how to get superslomotion in hollywood movies?
 

HI

HOw to they do that? Superslomotion in which you can see evry detail and the camera doesn't shake or anything. YOu can see that effect on MTV as well. Can you do this with a standard xl/gl2 cam? or do you need a special 35 mm cam to do this?

Thanks

Jose:

The industry standard film camera for high speed filming, the Arri 435, shoots at a top speed of 150 fps (a little better than 1/6th of real time when viewed at 24 fps). There are specialized systems such as Photosonics cameras which are brought in when ultra high speeds such as 2000 fps are needed.

There are no DV level video cameras that can deliver true slow motion. You can fake this using software when editing.

Wait a sec, I thought they were able to do this effect with a bunch of PD150's for Neo's falling back scene in the first Matrix movie. Well, that may be different because they used like what? 20 or 50 PD150's in a large circle around Keanu Reeves? Well, sorry if this isn't a helpful example. If it makes ya feel any better, I've seen this effect done with lower cameras, like a VX2000, for some fan movies on the net, the slow motion wasn't anything like something out of Lord of the Rings or The Matrix, but it was television show believable.

I think you are talking about two different things - slow motion and 'bullet time' as they call it in the Matrix.

Standard slomo is done by basically overcranking a film camera.

Bullet time is usually done (at least in the Matrix) by using an array of stills cameras with their shutters fired in a precisely defined order, eg an arc of cameras around a subject fired all at once can give you the subject frozen in time and a dolly shot.

I have heard of no-budget films using an array of identical disposable cameras to do this. Sounds good but firing the shutters is a problem and also they must be heavily colour corrected and the sequences usually look a bit clumsy.

Personally I think the overuse of this effect has turned bullet time into a cheesy effect that is both very expensive and difficult to carry out.

The Matrix effect (variously known as Bullet Time or Slice of Life, depending on who's setup was in use) was initially done with an array of still (photo) cameras. Later versions used film cameras at the beginning or end or other points in between.

Today's image processing techniques allow more and better than the frame blending/repetition we used to use for slow motion. Today one can get impressive results based on motion compensated field interpollation and morphing algorithms. These concepts really calculate the missing "in- between" frame contents. Dynapel has a consumer version (Slow motion) using these techniques

nest thign for me is to buy 150 PD150's. Well, I wasn't refearing to that effect. Thanks for the answer. I guess you can't do that superslomotion britney spears kind of clip. I was watching a xl2 vid 3 days ago and it had slomotion in it and it was like pretty real to me. I have to check out how fast the GL2 shoots max. The same for the xl version.

I haven't seen the Britney video.. but using conventional camcorders, I would think you can get better slow mo (this is purely my guess) from a 29.97 FPS camera as you get more frames and when you stretch it in post, you can retain a little more detail.

This is the reason on big budget hollywood films, they use super high speed cameras that can crank out several times the amount of frames/sec in comparison to conventional cameras because it can capture the movement more accurately to hundreds of a second and retaining much of the quality. An analogy would be if your camera can shoot twice as many FPS as a regular camera, your footage if stretched would have twice as many pictures/frames you can use. Otherwise, the editor will have to fill in the frames by duplicating frames or perhaps using some algorithm to generate the difference but it won't looks smooth.

I've heard that some people shoot it in 60i and then basically cut the resolution in half as they use each even or odd half/frame to make a half height DV progressive image then uprezzed back to DV. Done with a high shutter speed, proper lighting etc the effect can look fairly decent. Nothing close to what a film camera can do obviously or a super fast CCD but for those with the industry standard DV cam it's at least a place to start. I'll have to look for the site where I saw it done.




Jacob

I haven't seen the clip you're talking about either.

I've done what Jacob says though - it works pretty well shooting with a higher shutter speed and interlace mode.

You can do it pretty easily with avisynth, just make sure you bob deinterlace to get rid of the jitter that comes from the two fields being vertically one scanline displaced.

Check this out. It is software called slowmotion from http://www.dynapel.com/index.shtml
look under products/video effects/slomotion

One site(great site about deinterlacing etc) ' http://www.100fps.com 'has used this software to create digital superslomotion.
you can download it here:http://www.100fps.com/slowsnake.avi


dynapels site says:

With a simple user-interface, SlowMotion lets anyone instantly create professional-quality slow-motion video on the PC!

By using advanced motion-compensated interpolation and morphing algorithms to generate the new "intra" frames, DynaPel SlowMotion produces a smooth, natural slow motion that has to be seen to be believed. This is a quantum leap over today's techniques of repeating or blending frames; SlowMotion clearly is the new standard.

Get a free trial version today!


More information:

Description
Screenshot
System requirements
(Demo Video-check back soon)
Demoversion
Purchase SlowMotion
Difference: DynaPel SlowMotion and MotionPerfect

I'm not sure how people get good results from the Dynapel software. I have tried it on several different types of footage and without exception it has always intruduced weird distortions into the picture.

I have the XL2. I shot some stuff in 60i mode and then slowed it down to 6 fps in Avid and it looks super smooth. I think I had it at like 15% of the original speed. If you plan on having the shot be slow motion, shoot in 60i, because you get more frames so you can have a smoother shot.

That's what I did and it looks fantastic. Shutter speed settings can also have an effect on this.

Shooting 60i at 1/120th, and playing back at 50% speed, delivers glass-smooth slow motion, but with an overall softer image.

Nothing like shooting film at 150fps though!

Barry

Have you seen how this can blend with 24p? Is it something that can be meshed together?