Last year I was asked to make a music video for a band that we work with and have done many music videos for.
The only thing we got was the song itself and that they wanted it to look and feel scary. That was it.
Anyway we started piecing together a story line and as I've said many times I always try to do something new with every project. Just to try something
We knew that a lot of the scary feel was going to be done with editing, transitions and color grading.
Somehow we came up with a one take video where the main character would cross from one group to another in a scary moss tiled forest. But due to the whole corona thing we decided to in staid of a one take we would film the groups individually and peace it together with editing.
Of course it would have been much better in a one take kind of thing but what can you do.
But I still wanted a different type of look for the scary visual so one day I remembered something that I saw in a couple of movies, a visual effect that I liked in the movies Unstoppable 2010 and The Taking of Pelham 123 2009.
I quickly realized that director Tony Scott liked this type of shots and investigated further on how to create this type of visual.
The first thing was the frame rate which was being captured at 12 fps and then displayed at 24 fps to create a jittery effect which worked out great, because I wanted the image to stutter a lot.
The second was shutter angle, which when wide open would make the image streak a little which also tied into the scary vibe.
Then there was using a longer lens but we were actually not able to use a longer lens a lot because of the terrain and also due to not being able to stop down the longer lens far enough. So the longer lens was only used for a couple of shots.
The last thing was that we tried to use was as much natural light to create a spooky high contrast look as possible and ended up using a very fast T1.4 lens.
But the visual effect in the end was almost exactly what I imagined it will be.
Of course like I said the story, editing and color grading had a role to play also.
What I actually really like this effect and it's baked in. We couldn't change this in post which cemented my decision.
I think there's a certain benefit to having some effects baked into the image. I mean these days a lot of stuff is made in post but sometimes you just can't get around creating an effect practically.
I'm interested to know what kind of in camera effects or tricks have you guys done?
Maybe it will help us get some ideas in the future.
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Bravo! Good stuff here, Vital !
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Dude this is wicked, love the 12fps thing works amazing!
Thank you Lindbergh E Hollingsworth.
Yeah Ben Fox. I was really happy when I tried shooting at 12 fps and then playing it back on 24 fps. It gave a really nice effect and when we added the wide open shutter it became even better.
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This is phenomenal, thanks for sharing!
Thank you Karen "Kay" Ross and it's pleasure.
This music video was actually very hard to shoot. We couldn't shoot the band in 12 frames because it would not go together with the music. But everything else was.
The hardest part was the editing because we didn't shoot a sort of one take video but then it was a lot harder to find the right shots to make it work.
Vital Butinar really found a cool look from the films he mentioned, it was really fun playing around with different types of looks.
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I have come to terms with shooting my effects in camera rather than depend on post and it’s been really helpful.
Adeniyi Joseph that's really great. I think that we tend to relay on post production too much.
I mean, I love the ability to change the colors but a lot of stuff can be done in camera.
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If anyone wants to watch the whole music video, here is a link to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoQCwtcq0yY