undercranked lip synch

radar71 · February 22, 2005

anyone know how to acheive the effect seen in:

-latest Cure video shot i think by chris soos

-Marilyn Manson video (beautiful people) same DP

-Radio Head video, where singer is walking through forest.

it looks like stop motion sort of.

i believe it's done by undercranking at 6-12fps and having the actors lip synch to a slowed down track, also walking slowly.

is the variable shutter important for this look? ie. 90 degrees or below...

there is no motion blur. sharp frames. it occured to me that the look may be achieved as well by over cranking in camera @ 48fps or higher, and then speeding it up in the transfer... that way there're more frames to mess around with.

hopefully someone out there knows... or else it's going to be a lot of testing to do!

thanks guys.

February 23, 2005

You're probably right about undercranking. At 12fps or so, especially if you are handholding, you should get pretty jerky movement. Lip synch would need to be done with a 2x slowed down track.

If motion blur is going to be a problem, and you can't close the shutter down, you could probably get away with skipping frames in post and shooting at 24fps or above. If you are going to drop 2 out of every 3 frames for example, you will need to slow down the audio 3x.

Sounds like fun. Maybe I'll test this next time I'm down to my last 20 feet.

J. Anthony Gonzales · February 23, 2005

I notice this technique used A LOT in music videos of late, especially the other way around in which the soundtrack is normal speed and everybody is moving around in slow motion. I think the Beastie Boys pretty much have the patent on that one, although more and more acts are doing it in their videos.

One of the coolest techniques of "altered time" I have seen is the Cold Play video for the song "The Scientist". The whole photography/storyline runs backwards, but the soundtrack is normal.

John G.

February 23, 2005

One of the coolest techniques of "altered time" I have seen is the Cold Play video for the song "The Scientist". The whole photography/storyline runs backwards, but the soundtrack is normal.

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Very tricky to do. I believe this trick was also used in a Weird Al video (Amish Paradise). It looked a bit odd. I saw another video using this trick earlier this week and it was a far cry from 'The Scientist'. It's very difficult to sing to a backwards track. Perhaps the only reason the coldplay video worked was because the lyrics play so slow (that or it was fiddled in post to fix the synch).

I still like the Radiohead video for Street Spirit. Mixed-time elements.

Kim Sargenius · February 24, 2005

Check out the feature film 'Chopper', starring Eric Bana, directed by Andrew Dominik - it has a couple of scenes with what looks like 6fps, with near perfect lip synch. I guess they would have had pre-recorded dialogue, and just a *lot* of rehearsal time for the actor. Anyone know for sure?

Kim Sargenius

cinematographer

sydney

radar71 · February 24, 2005

i'm going to do some tests this weekend with my s16mm kras. i'll lock the camera down and shoot 12fps with lip synch to a track slowed down by 1/2. actor will behave slowly.

another test will be shooting at 48fps with a normal speed track and then cutting out every other frame.

anyone have test ideas? i'll shoot good ideas and post online.

obviously the way to do this is shoot 12fps with 45 degree shutter angle, or a strobe synched up that runs 1,000 times per second.

but that's if we had a budget.