Shake, focusing and speed of this Music Video

D

DDirector

Veteran
The whole shake, rack focusing in/out, and the speed... how is this achieved?

Mainly seen in the shots where they are standing in front of the backdrop with random letters and pictures on it.

Is this all in camera or some of it done in post too?
Is the video playing at normal speed or do they speed it up or down while recording?


There are many of these clips on the shot. Here are the two examples:
1:50-1:53
2:00-2:05
 
For the backdrop shots there are times where the background shakes and the artist doesn't, so number one I have to say it is done on green screen - if not then there was some rotoscoping done around the artist where bg was shaken separately from artist. (AE has a new auto-roto tool which makes rotoscoping a friggin breeze. google it)

The fast blurs can easily be done in post, and same with the shake effect. In After Effects you can actually shake a layer by writing an "expression" using the "wiggle" command - which is a mathematical expression to tell AE how many pixels to shift a layer in X and Y axis (even Z if you convert it to 3D layer and want to go in and out from camera for example) and then also the frequency/speed of the shake.

You can see a ton of examples of "wiggle" by Andrew on videocopilot.net in certain tutorials.
 
Also some of the footage is definitely sped up.

If you have any projects that needs this kind of post work, let me know. I'm pretty good with AE and advanced compositions. :happy:
 
I thought the Rihanna "Where have you been" video was pretty great... there was some nice shots where the camera was all over the place (the ones where she's against a golden background)
 
DDirector said:
The whole shake, rack focusing in/out, and the speed... how is this achieved?

Mainly seen in the shots where they are standing in front of the backdrop with random letters and pictures on it.

Is this all in camera or some of it done in post too?
Is the video playing at normal speed or do they speed it up or down while recording?

Looks like its mostly done on set. The actor is on set/location with the walls behind him. Artist performed the song in slower speed and ten in post it was sped up to match the vocal track. This gives the fast forward effect but keeps the vocals in sync with the song.

As for yhe shakes i think its locked down on a tripod and the head is loose. So the operator can freely move around and/or shake the camera for desired effect. Also because it is sped up any little movement will make it look dramatic.

The in and out focus could be practical or post. Im guessing practical. Maybe added a wiggle in post for extra effect and blurs.
Click to expand...
 
I do a lot of behind the scenes work on videos just like this... the company I work for always uses a technocrane to achieve this effect. The head is controlled by a couple small joysticks at the back of the crane, where the operator's at. Any time he wants this effect, he just firmly jiggles the joysticks a bit while "jamming" to the beat of the music. It's the tinniest movement by his hands. I didn't watch this video all the way through, but skimmed it... it looks like they may be cheating it here with a loose head or something instead of the actual method I described on a few of those shots.
 
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