation video you are all talking about please? I have not watched the show at all. I spent some time at their website looking for it but came up short.

My brother just told me about how good this show is in an email this morning. So, I went to the website and watched a few of the ONE MINUTE comedy shorts. I have to say, the production value is incredibly high. Do they explain that during the show? How they get props, actors, budget? Just curious.

Thanks!
Rick
 
guys I really don't think that they are composited or greenscreened. There is a much simpler way. 1. The were real beause the actually showed them hitting the hangers in some of the clips, and they show a clip of zach's laptop just analyzing the footage. 2. there was no green screen that you could see from any of the clips they showed. What I think they did was with masking, using a program called "composited lab pro" for Mac. They just traced around the hangers and hit the "invert" button, so everything was cut out of that clip and then just stuck it over a second clip with them moving. The key is the "invert" button.
 
You could it all in final cut with a free 64 point matte plug in I got it from paul crisp. This effect is very simple if you know anything about doing mattes. The objects being matted are even frozen, which is much simpler to do. It's still impressive they did it in a short amount of time, but it's not complicated at all.
 
freeze frame the shot right as the hangers freeze in the air... look in the lower left corner, you will see some of the rails on the hangers do not align properly. look close by going nearly frame by frame and you will see some sloppy work. they did do this in an accelerated time period though so you have to give them that. i was initially very impressed, now i am just impressed mainly due to the situation they created this effect. thats my 2 cents.
 
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