Last Wednesday, Spiral and I had a thrilling opportunity. We got to shoot video footage with a 3d stop motion camera. This is essentially the same setup used for the Matrix when Trinity jumps in the air, freezing in position while the camera rotates around. We’re very excited and curious to see what the footage looks like. Although it might be challenging to edit it into the Hoop Technique DVD, we’re hoping that the footage will be usable. If not, we’re going to have some dope YouTube clips :)
The setup consisted of 1 Canon 5d Mark II shooting video footage and 36 Canon Rebels mounted on an 18ft semi circle, each shooting a still image simultaneously. The team working on the footage has created software that automatically combines all the still images into a video clip. This clip can then be edited in with the footage from the 5d.
The effect that can theoretically be achieved is like this scene from the Matrix. Skip to :44 to see the jump.
What may be very interesting about the footage is that both fire and led leave tracers in an image. You can see the persistent image of an antispin flower in the image below. All of the Canon Rebel still cameras were set to 1 sec exposure meaning we were leaving a lot of trails. If all goes as planed we will appear to freeze in a 3d cloud of tracers as the camera rotates around us.
The entire setup is still pretty experimental so no one really knows if we got anything usable. We’re crossing our fingers that everything went as planned. I’m sure whatever comes of it will be very interesting.
Sending a big thanks to Dai for the images and Tuana for the unbelievable opportunity to shoot with this camera setup.