I’ve been working on a special Easter video and have managed to complete it just on time. Watch Walter and his evil twin ‘celebrate’ Easter together
Frenemies – The Evil Easter Bunny (Happy Easter Short Film)
I have always been a fan of antagonistic duos like Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and Wile E coyote or – more contemporary – Itchy & Scratchy. No words are necessary; the entire story is told with nothing but gestures, scenes and music so the viewer can enjoy the movie no matter what language they may speak
It took me a long time to edit this video and I am still not sure whether the storyline will be clear to someone watching without knowing what is going on. It’s sometimes hard to disassociate yourself from your own story and try to see it with ‘fresh’ eyes.
I also have to find an easier way to record the sound. None of the sound you hear in this Easter short film is real – it is all recorded and overlayed in post production. But since this is a very slow process I think I have to rethink how I can record the sound cleanly directly when filming
Either way, I am very happy with this video and I hope you will enjoy watching it!
Visual Effects 101 - Learn All About Motion Tracking and Null Objects
April 3rd, 2012
I finally got around to cover a topic that I’ve wanted to do for a while now: motion tracking in After Effects
In this tutorial, besides watching Walter and The Devil fight it out, you will learn all about the concepts and the practical application of Motion Tracking!
Enjoy!
Motion Tracking Fundamentals
Motion tracking in itself is not a visual effect, but an essential tool to help you create visual effects. It allows you to track the motion of moving elements in your footage and extract information about their position, rotation and scaling.
You can then use this tracking data to control other layers in your composition and, for example, create visual effect elements and have them follow your tracked object.
This allows you to do things like have blood stains stick to walls during a moving shot, add a halo or other effect to follow your actor, erase objects from your scene and much much more.
Base Footage
If you want to do motion tracking in a scene, make sure the element you want to track stands out cleanly against the background while shooting your footage. A person dressed in black walking in front of a dark sky will likely be hard to track. You can make motion tracking easier by adding tape markers or other helpers to your actors or objects to make them easier to track.
It is MUCH easier to remove a tracking marker than it is to track an indistinct object!
For this tutorial, we are going to track Walter’s head as he walks through the shot and attach a halo to it
After Effects Motion Tracker Controls
To get started with motion tracking in After Effects, open the Tracker window by going to
Window -> Tracker.
A small tool window containing all the controls necessary for tracking your footage will appear on the screen.
Scroll to a time position in your clip where Walter’s head is fully in frame, make sure the footage layer is selected and click on the ‘Track Motion’ button in the Tracker window. Since we also want to track the rotation of Walter’s head, make sure the ‘Rotation’ checkbox is ticked. You should now see 2 track points overlayed onto your footage, connected by a white line.
Motion Track Points
If you zoom into your track points, you will notice that each of them consists of 2 rectangles!
The inner rectangle defines the part of the frame we want to track. Make sure you position it on a very distinct and high contrast element that is easy to follow visually from frame to frame.
The outer rectangle defines the area that will be searched each frame to locate the contents defined by the inner one. Make sure it is big enough so that the element you are tracking remains within its borders across consecutive frames.
Notice that the larger you make the rectangles, the more processing After Effects will have to do and the slower the motion tracking calculations will become. Also note the small arrows on the white line connecting the 2 track points.
Track Point 1 will define the position data we are recording and Track Point 2 is used to record the angle i relation to Track Point 1 and store it as a rotation value.
Null Objects
Before we get started with the motion tracking, we need a place to store our tracking data. For this, a Null Object will be perfect. You can create a new Null Object by selecting
Layer -> New -> Null Object.
I called my layer ‘HeadTrack’ as we’ll be tracking Walter’s head
A Null Object is merely a placeholder object with a transform that contains position, rotation and scale data. You can animate these properties or add other custom properties to the Null Object and then use the Null to control other layers in your composition. A Null Object will never be rendered.
We will use the Null Object to store our position and rotation data from motion tracking Walter’s head.
Tracking The Footage
Position the track points on the element you want to track. For me, I will place them on the back of Walter’s head and on his hairline as I want to track the position and the rotation of his head.
Once you positioned your track points, you can start the motion tracking process by clicking on the ‘Analyze Forward’ button in the Tracker tool window.
After Effects will now, frame by frame, process your footage and try to keep track of the elements you specified with the track points. If at any point in time the track points fail to follow what you expected them to, you can stop this process, go back, reposition the track points and continue the process from where you left of
Sometimes you have to fix a few small things manually or help the motion tracking process along, but eventually you should end up with having your track points follow the object you are tracking nicely.
Apply Motion Tracking to Null Object
Now that we have the track points follow Walter’s head, we can apply the motion tracking data (position and rotation) to our HeadTrack Null Object. For this, click on ‘Edit Target’ in the Tracker tool window and select the HeadTrack layer. Then click on ‘Apply’, select ‘X and Y’ and click OK.
Now when you scroll through your clip, you should see the Null Object follow Walter’s head correctly through the shot
You may have to manually fix up parts of the track, for example, where your actor enters or exists the frame. I fixed up the track for the HeadTrack Null Object manually.
Parenting The Effect Layer To The Null Object
Finally, I’ve created a nice glowing halo effect that we will now attach to Walter’s head
Go to any frame in the footage and position the halo nicely over Walter’s head.
We now want to parent the halo layer to the Null Object layer. You can do this by selecting the pick whip in the ‘Parent’ column for the Halo layer and dragging it onto the HeadTrack Null Object. This will make the HeadTrack layer the parent of the Halo layer.
Now, every change in position, rotation and scaling that occurs on the HeadTrack layer will automatically be applied to the Halo layer. Since we used motion tracking to make our HeadTrack Null Object follow Walter’s head nicely during the clip, so will our Halo layer
The Result
You can add more effect layers and have them follow Walter’s head by parenting them to the HeadTrack Null Object. I added a nice glow for the halo to make it look a little more convincing
You can use motion tracking to trace the movement of any element in your footage (as long as they have distinct features you can track), store the data in a Null Object and then use the Null Object to attach effect layers or control all sorts of other effects with it
Motion tracking is a fundamental part of knowledge for any visual effects artist and I am sure you will have lots of fun with it!
VFX 101 - Add realistic destruction elements to your bullet hit effects
March 30th, 2012
Visual bullet hits are great fun to create – as are any other type of destructive effects. All of these effects are most realistic when they visible cause some damage, as would in real life.
However, I did not talk much about how to create great destruction effects. This video applies not only to bullet hits but should prove useful for any sort of damage effect you are trying to create
The basic principle of destructive visual effects
I like the psychology of this effect as it kind of works in reverse
Rather than adding a visual effect to make an object appear broken, we shoot the scene with the object already broken and then use visual effects to cover up the damage until it is destroyed.
The great thing about this is that you can interact with the broken element properly!
Imagine a scene where a wall is hit by a mortar, leaving a massive hole in it and then one of your actors crawls through that hole. For the effect, you simply cover up the hole using VFX and reveal it in a wake of rubble and dust when the mortar strikes
Step 1: Film your footage
Shoot your scene with the already destroyed element in it. For my tutorial clip, I pre-tore up a paper target and filmed the scene of me pretending to shoot at it with my fingers.
Step 2: Prepare material to cover up the damage
When you use VFX to cover up the damage, you will need something to cover up the damage with.
In my case I filmed a few small clips of me standing in the same position holding up an intact paper target.
You can then use your additional footage to cut out the element you need to cover up your broken element. In my case, I masked out a mint condition version of the paper target
Overlay the materials to cover up the damage
This can be a little tedious as you will have to align your overlay with the original footage up to the point where the element is destroyed. I used a corner pin effect and keyframing to align my paper target overlay with the broken target until I throw it into the air.
However, at the moment where I lift the target up into the air to shoot at it with my fingers, I could no longer use my overlay due to the position of the paper. During the last second before I shoot at the target, the three holes were visible from the front as well as the back.
To solve this, I created smaller overlays from parts of the intact target footage to cover up the holes individually.
I had to add some animated colorisation effects to them so the patches would blend in with the shadows on the paper
Once you have the damage covered up, you want to disable all of the VFX when the element is destroyed. For me, I remove all paper overlays when I pretend to shoot at the paper target.
Add action VFX during the transition
To make this effect less obvious, add some explosion, dust, rubble, particle or other destruction effect at the moment of impact/destruction This will make your effect more interesting as well as distract from the cover up VFX elements disapperaing.
Gun effect destruction complete
Each situation will be slightly different and you may need to prepare different cover up VFX material, apply different effects to your overlay elements and add a variety of destruction effects to make it look convincing.
However, the principle is always the same:
Film with destroyed element
Cover up element with VFX to point of destruction
Add destruction effects and remove cover up effects
They seem to have changed the format and only introduce the first clip of the playlist (which isn’t mine) rather than each one, but I still happy to see it plugged by another YouTuber
I am sure I will submit a few more videos to Indy Mogul, especially since the next few in the pipeline are actual short films rather than VFX tutorials. Would be great to get a few more of my videos featured on other people’s channels
In last week’s tutorial I talked about how to create convincing looking muzzle flash (gun fire) effects. This week I decided to cover the second half of the equation and talk about how to make your bullet hit effects looks awesome
I hope you enjoy this tutorial
The Preparation – The Overlay Layer
One of the most frustrating things about creating visual effects for bullet hits is to ensure all the blood/debris/sparks appear behind your actors or objects in the scene. Imagine masking them out frame by frame and then you decide to move them or replace them with different footage. You end up having to go through the whole frame by frame masking nightmare again
To avoid this, I have decided to go another way and it has worked out pretty well so far
Instead of masking out the elements to sit behind my actors or objects, I rotoscope out the actors or objects and create an overlay layer. I then place all blood/spark/debris effects on top of my base footage layer without masking and then place the overlay layer on top of that. Instantly, all bullet hit effects appear to be sitting behind the elements in the overlay layer
And the best thing about this solution: it’s flexible! I can move or replace all bullet hit elements without any extra work required.
Starting with the base footage, we first rotoscope out our actor for the duration of the bullet hit to create the overlay layer. In After Effects CS5 and up, I highly recommend using the rotobrush tool to help you with this task as it can be a little tedious. The rotobrush tool is not perfect, but it does make your job a lot easier
Be sure to enable the ‘refine matte’ option on the rotobrush effect, it will make the edges of your overlay look cleaner.
Because the rotobrush effect is really slow to render, we render out our overlay layer. To maintain the transparency of the video, I usually export as AVI and set the output channels to RGB+Alpha.
Once we’ve done that, we can reimport the clip into your scene and place it on top of your base footage. Don’t forget to disable the rotobrush effect on your base footage as we no longer need it. I usually don’t like to delete it just in case I need to make adjustments and re-export the overlay
The Bullet Hit
Now that we have the overlay layer created, we can add some blood splatters for the bullet hit onto the wall behind the actor. Simply take a blood splatter elment and place it above the base footage but under the overlay layer. Without any extra work the blood appears to be sitting behind our actor
Next, take an image of a bullet hole or a damaged plaster wall and place it over the blood effect layer. Scale it and position it right over the centre of the blood. You may have to add a curves adjustment to ensure the lighting is correct and the bullet hole fits into the scene. Again, notice that no masking is required.
One important thing for the bullet hit is the blood mist cloud. When a bullet hits a person, the impact usually creates a small explosive cloud of blood mist due to the force of the impact. To simulate this effect, we add a smoke or dust element on top of the overlay layer. We then colour the layer red.
In After Effects, you can do this by applying the Colorama effect. Leave the input as ‘Intensity’ and select ‘Red Ramp’ for the output. If your effect appears to be almost solid red, it is because Colorama is overwriting the alpha channel. To fix this, expand the ‘Modify’ tab and untick the ‘Modify Alpha’ checkbox.
I usually like to make the blood a bit darker so it looks a bit more realistic, but feel free to tweak it as you like. Make sure the blood mist cloud shoots out at the moment of bullet impact and fades out after about 1-2 seconds.
Lastly, we can add some debris from the wall to complete the bullet hit. If a bullet was to pierce the shoulder of our actor and hit the wall behind, it would likely cause some plaster fragments to fly around. You can either create a particle effect for this or simply use some wall debris stock footage
I prefer to opt for the latter if possible simply because it saves time and with a bit of curves adjustment you can make it sit nicely in the scene!
Since the bullet hit is a very fast effect and some of the fragments would fly over our actor, I prefer to place the fragments on top of the scene.
Finally, you can add some curves and saturation effects to the bullet his scene a nice ‘film look’
Note that the layers you need for a great looking bullet hit effect will depend on what (or who) your bullets are colliding with. But I higly recommend using an overlay layer as outlined above – it will save you a hell of a lot of time, render faster and allow you to experiment around more easily until you are satisfied with your bullet hit
Realistic Looking Gun Muzzle Flashes in 6 Easy Steps
March 4th, 2012
I see way too many badly done muzzle flash effects on YouTube to not want to do this basic Visual Effects 101 tutorial.
It is really not hard to add a few layers onto your scene to create great looking gun fire. And this video will show you how
Compositing the layers for a realistic muzzle flash
To create this effect, you will have to composite a number of layers. Of course, these are not hard set rules so experiment if something doesn’t seem to fit right – to me, that is always the most fun part anyways
The first thing I add is the actual muzzle flash effect. I really love the Action Esssentials 2 package from VideoCopilot and for $99 for the 720p version, I highly recommend it. It’s filled with pre keyed stock footage and I use it almost daily. However, you can also find free action stock footage just by searching on google
Here’s a useful link to free stock footage from detonation films.
Anyways, take and position a muzzle flash element on top of your base footage.
Next, add another solid colour layer to simulate the light emitting from the muzzle flash. Set it to a colour that is very similar to the muzzle flash and change the blend mode to additive. I usually set the opacity to around 20.
Just putting a solid layer over everything does look pretty crappy. If there was a real muzzle flash in the scene, only the elements facing the front of the gun would be lit. We can simulate this by applying some masks and cutting out only the areas that would directly be hit by the light.
Once you’re done, your shot should look something like this:
It’s not bad, but I personally find that using a simple overlay layer to simulate the muzzle flash light sits very unnaturally on top of our footage rather than in the scene. We can make this look a lot more natural with a technique I described in my After Effects – Natural Lighting VFX Using Mattes tutorial: by creating a matte layer.
You can do this in most compositing software packages, but I will talk here in terms of After Effects to keep things simple.
Duplicate the base footage layer and drag it above the light layer. Add a saturation effect and bring the saturation down to 0 so you end up with black and white footage. Then, add a brightness/contrast adjustment and increase the contrast. The idea is that the bright areas of this matte layer will essentially define the opacity of our light layer. Where the matte is brighter, the light layer will be more opaque, where the matte is darker, the light layer is more transparent.
Finally, add a blur effect to soften the matte a little bit.
Now go to the ‘track matte’ option for your light layer and set it to ‘luma’. This tells After Effects that the opacity for this layer is defined by the brightness of the layer directly above, which is our matte layer. And voila, the light from the muzzle flash sits a lot more natural in the scene.
I know, I know, it’s not ‘realistic’, but the whole point of the matte is simply to glue the light and the footage together and make the light be dependent on what’s in the scene. By doing this, you tie the layers together and it won’t look like you simply stuck one layer on top of the other
Finally, you can add some curves adjustments to the entire footage, colorise it, filter it, whatever you like to give your muzzle flash shot that nice ‘film look’
Following these 6 simple steps will usually result in great looking muzzle flash effects, but sometimes the situation might call for something different. Never, ever be afraid to deviate from the ‘fixed rules’ and experiment
Progressive vs Interlaced And Why Your Video May Appear Distorted
February 12th, 2012
When it comes to LCD screens, video cameras and DSLRs, everyone would have come across the most common terms for video modes like 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 720i, etc… but many people don’t actually know what the ‘p’ and the ‘i’ stand for.
They stand for pregressive and interlaced respectively.
Another important thing that, as a film maker, you should know is pixel aspect ratio. Sometimes when you export your video, it may appear stretched or squashed because your pixel aspect ratio is incorrect.
Hopefully this week’s video will be able to clarify these things
Progressive vs Interlaced Video Mode
All film consists of a sequence of images that is (usually) played back at at least 24 frames per second. In digital video, each frame is a grid of pixels and with each new frame, the pixels on your display are updated with new colour values. However, depending on what video mode you are using, not all pixels may be updated with each new frame.
This is where progressive and interlaced video differ.
In progressive video, all pixels on your screen are updated with each new frame. This ensures smooth animation, but requires more data to be stored (and thus bigger file sizes) for each frame of video.
In interlaced video, each frame only updated every other row of pixels, alternating between the odd and the even rows. This means that it takes 2 frames for all pixels on your screen to be updated and, because less data needs to be saved for every frame, leads to smaller file sizes.
However, it does lead to very ugly video artefacts, especially around the border of moving objects
If an object is moving through the frame very fast, it will be at very different positions in consecutive frames. However, because interlaced video only stores every other row of pixels, when played back, strong horizontal lines can be seen where the object has moved.
I highly recommend to avoid interlaced video wherever possible. It is not always easy to de-interlace your video and it will save you a lot of headache to ensure your camera/display supports progressive video
Pixel Aspect Ratio
On your computer screen, all pixels are square. However, when it comes to video cameras, film and broadcasting standards, not all pixels are created equal. Sometimes pixels are more wide than they are tall. The relationship between the width and the height of the pixel is referred to as the pixel aspect ratio
Why should you care about pixel aspect ratio?
If you are a film maker or have recorded some video with a DSLR camera or a camcorder you may have encountered the problem of you video appearing stretched or squashed when you load it into your post production software or display it on a tv screen.
The most common reason for video to appear stretched or squashed is that the pixel aspect ratio used during displaying the video does not match the pixel aspect ratio that was used to record the video.
Assume you have a video recorded with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.333 (many camcorders record at 1440×1080 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.333).
Your video comes out of the camera like this:
Now if you display this video on a display or in your post production software using a square pixel aspect ratio (1), then the video will appear squashed:
Conversely, if you recorded a video at a square pixel aspect ratio, your video would come out of your camera like this:
If you displayed this video using a pixel aspect ratio of 1.333, the footage would actually appear stretched.
If your video appears stretched or squashed, check that your pixel aspect ratio setting matches the pixel aspect ratio of the camera you used to record your footage
It is almost Valentine’s Day and, well, what is more romantic than a bunch of trash bins proclaiming their eternal love for the garbage man in a song?
Happy Valentine’s Day!
There were two parts to creating this Valentine’s Day music video:
Composing the barber shop style love song
Filming and syncing the trash bin lids to the voices
Composing the Valentine’s Day love song
I have never tried to compose an a-capella piece, but once I had the melody line and the chords down it was actually not too difficult
I ended up having the bass and the baritone (leftmost 2 trash bins) sing over the base notes from the chords while only the tenor carried the melody notes.
To add a bit of variation and make it sound a little more interesting, the bass and baritone only follow the main vocals half the verse and then break out into longer, more background style vocals. This also helps make the chorus line stand out cleanly against them
During the chorus I added a choir group containing a bass, a tenor and one soprano voice (sung I head voice).
I have to admit that I ended up using a fair bit of auto tune as I’m not a terribly great singer and the tenor voice of Willis is pitch shifted up by 4 semitones because I could not sing high enough But I am pretty happy with the results and the feel of this Valentine’s Day song.
Shooting and syncing the trash bins
Once I had the music for the Valentine’s Day song, I had to combine it with the footage.
I attached a fishing line to each of the bins separately and filmed the lid moving up and down once. In post production I had to edit out some of the parts whe the fishing line, because it was sometimes clearly visible in the direct sunlight.
The stage of synchronizing the lid movements with the audio is probably where I spent the most time.
I placed the footage in After Effects, duplicated the trash bins with the cloning effect and enabled time remapping on them. With the music added, I then matched up the opening of the lids with the volume of the individual voices. For this, I used a little trick.
I used Motion Sketch to record my mouse movement on a Null object and linked the time positon of the trash bin to the x coordinate of the Null. When the Null was on the left side of the screen, the lid would be closed, if it was on the right side of the screen, the lid would be fully opened. I then played back the track and, with my mouse, recorded the lid movement to match up with the audio.
I repeated this for all trash bins
Finally, I added some colorisation and a little bit of story around the Valentine’s Day love song to wrap it all a little better
I love using my green screen for visual effects. If used properly, it allows for a vast number of cool effects to be created with relative ease However, if you are not careful during filming you could end up with a number of problems in post production that will hinder if not completely block the visual effect you had in mind.
To not let all my failed attempts go to waste, I decided to create a video tutorial on the most common green mistakes and how you can avoid them!
Here is a quick summary of the 5 most common green screen mistakes and some tips on how to avoid or fix them
1. Shadows on the Green Screen
The Problem
If your subject is too close to the green screen or the light from the front is too strong, a dark shadow might be cast onto your green screen.
This can cause unpleasant artefacts when you finally try to apply the chroma key. Because the dark areas on the green screen are too close in colour to the dark areas of your subject it may be hard to key them out cleanly.
On the right side it’s hard to tell where the arm ends and the shadow on the green scren begins.
The Solution
Position your subject a little bit at a distance to the green screen to reduce the shadows.
Try to avoid a single hard light on your subject which will cause strong shadows.
Add lights behind your subject that are aimed at the green screen to brighten up the dark areas.
2. Unevenly lit Green Screen
The Problem
This problem is very similar to the previous one. While the green screen is now better lit, the lighting is very uneven, creating dark and bright areas in the background.
Again, this can make the application of the chroma key difficult without clipping away parts of your subject. Here is an image of what the unmodified screen matte looks like.
The Solution
Sometimes you can rectify the solution in post by carefully controlling the ‘deposit black’ and ‘deposit white’ parameters in your Keylight Effect (if in After Effects). Other compositing software chroma key effects will have similar options, so try this first
To prevent getting into this situation to begin wtih, try to add lights aimed at your green screen to even out the lighting before you shoot.
3. Motion blur in front of Green Screen
The Problem
If you shoot at a slow shutter angle, you may end up with motion blur in front of the green screen.
This is something that is really hard to fix in post production since the areas where the motion blur occurred will be blended together with the green screen. It can be hard or even impossible to set up a clean chroma key without losing parts of your subject.
The Solution
Try to have your subject move slowly to avoid motion blur to begin with.
If you need fast movement, use a higher shutter speed (a smaller shutter angle) to avoid motion blur. Because this will impose a certain hypersensitive onto your footage, you can add the motion blur back in post production – AFTER you applied the green screen
4. Clipping out of the Green Screen
The Problem
You shot in front of your green screen and the subject was out of the screen for just a short moment. Not a problem, right? Fix it in post?
This can be very annoying to fix as you will have to manually rotoscope out all the elements that left the green screen.
The Solution
While the rotobrush tool in After Effects may help make the job easier, I strongly recommend reshooting the footage if you can
5. No backlight
The Problem
This is not really a problem, more a tip on how to make your subject stand out a little cleaner against the green screen. This will make application of the chroma key a lot easier and it will help give the actor or object a bit more shape by lighting them smartly
If you just shoot your subject against a green screen with light from the front, the outline of the subject is not very well defined.
The Solution
Add a light between the green screen and your subject but aim it towards the camera at the back of your subject. This will create a nice highlight outline around your subject and give it shape and make it stand out nicely against the background
I hope these tips will be helpful when you’re doing your next green screen shoot! I certainly learnt them the hard way hehe
After a lot of awkward talking into a camera, I finally managed to finish my video tutorial on shutter angle! If you are not sure what shutter angle is and how it can help you make your DSLR video look more like film, please watch my latest SurfacedStudio tutorial
Shutter Angle Tutorial Video
In addition to the video I have written up the following tutorial to go into a few more details on shutter angle and why it is so important.
Common mistakes when shooting video with your DSLR
Have you ever taken a video with your DSLR and it ended up looking more like some cheap home made clip rather than high quality film? While there are a lot of steps taken in post-processing to make the footage look sleek and polished, one simple principle you can utilise right now to improve the quality of your videos is shutter angle.
When you take video with your DSLR in automatic mode two bad things will happen:
The brightness will constantly change as the camera tries to keep your film at ‘default’ brightness. This causes the video to look very ‘home made’
The brightness is adjusted by constantly changing the shutter speed of your camera. This behaviour is called a ‘rolling shutter’
To understand why a rolling shutter is a bad thing we need to discuss the effect shutter speed has on your video.
The effect of shutter speed on your video
The shutter speed of your camera controls how much motion blur you will see in every single frame of video footage. Unless the amount of motion blur in the video is similar to the amount we see in our every day lives, the footage will not feel natural to us. Our brain will perceive the differences and distance us from what is happening on screen
Have a look at these two images:
The falling ball in the left image has a lot more motion blur because the photo was taken with a slower shutter speed of 1/30s. The falling ball on the right side has a lot less motion blur because the shutter speed was faster at 1/100s. While this example is a photo, the effect of shutter speed on video is the same! The amount of motion blur in every single frame is controlled by your shutter speed.
A rolling shutter is bad for video because the constant change in shutter speed changes the amount of motion blur from frame to frame, creating a very inconsistent feel
Most of the time, we are used to seeing a certain amount of motion blur with our naked eye – just try to swipe your hand in front of your face and you see what I mean. Sometimes we have ‘blurry vision’ and all movement around us seems to leave more streaks than normally. Other times we receive an adrenaline rush and suddenly everything we see and hear appears were sharp and rich in details.
By using a specific (fixed) shutter speed we can give our film a certain amount of motion blur, depending on what effect we are after:
By using a slow shutter speed, every frame of video will have more motion blur than we naturally see and thus the footage will appear blurry and smooth
By using a ‘normal’ shutter speed (I will discuss this below), every frame of video will have an amount of motion blur that approximates what we see every day with our eyes. This shutter speed is most frequently used in most motion pictures
By using a fast shutter speed, every frame of video will have very little motion blur and the footage will look as if we were experiencing an adrenaline rush
Why is it called Shutter Angle?
In analog motion picture cameras the shutter is a spinning disc called a rotary disc shutter. The film is being pulled through the camera one frame at a time and the shutter rotates in front of the film to control how long each frame is exposed.
This shutter rotates at the same speed as the framerate. For 24fps, the shutter rotates 24 times a second. For 30fps, the shutter rotates 30 times a second. The shutter disc has a certain angle cut out of it and every time the cut out moves over the frame, light can reach the frame and expose it. How long each frame is exposed is determined by the angle of this cut out.
And it is this angle that is referred to as the shutter angle
At 24fps, the shutter rotates 24 times a second, each rotation taking 1/24s.
At 180° shutter angle, the shutter is basically cut in half and each frame is exposed for half the time it takes the shutter disc to do one full rotation. One full rotation takes 1/24s, so each frame is exposed for exactly half of that time, which is 1/48s.
At 30fps, the shutter rotates 30times a second, each rotation taking 1/30s.
At 180° shutter angle, each frame is exposed for half the time it takes the shutter disc to do one full rotation. One full rotation takes 1/30s, so each frame is exposed for exactly half of that time, which is 1/60s.
It is important to notice that the shutter angle describes the shutter speed in relation to the framerate. When you keep the same shutter angle but you change the frame rate, you need to adjust your shutter speed accordingly
Why 180° makes your video look like film
Typically, motion pictures are filmed at a 180° shutter angle. Lately, 90° is used a fair bit in war or horror movies to make the footage more intense and give the viewer an adrenaline rush feeling, bust most of the films you will see in the cinema use 180° because it has the motion blur that most closely approximates the motion blur we see with the naked eye.
So if you want your DSLR video to look more like film do two things:
Set your camera to manual mode during recording. You might have to manually adjust the ISO setting or the aperture to make sure your image has the correct brightness. Yes this is more work, but believe me, it’s worth it
Set your shutter angle to 180°: if you’re shooting at 24fps, use 1/50s shutter speed (1/48s would be more exact, but most cameras don’t have that option so 1/50s will do ). If you are shooting at 30fps use 1/60s.
Finally, here is a table summarising the framerate, shutter angle and effect most commonly used in motion pictures
FPS
Shutter Angle
Shutter Speed
Effect
24 fps
240°
1/36s
Every frame has a lot of motion blur resulting in slightly streaked, very smooth footage. Almost ‘drunk’ effect
30 fps
240°
1/45s
24 fps
180°
1/48s
‘Natural’ amount of motion blur. Most often used in motion pictures so use this setting to make your DSLR footage look like film
30 fps
180°
1/60s
24 fps
90°
1/96s
Very little to no motion blur resulting in a very ‘intense’ feel of your footage. Often used in war or horror movies to emphasize details
30 fps
90°
1/120s
I hope this tutorial was helpful to you and if you have any questions, please let me know and I will try my best to answer them and update this tutorial
New music videos are finally being uploaded onto YouTube
June 19th, 2011
I have finally managed to get my (properly styled) YouTube channel online and have started uploading the first videos
I already have a few musical drafts online that I want to eventually develop into full songs. Since I have only recently gotten my hands on a shiny new Nikon D7000 (which can also take awesome full HD movies), the current videos are sporting a simple image and text only.
The plan is to keep uploading smaller fragments regularly while working on full length songs. For the full length songs I want to create actual music videos as well – how long this process will take I am not sure yet, we shall see.
I am currently working on a song called ‘Rise Up’ which will be my first attempt at a full music + video project
There are lots of other ideas floating through my head now on what I want to put onto YouTube
I have already picked one of those ideas and want to properly film, cut and polish it – and of course I will be making the music for it too! Hopefully I will get to film all the material I need this coming weekend!
Besides getting more into video recording (and special effects – thank you After Effects!), I have mainly been working on a proper recording plan.
I have been pretty badly stuck with my music lately, ending up with hundreds of fragments and no complete songs. Trying to bust through that block, I have laid out a strict plan to follow for the next few months.
My plan schedules the release of 5 currently unfinished songs, properly composed, recorded, mixed and mastered by October. I might end up making a small video diary for the process – hopefully recording some useful information on how to get out of a rut along the way
For now, here are a few of the song drafts I have already online.
For more videos, please visit my YouTube channel.
Any feedback or suggestions are always welcome
