Stop Motion using the 7D = Awesome!

R

ride2bhi

New member
Hello,
We finished this commercial a couple weeks back using the 7D and just wanted to share the results with the board where I have learned so much. This was my first using the 7D and I couldn't be happier with the results. It's almost as if the camera was meant for me and this spot in that the 8fps on the stills was invaluable. Any notes would be most welcome as we look to improve!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FlRrEBFV7Y
 
ride2bhi said:
Hello,
We finished this commercial a couple weeks back using the 7D and just wanted to share the results with the board where I have learned so much. This was my first using the 7D and I couldn't be happier with the results. It's almost as if the camera was meant for me and this spot in that the 8fps on the stills was invaluable. Any notes would be most welcome as we look to improve!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FlRrEBFV7Y
Click to expand...

That was very cool. So how about some more technical details? What lenses did you use? What apps/work flow did you use for the animation? Also, how did you keep the details on the bulletin board, the brushed metal wall and the carpet near the elevator from aliasing? That stuff can reek havoc with the video DSLRs.

My only, nit picky, criticism is the music. Sounds very canned. Otherwise, great job.
 
David G. Smith said:
That was very cool. So how about some more technical details? What lenses did you use? What apps/work flow did you use for the animation? Also, how did you keep the details on the bulletin board, the brushed metal wall and the carpet near the elevator from aliasing? That stuff can reek havoc with the video DSLRs.

job.
Click to expand...
seconded! :D
 
Nice work. Did you just run everything at normal speed and shoot stills at 8fps? I'd love to shoot surfing stills at 8fps and stich them back together into video. I've been experimenting with a few effects/techniques using 4fps stills and would love to be able to get 2x the frames to work with.
 
Hi, thanks for the feedback. We shot with two old Nikon primes that we adapted for the 7D, a 24mm and a 50mm, as well as using the Canon EF-S 15-85mm. We mostly used the canon lens as it gave us a lot of flexibility and since we were in a controlled lighting situation it worked out well.

The workflow consisted of going to ProRes HQ using compressor from the H264 files. We shot at 1080p at 23.98 and edited in FCP. Using After Effects we composited the stills in to the video to get the effect we were looking for.

The process involved locking off the camera, having the actor walk through while shooting video, then switching the camera to stills mode and doing stop motion for the photos. We printed out every photo you see in the video except the shot from behind which we composited in After Effects. The stop motion was done using Dragon software.

As for the aliasing, we just got lucky...

For the stills, we set the camera to the stills mode, and then set it to high res JPEGS, which allows for shooting at 8fps. It can only be done for short times, I believe something like 110 frames depending on your memory card, but it was plenty for our purposes.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for the feedback.
 
So you print out all the photos??? why? So you print out the photos, scanned them and then composed them in AE??
 
We shot the photos in the location where we shot the actor and then composited the parts of the shot with the pictures to match the video using After Effects. If you were able to watch the stop motion, the scene would look much like it does now, just without the actor. Hopefully this makes sense... not sure I am doing the best job of explaining it.

Thanks grimepoch!
 
So to get it straight. You shot the stills of the girl running as high res jpegs at 8fps, then printed the stills out. You shot the video of the guy, and with a locked off camera, then shot the printed stills on the location, single frame as stills. Wow. How long did it take to shoot?
 
Pretty good, although this technique got used ages ago:

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I AGREE
 
David G. Smith said:
So to get it straight. You shot the stills of the girl running as high res jpegs at 8fps, then printed the stills out. You shot the video of the guy, and with a locked off camera, then shot the printed stills on the location, single frame as stills. Wow. How long did it take to shoot?
Click to expand...

That is correct. It took a lot of work and time. Hard to say how much pre-production went into it, but we shot three nights after work, usually going well past midnight. The sad part is we actually had another scene that we shot until 3am with my co-director deathly ill, and we ended up having to cut it. Brutal...
 
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