Taking motion design to the next level

The opening titles of David Fincher's film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are one of the most impressive pieces of CGI/motion design I've seen in a while. Onur Senturk created these amazing visuals in cooperation with Blur Studio. They took vignettes from different parts of the film and transformed them into a mesmerizing, dark, oozing piece of visual art. If you're curious about the ideas and process behind it, you can read more here, or - if you're more technically inclined - here.

Michael Fletcher - Capturing the moving landscape

Instead of just rambling on about my own work on this blog I thought it might be interesting for a change to feature other people’s work that I find interesting or inspiring, and have a little chat about their background, motivation and way of working. This time I would like to introduce the work of Michael Fletcher.

I've been following Michael on Vimeo for quite some time. Based in Western Australia, he's involved in the photographic business of his equally talented brother Christian, and has managed to produce an impressive number of awe-inspiring short films focussing mainly on the Australian landscape. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, landscapes and video can be a challenging combination. It’s often difficult to make them look interesting because there’s not much movement going on.

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Super slow motion awesomeness

I came across this short film/commercial by Norwegian director Howie Arnstad for eco clothing label FIN Feline. It was filmed on the Phantom HD Gold camera, which can record a 1000 frames per second in full HD resolution. It makes ordinary things look somewhat surreal, especially with the color grading and the slightly underexposed look.

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Mercedes-Benz interactive films

Mercedes-Benz recently released a couple of interactive films on their website, featuring their SLK and C-Class Coupe models. Although they are sometime struggling to bridge the gap between creating engaging entertainment and communicating information about the cars, I have to say the films are cinematically quite beautiful. The C-Class Coupe film is modelled after Hollywood-style action thrillers, whereas the SLK film is a road movie featuring... you, the viewer, stuck in the desert, when a beautiful and mysterious stranger pulls up in her fancy SLK.

From a user experience point of view I'm always on a fence with interactive movies. It has to do with storytelling. A good story needs a storyteller, who skillfully guides you through the twists and turns of the narrative. Introducing user input always makes me feel I might not be getting the best experience, the best version of the story. The point-of-view style cinematography in the SLK movie on the other hand is interesting and does kind of draw you into the action, making the interaction aspect feel more natural.

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Less experts, more exploration

A couple of days ago I came across a blog post on Stu Maschwitz' Prolost.com titled "Eschew experts, follow the curious", in which Stu explained his take on people sharing knowledge from a point of view that they are an expert in their field:

I’m not interested in hearing from “experts.” By that term I mean a certain type who seem to feel that they’ve crested the mountaintop of knowledge on a particular subject, and are now prepared to dole out this valuable accrual of information to whomever will politely listen. Experts tell you the “correct” answer, because they know.

He goes on to explain how it can be much more interesting when one approaches problems by openly exploring all the possible options, instead of proclaiming there's one "right" answer. I like the whole idea of exploring various options, solutions and possibilities. Taking things apart (sometimes literally), look at them from all sides and discover new insights unexpected outcomes. The cool thing is that this process becomes even more powerful if ideas are shared and bounced back and forth between several people. As Salomon Ligthelm says in this interview: don't just copy the tutorial litterally, but make it your own and expand upon it. We need less experts, and more exploration. But don't just take it from me. I'm no expert after all...

From the edge of the world

In two days arctic explorer Ben Saunders will set off from Cape Discovery in northern Canada to ski solo and unsupported to the North Pole and set a couple of speed records along the way. After two earlier attemps had to be aborted because of gear malfunctions and fuel contaminating his food, Ben has decided to give it another go, more determined than ever. Failure is not trying, so in that respect this expedition is already a success.

The cool thing (pun intended) is that filmmaker Temujin Doran is traveling with Ben to Canada and has managed to produce a couple of beautiful mini documentaries over the last few days. The one at the top of this post is an introduction to Ben and the North3 expedition. Watch the other episodes on Ben's website.

Although I've never visited the high arctic myself, I have supported various polar expeditions in terms of getting their story out to the world. One constant factor is the difficulty to get any information (a text or voice message for example) out of those remote locations via dodgy satellite connections, let alone sending out this kind of high definition, artfully crafted video poetry. What's even more impressive that new updates are released as things develop, not weeks after the fact, lending the whole thing an extra dose of excitement. So make sure to check back regularly over the next couple of weeks...

Virtual made real

Below are two videos I recently saw on Vimeo, that at first glance have nothing in common. The first one is an abstract, computer generated composition of colorful lines, set to a minimalist piece of music.

Creator ku-schneider makes use of a couple of interesting techniques to make the whole thing come to life. For example, virtual camera shake is used to make it look as if the video was shot on a hand-held camera. This makes the extremely abstract patterns all of a sudden appear more real, because our eyes have become used to to shaky camera footage of real life situations. Shallow depth of field (not everything is in focus at the same time) is used to enhance that effect.

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The making of

The “making of” is gradually becoming a more powerful way to communicate than the shiny, polished end product. Chase Jarvis did a great job producing the latest music video for Seattle-based band The Blakes, but even more interesting is the above “making of” video.

This beautifully styled mini documentary introduces the band, Chase and his staff, and a whole bunch of other people who made this project come together. You get to hear the stories behind the concept for the video and see a glimpse of what it takes to pull off a production like this. Everything is told from an engaging first person perspective.

There will always be a place for for the high-gloss end product, but it’s this behind-the-scenes stuff that really pulls you in. It just makes you want to invite Chase and The Blakes over to chat about their new album over a cup of coffee. And it certainly makes you want to watch the video again. In fact, that’s probably what I’m going to do right now.

One frame at a time

If you haven't already, you must check out Tom Lowe's timelapse videos. One frame at a time, he creates awesome shots of the night sky and mountain landscapes by stringing together hundreds or even thousands of individual long exposure photos. To create some extra depth, Tom puts the camera on a computer controlled dolly that moves along a track at precise increments. The resultng effect is that you see not only the movement of the stars, but also the changing perspective of objects in the foreground. Watch a little behind-the-scenes video after the break.

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Landscape videography and avoiding supreme disappointment

According to über landscape photographer Ansel Adams, "Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer and often the supreme disappointment". That probably goes even more for landscape videography (not sure that's the proper terminology).

If you've ever tried to capture an otherwise interesting looking landscape on video, you very quickly notice that your shots have a tendency to turn out rather static. String a couple of those together into a video, and you have to squint really hard to convince yourself you're not actually looking at a photo slideshow - wait, did that blade of grass over there just move? And while some people are attracted to this type of minimalist aesthetic, most of your viewers might quickly zone out. When we watch a video after all we expect there to be stuff going on.

So how do we keep it interesting? Here's a couple of suggestions:

Panning and zooming - tiltling the camera up and down, or left and right can add interest to a scene where not much is happening otherwise. If you film at a higher resolution than your final output, you can do this also to a certain degree in post production, by showing only part of your frame.

Moving the camera itself - taking it a step further (literally), you can move the camera itself by walking around with it, or mounting it on a mobile platform such as a dolly, car, boat or helicopter. The movement is going to change the viewers perspective of the landscape, especially for elements that are in the foreground.

Motion - the human eye is very good at detecting subtle motion, so as long as there's water, trees, grass, or other moving objects in your frame, it's going to look less like a static photo. Of course you can also use less subtle motion by having things like people or cars moving across your field of view.

Changing light - things like the shadows of clouds moving across a landscape can make it seem much more alive and 3-dimensional. The changing of light between the different parts of the day can also do that, but unfortunately that takes a very long time, which is why we might have to resort to our next option...

Timelapse - by capturing only one frame every couple of seconds instead of dozens of frames per second we can speed things up a little, which makes motion that would be otherwise to subtle to perceive come alive.

These are just a few quick suggestions, so if you know of more and better ways, please feel free to post them in the comments.