Thursday, February 14, 2008

circular films

This is trippy. Why is the field of view so constrained to the present paradigm.

I mean your camera can only film so much, but what if it could take in some more around the edges, and what if the cinema canvas got even more panaromic.

In 300 the director runs a really cool technique of both widening the frame, and in so doing manipulating the images within it.

The effect can be just as a wierd as bullet time; differece is not many people have tried this, so give it a go.

To illustrate how it works, put three friends on a couch with three cameras trained on them individually.

You need three camera or more to make this look something else

Line em up on the field of action, and where possible demarcate the action into thirds.

Set the timecode: just slap your hands as you're recording

The let them fidget, jump up and down etc.

In the edit lay the three different film time lines on top of each other; synch them so they're the same timecode, then crop away each of the films to highlight only one of yor subjects.

You should have a seamless picture.

Now the fun; slow one down to 50 or less and speed up the other, letting one continure as normal.

Et Voila. In 300 you see the effect best in the end fighting scenes.

Next time try it with a wider panama.

Now what would film look like if we could wrap it around our visual periphery?

Yep we've been here before. cf Lev Manovic and spatial cinema.

Nothings orginal nowadays huh!

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