3 ms·
A few hasty, disconnected thoughts about slow-motion: 1) Back in the day, you'd use slowmo if you wanted to make something look bigger and more impressive, lik
by Joeboy 1y ago
A few hasty, disconnected thoughts about slow-motion:
1) Back in the day, you'd use slowmo if you wanted to make something look bigger and more impressive, like scale model work or making a human-sized person look like a giant[0]. Maybe people just figured out the same effect works at 1:1 scale. Or maybe it started working at 1:1 scale after people got used to it being associated with big and impressive things.
2) It's just become a lot easier and cheaper, in the same sort of way that shallow depth of field was everywhere after large-sensor consumer video cameras started appearing (notably the Canon 5D mkii). You don't even have to remember to overcrank the camera, you can fake it in post with Twixtor or its descendents.
3) Not sure what the state of play is now, but for a while higher frame rates were one of the main things distinguishing "cinema" cameras. Eg. maybe you could shoot at 180fps but only with an extra crop factor or with certain codecs. Maybe that focused film makers' minds on it a bit.
4) I don't think you ever see step printing [1] anymore (which is when you repeat frames, instead of overcranking or interpolating them). Maybe it's due a comeback.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XWiV1J4zKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XWiV1J4zKc
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju65gr9sUjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju65gr9sUjk
- pavlov 1y agoI watched Pixar’s “Elio” with the kids yesterday and I could swear there was a step printing effect in a montage. So I don’t think it’s quite that uncommon. For editors it serves a useful purpose as an effect that feels perceptually different than regular slow motion and adds variety to cuts.
- magicalhippo 1y agoAnimations are, or at least were, often animated on twos[1], leading to 12 frames per second. This was used to good effect in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse where they mixed animating on ones (24 fps) and twos[2], making one character appear more skilled than the other for example. [1]: https://businessofanimation.com/why-animation-studios-are-animating-on-2s/ https://businessofanimation.com/why-animation-studios-are-an... [2]: https://youtu.be/jEXUG_vN540?t=150 https://youtu.be/jEXUG_vN540?t=150
- dylan604 1y agoA lot of cell animations in anime are animated in much higher numbers too than just "on twos". Cell animation was slow, so anything they could do to reduce the number of tweens they would do. Most common is to animate in layers so the most difficult thing to animate, usually the character, is static while background elements have more motion.
- Doxin 1y agoYou'll get animators pulling all sorts of shenanigans. One I learned about recently is when animating on twos (or threes or fours or...) they'll interleave when different elements move. E.g. character A moves on odd frames and character B moves on even frames. This is the same amount of work but feels smoother and less mechanical when watching it.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI didn't know it was called step printing. Thanks. Remember it from 1983 or whenever R.E.M. did the Radio Free Europe video (just the live performance bits): https://youtu.be/Ac0oaXhz1u8?t=47 https://youtu.be/Ac0oaXhz1u8?t=47