Slow motion for martial arts/like 300

B

buijon

Active member
I have seen tutorials about how to make a scene go in slow motion. Most require the action to be minimal, or people to move slwer than they actually would. Well, I`m looking for a way to do normal motion slowed down to slow, and sped back up to normal again like in 300, only we will be using martial arts. My friend has done wu shu for 8 years and you can`t really do some of the aerial twists slower for the cameras sake. So I`m curious what method would work best with real fast motion stuff? I saw the Twixtor music video with the fighting bandmates, but you could tell they were not moving in realtime when they filmed it, nor did they have a clue as to how to fight.
 
The superclean slo mo is done by overcranking (shooting at a high frame rate). The change in speed is speedramping, essentially shooting while changing framerate. The best results are achieved in camera, typically a film camera although Panasonics Varicam can ramp the frame rate. In post many NLE's and compositing apps can emulate a speedramp. But the motion will never be as smooth as varying the frame rate in camera. If you shoot a golf swing at 30 fps and slow it down to a crawl the result is a choppy image. There's not enough information captured to create smooth movement. It probably be just as difficult to smooth out the slow motion of a high speed martial arts move if it were captured at 30fps. I've heard good things about Twixtor but I haven't used the plug myself so I don't know how well it performs.

I haven't seen 300 yet, should I make it a point to see the film?
 
"I saw the Twixtor music video with the fighting bandmates, but you could tell they were not moving in realtime when they filmed it, nor did they have a clue as to how to fight."

I`m also talking on prosumer HDV cameras etc. I need to get the best results with what I have, not what I could do if i were in hollywood with a huge budget ;)
 
Why not shoot the whole thing at 60fps (slomo) and then speed it way up? You will have more than enough frames to work with and the NLE will not have to creat frames.

I have done this effect several times ......even with a camcorder incapable of variable frame rates.

Check this (very rough) test i did. The entire clip was shot at 60fps. Then ramped with the NLE...this is a very rough test, but it does work.

www.taorminafilms.com/test.wmv
 
using the time remap feature in after effects lets you do the slow motion and speeding up. If you film with a high shutter speed it can make it look pretty decent
 
We don't really have enough information on this. Are you looking for your final output to be film like (24 progressive fps) or tv like? (60 fields per second)

Depending on this I'd consider some things. If you have access to a variable framerate camera which is the optimal solution, I'd consider how much slower I want the slowest motion to be shot at. If you want 3 x slower motion, then for 24fps, you should be shooting with a frame rate of 72fps. If TV, then consider trying for 90fps.

If you don't have access to such a camera, taormina seems to have the right idea. I think I'd approach using a TV frame rate of 60i fps.

If you're planning to output to TV, you can slow the image down by about half and still retain good motion.

If you are going for 24fps progressive, you can slow all the way down to that and still maintain full motion.

If you're choosing this route, then I'd check out converting all your footage into 60fps progressive. (http://100fps.com has a great FAQ and guide on deinterlacing)

In either case, you can ramp in software as desired.
 
what i noticed the last time i watched 300 is that they speed up right before they slow it down.. so if you like ramp it to 140% and then down to 50% i think you will get a cool effect..
 
The thing about 300 was, although it was mostly, if not 100% composite shots, they shot on 35mm film. The reason they wanted to shoot film was to get extreme slowmotion by ramping up to super high framerates. If you shoot video, which would seem ideal for this type of movie, the highest frame rate you can shoot at is 60p. You can't slow it down that much. One way to get decent slowmo footage from video for your project is to shoot 60i, then slow it down to 30% and de-interlace it. There are lots of good tutorials out there if you search for them.
 
I think 4mat posted some 60p bike footage. He said it really liked the 60p. It had some camera flashes going off and it made a weird smeary effect on a guy's face.
 
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