Video Intro

[brandon]

New One

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Old One

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*EDIT* I re-shot the intro/outro time lapse and I'd appreciate your opinions on the new one. Thanks!

 

 

For a while now I've been wanting to shoot an official intro to use for all my time lapse videos. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted but I knew the intro had to be a time lapse itself...just make sense, right? I'm not sure why but a few days ago I took notice of the shadows my railing cast upon my balcony. Movement in a time lapse is what creates interest so I knew I'd have to incorporate the railing shadows somehow into the intro. I also thought it would be cool to time lapse water freezing. And to take it one step further, have something in the water that would be floating around and moving throughout the time lapse until it froze.

 

Now that I had some ideas, it was time to make it all work...or try anyways. I picked up a casserole dish to hold the water and an upside down laundry basket covered with white bristol board to hold up the casserole dish. My tripod has a centre column so I can't get it very close to the ground, that's why I needed to boost the casserole dish up with the laundry basket. The next step was to create the text portion, the part that would be floating around in the water as it froze. The text would read "A Brandon Broderick Production". I was going to just write it with a sharpie on a piece of cardboard but I'm a guy, and i have messy writing. To solve this problem I went the microsoft word route. Each letter was individually cut and taped to the cardboard. A second, smaller piece of cardboard wrapped in wax paper was hidden and taped to the underside of the piece with the words on it. I figured this would slow down the deterioration of the cardboard from the water. With all these details figured out, it was time to shoot.

 

I shot it Friday over a 2 hour period because I wanted to really show the movements of the railing shadows. And 2 hours did provide lots of movement from the shadows, but there was a problem with the cardboard. The piece I used was too small which meant the wind could blow it all over the the surface of the water within the casserole dish. This was kind of the point, however the cardboard moved way too drastically between frames and was very dizzying and hard to read. It was so bad that if I were to use that intro, I wouldhave had to include a "may cause seizures" warning before each video as well. I don't want 2 intros and I knew saturday would be another sunny day so I just shot it again and made some changes. Also I'd like to pointout that the amount of water it takes to fill a casserole dish won't freeze in 2-3hrs when it's -5 celsius. I wish it did though...

 

The first change I had to make was to change the size of the cardboard. I made it just a bit smaller than the casserole dish so it would still move, but not as much. I also made the text bigger so it was easier to read, another problem with the previous attempt. I decided to shoot this second attempt over a 3hr period to really get those shadows moving.

 

Around 1 o'clock saturday afternoon I set everything up again with all the changes made including a change to the interval between photos. For those not familiar with time lapses, they're basically just a bunch of individual photos played one after the other. An intervalometer is plugged into the camera and you can choose how many seconds you want in between each image. The smoother you want your video to look, the shorter the distance between shots. The intervals I normally shoot at are between 2 and 10 seconds. If I had shot at, lets say 10 second intervals friday, over a 3hr period, I would have shot 1080 photos. I create each time lapse at 24 frames persecond and with 1080 frames, my small tiny video intro becomes a 45 secondclip... that's a pretty boring/lengthy start to a video.

 

For the 3 hour shoot saturday I set my interval at 2 minutes. This means I would end up with about 90 frames to work with and that would give me about a 3-4 second clip. That's right, 3 hours shooting for a 3 second clip.

 

Alright I'm starting to get too technical. Here's the summary. Friday I shot the intro time lapse. It didn't look how I wanted so Saturday I made some changes and re-shot it. Let me know what you think!

Edited February 9, 2011 by brandon

[Twocoda]

great idea!

but i think it needs to be a bit longer ...unless your going to use it as a closing credit for your productions?...kinda like the "thats some bad hat harry "

 

Concept is really cool! I didnt even notice the casserole dish ( if you hadnt of metioned it )...it would be really really cool to see the ice form in the dish...maybe even see the font disappear under snow as well ( if we get another heavy snow day)

 

Way to go

[brandon]

Yeah I'm calling it an Intro but I really haven't decided if I'm going to use it at the beginning or ending of the videos yet. So that's why I kept it to such a short length.

[Handlebarz]

Glad you pointed out the words i was watching the river flowing by

 

It looks great Brandon but it did seem short for my eyes by the time I focused it was over. I do like the idea alot.

[JBen]

Im of the, long enough opinion.

People these days have ADD, whether it's checking out photos on websites, reading artciles on the web, whatever.

Anything thats too long and they hit the back button. What I might do is slow it down some...So same or close to same duration, but fewer frames in the time lapse. It comes across as very fast.

[brandon]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I've decided to just re-shoot and keep things more simple...still movement, just not as much of it. It's basically just the words with blue sky/clouds moving in the background. I'm also creating a colour and black and white version. I'll post them when they're ready.

[brandon]

I added the new intro/outro to the original post. Let me know what you think!

[aplumma]

Brandon for some reason the letters on the post it notes looks wrong for some reason. If you were to have the movement on the letters on a plain backround like they enter the paper and circle around then stop in place. You might play with a glass backround with the clouds streaming by and your letters made of clay???or drawn on the glass with markers. I am not a critic just a fan trying to help you along.

 

 

 

Art

[bullybass]

I like the longer one... throw a little snip of your favourite music in there to make it pop!!