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Beads form Words - Trick shot


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Hello,

 

Here's the shot: beads are thrown or projected on a surface and come to form a word.

There's no need to see someone's hand doing the throwing. So the beads could just fall.

 

Part of the solution lies in showing this shot in reverse: we start the shot with the finished word and then, somehow, see the words "jump up" towards the camera.

That would suppose that the camera is looking up at the beads as they call towards the lens. That's what I can't figure out: how to make the beads hold in the shape of the word and fall towards the lens at the same time. There's probably no solution to this, at least no easy solution.

 

Another approach would be to shoot this as a stop motion sequence and go from the formed word to an empty canvas, after all the beads have been animated out of the frame.

 

I would be happy to hear people's thoughts on this!

 

Thanks.

Alex

 

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Magnets and ball bearings, painted to look like beads.

Form the words on a card, hold the balls on with magnetic strip shaped into letters.

Then turn it upside down and put the camera underneath.

Remove magnets. I don't know if you could get electromagnets in the right shape, but if you could, they could be switched off as required. Or if the strips don't work, hold the balls in place with holes in the card or channels shaped out of card. Gravity does the rest.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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Magnets and ball bearings, painted to look like beads.

Form the words on a card, hold the balls on with magnetic strip shaped into letters.

Then turn it upside down and put the camera underneath.

Remove magnets. I don't know if you could get electromagnets in the right shape, but if you could, they could be switched off as required. Or if the strips don't work, hold the balls in place with holes in the card or channels shaped out of card. Gravity does the rest.

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

Your idea of using magnets or some other form of adhesive to fix the beads (whether real or painted) is a good one. I forgot to mention, however, that the beads are the product that this little video is supposed to sell: expensive beads from a luxury jeweler. So, of course, we can't glue things to them or even recreate them by painting ball bearing, etc.

 

No, the more I think about this video the more it becomes clear that this particular idea can't be carried out as envisioned by the client, with the budget and the time we have. The best solution would be to use traditional stop-motion animation (also expensive, since it is so time-consuming) and do it frame by frame in two or three shots of a few seconds (and appropriate music and sound-effects).

 

I'll run it all with the client once we have something more concrete in mind, and we'll go from there ... which will be nowhere probably 'cause this is not going to be cheap. Lots of people have all sorts of ideas for "fun videos" until they realize that few are every simple and none are cheap.

 

Thanks again.

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What about the beads rolling into position?

 

Arrange the beads into the word,

then tilt slightly the surface for the beads to roll off.

Reverse footage.

 

The camera and lights need to be mounted

together with the surface in order to tilt in sync.

 

 

Oooh, I like that idea!

I didn't think of fixing the camera *and* the lights to the table, or the table/surface to a structure holding the lights and the camera.

That, plus shooting at a high frame rate for some added smooth speed ramping, might do the trick.

Gonna try and schedule in a rough test for tomorrow and see what happens.

Thank you.

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Well, gentlemen, it's not going to happen.

 

The client realizes that it's going to be too expensive for their budget, since I can't run one or two full-scale tests for free. So now the fallback option is for them to print a series of flip books (actual, old-fashioned, paper flip books) that are going to show their beads being animated across a flat surface. They'll give the flip books to their clients at some upcoming trade show. And it is their in-house photographer who is going to take care of the photos and the animation. So this project is now not mine to worry about, which is for the best.

 

Thank you all for your excellent suggestions. This little exchange might is not for naught as it might give ideas to future filmmakers.

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