Last Saturday I spent a great couple of hours photographing a dozen Lacrosse matches at school. By the time I was done I had 452 shots, of which I decided to keep 352 after reviewing them at home. As I was scrolling through the shots on the camera I noticed a rather nice flip book effect occurring. Inspired by this observation I bought a copy of the excellent iStop Motion software, which is a stop frame animation program for the Mac. I dropped in all 352 shots sequentially from iPhoto, exported the resulting movie into the new iMovie 09, from where I added opening titles and a slight vignetting effect. Then, I slowed the film down by 40%, added a free soundtrack that came with iMovie, exported it for online distrubution, and hey presto, an afternoon of sporting prowess condensed down to 80 seconds. The whole process took 15 minutes.
Lacrosse: Berkhamsted V Benenden from Sacha van Straten on Vimeo.
I chose to use Vimeo over YouTube, as I find the compression on Vimeo produces fewer artefacts. I like the end result. Let me know what you think.
It's got me thinking that I should play around with stop-frame animations more. I've been put off by the thought of hours of time consuming shot taking, but actually I think there are ways to make mini-films without too much fuss. I believe I can shoot DV and iStop Motion will strip out the frames, to create the desired animation effect.
At the other end of the spectrum I came across this post for a new app for the iPhone at Digital Urban. It allows users to make time lapse animations from their mobile. I'm not sure how practical this might be, but there are some cool examples in the posting.
So, time lapse and stop frame - they just might be the future of fast promo videos.
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2 comments:
Very nice. When teaching a class called Creativity and Design, the best I came up with was using iPhoto slideshow with Ken Burns effect and a sound track. It was a five minute (or less job), but I really like what you've done. I'll bet the girls would like a slower, longer version that allows them to enjoy seeing themselves. I applaud the fact that you've found a "quick" yet cool way to package your pics!
Hi Don,
I considered slowing the movie further, but then decided it was quite cool having an afternoon's worth of matches condensed into 80 seconds.
Once I can get back into school (this is the third day of snow that's left roads impassable) I'm going to put all 352 photos up in an album, so that the girls can look at them properly. This was me just playing with the tech!
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