seth_hancock

Hi all,

I am newbie to AE 6.5 Pro (made the switch from Combustion)and I am still learning a lot. I wanted to know if there are any tutorials or anything those here (with their incredibly vast knowledge) can help me with regarding this issue.

In a recent Purina commercial there is a dog that is in slow motion while the other dogs are playing in a park. This effect was used to simulate the aging process on the dog and how it can slow down over time. Eventually it gets sped up to normal speed (conveying what the dog food can do for your dog's health and agility). I am wanting to do this effect but with a person that has something adverse happen to them while everyone else around just keeps passing by. It doesn't appear that this was keyed in for the Purina spot. Is this something I can do in AE 6.5 Pro or is this an effect that is solely for the higher end platforms like Smoke, Flame, etc. I don't believe Rotoscoping would help here but I could be wrong. PLEASE HELP!

Also, there was an Alanis Morisette video where everyone was sped up around her while she was in real time. This is the video where she is *****. I would imagine that these two affects are similar in execution but I am sure that could be keyed in. Any advice that can be provided would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Seth

chrisgannon

Do a Google search for 'After Effects and Combustion comparison' - I use
both apps and find these tutorials excellent as they draw direct comparisons
with each, function for function - good luck, they're both very cool apps in
their own right!

seth_hancock

Chris,

Thanks for your post but I already know the differences b/n AE and C3... that's why I made the switch. I am just looking to see if there are any tools I can utilize to make this effect happen in AE. Again, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Seth

philo_calhoun

I would think you would record the slowed up character against a chroma background and then add it as a separate layer (for which you could enable time remapping).

navarro_parker

The camera isn't locked down, so it would be impossible to shoot the dog and the background at the same time. The camera movement would quickly get out of sync.

It quite likely it was a motion control camera filming the scene twice (once with the dog, once without).

If you look closely, the dog is losing weight over time too. Kind of of a cool 2D tracked morph effect!

Seth,

Effects like what you are looking for are all in the shoot and take planning (storyboard it out). The Purina commercial was definitely a Motion Control composite IMHO (dog on a bluescreen stage using same camera data as the park).

Look closely at the dog's shadows...they don't look authentic (probably because they were added later). This would be tough to duplicate unless the camera was locked down.

My 2¢.

- Joe

I haven't seen any of the examples you mention, but I have seen a few Wong Kar-Wai films. He did shoot his scenes in real-time, from my understanding, using a variation on an old animation technique somewhat akin to "The Wizard of Speed & Time" or old Laugh In episodes where people "drove around" without vehicles. I WK-W's case, I believe he shot with an intervalometer, having the people he eventually wanted to have moving in real-time moving very slowly while everyone else moved at normal speed. When the footage was playing at normal speed it then looked as if everyone who was moving at normal speed in the original shoot were moving really fast, and those who had been moving very slowly appeared to be moving normally. There were probably some very specific shutter speed settings to blend frames & smooth out the motion of the people who had moved slowly in the original shoot.

Some amazingly advanced effects can be created using techniques up to 100 years old (George Melies, I love you!), but these techniques seem to be becoming a lost art. A few other examples worth looking up are Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" and "Beauty and the Beast" (amazing uses of reversed motion), and Gary Hill's experimental video called "Why Do Things Get In A Muddle" (he recorded a script to tape, reversed the audio and transcribed the words phoneticly, then had his actors read the phonetic script while performing their actions normally, then he reversed the tape so their words were intelligible but all their actions happened in reverse; David lynch used the same technique with the dwarf in Twin Peaks).

I thought I'd just mention these examples as food for thought.

Here are some links on the above-mentioned names, though they only scratch the surface of what's available about them:

Mike Jitlov's The Wizard of Speed and Time
<http://wosat.remulak.net/repository/Trailer.mov>

Wong Kar-Wai
<http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/wong.html>

George Melies
<http://www.nwlink.com/~erick/silentera/Melies/melies.html>
(a little aside for the DIYers out there...Melies tried to buy the Lumiere Bros camera/projection system to pursue his own ideas, but when they refused to sell him one with the explanation that "this cinema thing is just a fad, don't waste your money," he invented his own)

Jean Cocteau
<http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/cocteau/cocteau.html>

Gary Hill
<http://www.djdesign.com/artists/ghill1.html>