Research: slow motion- prepared for final session

Before I progressed to the final shooting I tried working on slow-motion with the footage I had already. This is  example footage from previous production I used to attempt slow-motion.

Although the effect is quite satisfactory in the first part, part two is misinterpreted by the Twixtor: in the extra frames generated by the software the coin flashes through Radek's hand instead of following on top of his fingers ( 0:11 - 0:12)

In order to get smooth slow-motion I need to film in fixed conditions first.

(from Philip Bloom’s blog):

Here are a few key things to consider when working with Twixtor:

Shooting Workflow:

1. Shoot at a fast shutter: anything 1/2000 - 1/4000s. [so your lighting needs to be good]

2. Shoot against a plain/solid colored background – sky/wall etc etc.

3. Shoot at the highest point of action. The law of nature is that what must goes up, must come down. Its the movement at the top of an arc/trajectory that works best for Twixtor because that’s when things generally move the slowest, more frames of the relevant action for Twixtor to work with.

4. When you shoot really close/tight, slow the action down manually ie – move slower and fake slow motion [all the tight sequences in 'Gravity' was done this way and then slowed down a little more with the tools]. Its easier to get good results with Twixtor when the action is shot from a distance, because of the fact that the action will happen across more frames – ie – Imagine moving your arms up and down – a distance 50 centimeters right in front of the camera – the camera will only catch SOME of that action as your arms pass by the front of the lens, for maybe 1-3 frames. However if you move away from the camera and shoot say 10-15 meters away from the lens, you would catch the ENTIRE action across say 7-10 frames – giving Twixtor more information to work with

5. Shoot at 50 or 60fps. When you shoot high-speed you give Twixtor more info to work with – it is a shame that you have to forgo resolution

6. Shoot as much as you can – try to get the action from different angles – reshoot stuff if wasn’t working, or if your settings weren’t correct. SHOOT MUCH!

Post Workflow:

1. Use Twixtor in After Effects – for some reason Twixtor works best in After Effects – for me at least. Probably because After Effects’ ability to manipulate time is so effective.

So here’s what I do in a typical scenario.

- Edit the entire piece in an NLE [Non-linear Editor - like Final Cut] and then I’d

leave sections in the timeline open, or maybe reference clips that I want to

work with eventually in After Effects using Twixtor – you can’t do too much in

FCP at this stage because we’re going to be playing with time-changes – which

can screw up things if you don’t work carefully]

- Move the whole piece over to After Effects via an XML script called Popcorn

Island FCPtoAE. You need to export an XML from FCP by going to File >

Export > XML [ for FORMAT click Apple XML Interchange Format, Version 5]

- Open AE and go to scripts – look for FCPtoAE and then pull up the exported

XML

- Now click on the clip you want to use Twixtor on:  from the MENU go to LAYER

> TIME > ENABLE TIME REMAPPING. This allows you to extend a clip our for

longer – because when you start slowing stuff down, the clip needs to become

longer, which you can now easily do by enabling time remapping – just pull out

the edges using the drag function on the clip

2. Check that your Twixtor settings match your footage ie – Make sure your frame rate is correct when you set up Twixtor’s settings. If its not correct then Twixtor will stutter across your footage

- I typically shoot and edit in 23.976fps because I like the film aesthetic.

- I generally find that manipulating the image to a slower speed – say anything

between 2-5% yields better results than trying to get something workable at

30%. I don’t know why that is, but I reckon it has something to do with the fact

that with many more frames created it uses those created frames to reference

from in order to create more ‘interpolated/guessed’ frames.

3. Consider using an aspect matte to hide warping. I often use an aspect ratio of 2.4:1 in my work as a lot of my warping happens at the edges of my shots, thus a matte will hide the really bad sections. One instance of this was a shot in the short of mine called [Fo'tis'ma], where my good friend Franzwa is taking off from a ledge [Its the tight - slightly angled down shot at 34s]. The warping on his hand was REALLY bad – especially because the shot was rather tight and he was coming down at such a pace. It was because of that shot not working at 16:9 that I decided to make the whole piece 2.4:1 [IMAGE 1 & 2]

4. Avoid warping by editing well. Many times Twixtor works for only a few frames – if that’s the case I’ll only use it for a few frames and will cut to the next image – to avoid things looking crappy [obviously this must be done tastefully]. Don’t hang on too long on a shot that was good to start with but warped into mush at the end – EDIT WELL.”

The difficult part in owning 5d Mark II (other than being amazing) is the fact that it cannot go above 30 frames per second.

For this reason, I had to step down several models and get Canon d550 which will allow this except I will for-go the resolution (720 contrary to the crisp 1080 5d provides).

The drawback of this is that I won’t be able to make any amendments to the composition afterwards – while I shoot at 1080 I still work in 720 project files due to two reasons. One being that 1080 is not yet widely accepted and most of the internet services will either ask for 720 pix or “downgrade” it to this.

The second reason is that by placing 1080 footage onto 720 project it allows me to reposition the footage the way I like best or allow zoom-ins without the loss of quality.