Stop Motion look ?? Anyone ?

clumsy_cool

clumsy_cool

Well-known member
Hey, would anyone know how to achieve the stop motion look used in many of Floria Sigismondi's(director) music videos ( http://www.floriasigismondi.com/main.html ). She did a couple of Marilyn Manson's videos including the beautiful people and also did Blue Orchids from The white stripes. I'm sure there's more to it , then just playing with the speed.

Ray
 
I can't tell, but it may be pixelation. ( Where you treat real people as if they were objects and move them frame by frame.)
 
wow, that must take loads of time, I thought it was something like, shooting the person moving real slowly and speeding it up a tiny bit faster then normal. I dont know, I would like to know the correct way of doing it though, cause when I try that it always ends up looking weird, or interlaced.
 
Yeah, I am pretty sure that they did some form of pixelation. From what I have gathered, she is pretty well intrenched into the use of film for her videos. I have done pixelation, and it really does not take that much more time, unless the effect is very complecated (White Stripes Videos). It is not really an effect that can be emulated in video, IMHO. When I did it, I used a Bolex Rex4 with a mechanical cable shutter release and just pushed the cable release button at different rates for different effects. For the MM videos, I believe that when they varied the frame rate they also varied the shutter angle. from what I remember, they got very crisp images with the fast motion effect. Find a Bolex Rex4 or better and experiment.
 
hmmm nice, so what your saying is that there's no way of copying that look with a DVX, and Film is the only way to do it.
 
Well, actually, what I am saying is that I do not know how to emulate the look with a DVX.

After thinking about it for a while, I am sure that a reasonable approximation of that look could be done in the digital realm. Just as a suggestion, I would shoot the action at a very high shutter speed (to maintain the crisp look of the slo-mo), add a little motion blur to the real time images, then slow down the selected takes (with out blur).

Just a suggestion. Experiment. See what kind of look you can come up with.
 
Shoot at like 1/1000th of a second shutter. If you have an HVX shoot at 60p. Take it into a retimer and randomize the frame rate between 14 and 18 fps, be sure to use drop frame mode. I would guess that would do it.

If you want that model look also be sure to shoot with some variety of 35mm adapter and shoot wide open with a telephoto to get that exagerated DOF.
 
Another possibility, which was most definitely used in the bathtub shot on blue orchid, was doing burst recording (in like 1 second intervals) and then piecing it together. You just have to have your talent move incredibly slow.
 
You can also just use the burst capture (or timelapse) and in your editor cut each burst shot down to 1 or 2 frames (making a few clips 3 frames long will help look extra jerky). It will take a while though. Earlier versions of Premiere had a "Stop Motion Capture", if you can capture tethered to your computer. Also, I don't know if they exist any more, but there is an awesome program called "Stop Motion Pro" that does tons of features handy for stop-motion video capture (like pixelation).
 
yeah check out Awake or ask Scharky about it. He has an excellent interpretation of the look you're talking about. I believe he just used a still camera for the pixellation. but you could use a DVX just doing interval recording the same way you would do stop motion with the dvx.
 
My ears were ringing :). Yep, I used a Dslr for most of the stop motion scenes, but I also used a DVX for one scene, and the look is capable of being done completely with the DVX. I just had my actors move really really slowly, and then sped up the footage by quite a bit, depending on the scene, and cut certain frames completly. It's fun to experiment, and see what kind of looks you can come up with.
 
The way I have done stop motion in the past is not even use a video camera, but rather a digital still camera. Then bring the images in as a sequence to AE or a NLE.
 
what was your final solution to get that effect? Love it, btw. Also, the file name should be test.wmv, not test/wmv. :)
 
I shot my footage really slow with a 1/1000 shutter speed (really hard to light lol) then I speed it up in post. That gave me the stop motion look but I fooled arround with it abit more. I then duplicated the video layer and put a random strobe and displaced the bottom layer. IF that makes any sense.
 
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