Question about doing fast motion effects.

[Ryan Elder]

No I won't be able to drive faster than the speed limit.

[Paul R Johnson]

You are going to need to not just undercrank, but your camera movements must be also slowed down and smoothed, because objects behave differently when sped up. The other thing is consider what the reduced frame rate does to the actual video. The car/bike will move further between frames. The slower free rate will also blur the image. How much is experimentation again. Let's say you want to make a car at 30mph look like it is doing 60mph. Your options are to underzrank, and speed up in the editor - this will give you motion blur, and more changes between frames. Alternatively you can shoot at say 60fps and have razor sharp images that have little difference between frames, and then you speed this up in the edit, which probably means throwing frames away. Again a different look. Try it and see what looks best.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, well I have tried both and it seems to me that shooting at a higher frame rate is worse, because their is not as much motion blur, and you need more motion blur to make undercranking look better.

That is what I think so far, from what I can tell. Would you concur with that? Plus if I shoot at 60 and speed it up in the edit to 18 fps, I am still throwing away 42 frames. So what good is 60 fps, if 42 frames are now gone? How does that make 60 fps smoother?

As for moving the camera slower, I still have to keep up with the car though. So if I want to pan with the car, I have to move the camera fast enough to keep up in the pan, don't I?

[Brian Drysdale]

I know you have an obsession about steady pictures, but doing "grabbed" handheld shots combined with fast cutting is probably the way to go. This is because you're not going to have the dramatics of a high speed chase with cars that look like they're doing 37 mph (shooting at 18fps) with the camera stuck on a tripod.

The cars in the Bourne video weren't going fast, but it looks a lot more exciting than if the same shots were done from a tripod.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, well I wasn't planning on having all the car shots be on a tripod, but I thought some of the establishing ones should be.

What is it about handheld that makes a car look like it's going faster?

Also, when you say do tests at 60 fps, to see how sharper they are, do you mean with the shutter speed set at 1/60, or more like 1/120?

[Brian Drysdale]

It's a combination of things, shooting tighter shots, barely being able to keep things in frame because things are happening so fast, good fast cutting, You need to create the impression that these cars are doing 50 or 60mph in city streets and you can't keep up with what's happening. Spielberg vibrated cameras etc in the opening of Saving Private Ryan on the D Day landings..

I've hard mounted a camera inside a saloon racing car on a race track and it didn't give any impression of the G forces involved, it just looked like a quiet drive down the country.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay sure. As long as barely being able to keep things in the frame doesn't look sloppy.

One idea I had was this would be a good time to use the telephoto lens on a tripod, cause if you zoom in and pan with the car, the compression will give the car the appearance that it is going faster, because objects in the background will pass by quicker, as the car drives. Is this what you mean by shooting tighter shots as well? But I can mix those shots with other wider shots from the front and rear of the car, since the wide lenses of course, will make it look like it's going faster from the front and rear.

Plus I also watched this video on making a car looking like it's going fast:

DJI Film School - Car Chase - YouTube

And at 3:42 in the video, he says that he speeded up the footage in post, but that if you do that, you need to shoot very smoothly, so the speeding up in post doesn't look jittery. So if I shot it so that I can barely keep the car in the frame, wouldn't that look jittery if you speed up in post, compared to keeping it frame more smoothly then, or no? But he also said he was able to speed up the shots 'a lot' as he put it, so how did he do that without it looking sped up and made it look more natural?

[Brian Drysdale]

You can speed things up a lot as long as you don't have anything else in the frame that's moving and the car is going in a straight line. Going around corners things change and it starts to look fake.

They're tracking with the car, which is a lot more dynamic than a camera on a tripod panning with a telephoto lens, which is pretty televisual these days, since Ir's a motor sport standard shot.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, this helps a lot. Also, when speeding things up, I added motion blur in my tests, but I noticed that there doesn't seem to be any added motion blur in that film riot example. Is not adding motion blur better, for trying to make a vehicle look like it's going faster?

[Brian Drysdale]

You used more motion blur than you'd see in reality.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I tried estimating. In one example I used 180 degree shutter angel setting and in the other, I used a 90 degree shutter setting. Should I go lower than 90 even?

[Brian Drysdale]

Use according to taste.

[Ryan Elder]

Well I want to use the amount which is natural since you said it was not natural looking to have that much before. I can keep playing around with it...

[Paul R Johnson]

he speeded up the footage in post, but that if you do that, you need to shoot very smoothly, so the speeding up in post doesn't look jittery.

That's what I meant about smoothness - any jerky movement from the camera is enhanced.

That clip was full of useful stuff for you Ryan. The problem you're having is that you're experiments are somewhat random. You mentioned that if the subject falls out of frame that doesn't matter? It does - that's just bad camerawork. Framing is always win/lose.

The thing is really that what the viewer uses to assess speed is quite variable. In a 4x4 racing across a field, then sharpness with the violent movements because of the ground indicates exactly what's happening - the violence and bouncing is a positive. The shot contains the clues and is exciting. If you go to F1 races then the fact they are doing 200mph does not come across. When we first started broadcasting live races on modern cameras people said they looked slower, because the cameras captured sharper pictures without the old two frame low res interlaced blurry pics, and for a while broadcasters tried to use slower frame rates, or other tweaks to recreate the old fashioned 'fast' look, and it pretty much failed. Now we just have sharp images and have gotten used to it!

Of course you also have the background tricks - so you have nice sharp objects, with the camera following, that lets the background blur out - that's a good one. Or you have the static shot as you put up, but proper motion blur is less pleasant or successful.

So many things to try and get used to.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, what I meant was, is that it was said before in this post, to barely keep things in frame in order to sell the illusion of speed:

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

It's a combination of things, shooting tighter shots, barely being able to keep things in frame because things are happening so fast, good fast cutting, You need to create the impression that these cars are doing 50 or 60mph in city streets and you can't keep up with what's happening. Spielberg vibrated cameras etc in the opening of Saving Private Ryan on the D Day landings..

I've hard mounted a camera inside a saloon racing car on a race track and it didn't give any impression of the G forces involved, it just looked like a quiet drive down the country.

But the video says to keep things smooth, which seems like opposite advice. So I was just wondering if one is better than the other, if they seem like opposite advice, that's all.