Seeing the Twixtor plug in on all those cool bike videos on vimeo made me think how could I bring this 1000 frames per second look into a employee communications corporate video.
I thought it would be cool to see employees having a ball traveling up and down in mid-air but slowed down so I could really spend some time on them (2 to 3 seconds).
The idea was for a show where the client need was to highlight this team for outstanding achievement.
I've edited together the twixtor doctored footage in this video below and have some advice if you want to incorporate twixtor in your next show:
- Don't shoot in overcrank mode or better known as slow motion. We shot with the AG AF 100 Panansonic camera which makes it easy to go from regular motion to a simulated 60 fps slow motion. You just have to push a button. I thought twixtor would slow this footage down even more. It did slow it down - but at the 60 fps setting - you get a lot of motion blur - making your shots useless.
Twixtor hates motion blur. So stay in 24 fps - regular motion.
Sidebar: FCP ingests your 60 fps footage into log and transfer and makes it 24 fps - so you can't really ingest a true 60 fps from the AG AF 100. I even tried ingesting straight into AE, but still the information on all clips shot overcranked was 24 fps. - Shoot outdoors. Twixtor does not like low light.
- For best results shoot one thing that is moving. You can do two but make sure both are in your plane of focus when shooting!
- Stay on a tripod. Shakiness causes blurriness.
- The FCP Twixtor plug in seemed to work better for us in the edit than the AE Twixtor plug in. Just my feeling. You could get different results.
- When it works, Twixtor is awesome.
Take a look at the Twixtor samples here in this film. This was taken from a finished piece produced by me at Wheelhouse Communications. Music is The Empire State by Caution Cat, courtesy of Love Cat Music. Can't see the video in your email: http://www.vimeo.com/21659380
For extra bonus points: How did we get the people so high up?
