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Practical Psychedelic Camera Effects


Sam Oddo

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Hello Cinema Community!

I have a music video client who would like psychedelic images in her music video: Options include fractals, light prism effects, kaleidoscopic imagery etc. I am curious, is anyone aware of practical solutions to achieving an end result similar to what I listed above? I realize that I could achieve much of this via a program like After Effects; however, I am curious if doing something like this practically would produce something more organic. If anyone has any experience with this, it would be great to know what methods you used, in addition to seeing visual references of the end result. Lastly, this project is on a shoe string budget!

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Tape a kaleidoscope to the front of a lens--Look into Vantage Filter's range of interesting optical products-- they do have some filters with prisms built in-- but in 100% truth my highest recommendation is to get a DSLR and play around with some things.

I've taken prisms and mounted them on little isreali arm in front of the lens. I have a warped 138mm plastic magnifying glass I often throw in a filter stage which works kinda like a diopter but, bends everything, You can take a transparent plastic tube and some glitter with a little hand-held battery fan and put it in front of the lens with a little pen light to get some interesting particle things-- i mean the possibilities are endless-- it really just comes down to playing around with some things in your spare time and keeping the stuff that works.

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Also consider easing the lens very, very slightly out of the mount. Don't drop it.

 

Consider reflective things, fairy lights, or other things very close to the camera so they're extremely out of focus. Experiement with different lenses and different combinations of aperture and ND.

 

As a halfway house, retaining the organic look but with some post control, shoot expressionistic, graphical elements extremely out of focus and comp them together later on. I did this recently for a watch promo that was all shot in macro and it has been well-received.

 

P

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Are you trying to archieve psycedelic effect which is on the real image eg.the singer for example or completely separate psycedelic effects?

If the latter, you can experiment with macro lenses and chemical chrystals, colored liquids, etc. I think they used milk and colored liquids in the Tree of Life for example.

 

If you try to experiment with chrystals I recommend mid to low quality lenses with chromatic aberrations, lots of extension tubes or bellows, and using moving polarized lights for shooting. You can try growing vitamin c chrystals for example (check youtube)

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Start collecting glass and plastic cups, prisms, and other transparent/reflective objects. Hold them in front of the lens. Use smaller pieces so that you can leave portions of the lens clear.

 

Also, if you have a camera that can shoot slower frame rates or at least do slow shutter speeds for extra motion blur, then you can get some cool effects by moving quickly and then stopping so that things come in and out of focus. Add in some snap zooms, and you can make some pretty crazy looking shots. Sometimes I like to grab the zoom bar and wiggle it back and forth like a dog with chew toy, it's an interesting effect.

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Try this one first as it is the easiest.

 

Take the output for your camera and feed it to a monitor.

 

Point your camera towards the monitor and you will get a "Video Feedback Loop".

 

Place a person or thing between the camera and monitor and it will become part of the feedback loop.

 

 

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speaking of macro lenses, here is some stuff I made a while ago using a custom low quality macro lens, lots of extension tubes and shooting blurred satin aluminum surface with changing lighting http://www.shutterstock.com/fi/video/clip-4312820-stock-footage-abstract-background-with-slowly-changing-lighting-only-optical-effects-used-no-digital.html?src=gallery/z4H6fuwAMG6j7qVsNAkfYw:12:91/3p

 

you can experiment with other shiny surfaces, various small crystals, metal powders, etc.

I could also produce this type of material for you but it would cost a bit (one day shoot) so not possible with 0 budget

Edited by aapo lettinen
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As mentioned pointing the capture camera at a monitor of the current capture will produced a video feed back image... infinite mirror regression...

 

Old school... take a old school transparency overhead projector, fill a glass bowl, sitting on the projector's 'transparency' area, with water and oil based inks, make ink droplets in the bowl of water... shake around, etc.

 

Overhead projector, with bowl and colored inks... it ought to be in a museum...

tanya-gerber-pic-of-otis-lightshow.jpg

 

 

Vintage 60's look...

 

FVHZI9RFG5PRD6Y.LARGE.jpg

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