Editing Technique

[Darth Sithari]

I need some help jogging my memory.

 

I can't remember the name of the special effects technique that's really popular in Japanese horror films and in music videos that creates the extra jerky/spastic motion of the peron(s) onscreen. If anyone here knows what I'm talking about, could you remind me? I've ben Googling and trying to Youtube if all night, but I'll be damned if it isn't driving me crazy that I can't find it!!!

Edited September 25, 2009 by Darth Sithari

[Walsingham]

I know the thing you mean. I found t

. You may want to PM the creator.

 

I've been looking for the term on google as well, using "the grudge" and "tthe ring" as search terms. Everyone talks about the technique but never fething well names it.

[Hiro Protagonist]

^ The guy who did the video says it was good old Stop Motion.

[Walsingham]

^ The guy who did the video says it was good old Stop Motion.

 

aha. And I guess if you do stop motion badly, and have varied intervals, then it looks all jerky?

[Blarghagh]

Yes, it's just stop motion. But I suppose you could do it by speeding up your video and just cutting out frames here and there. Maybe film it backwards and do that.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Yes, it's just stop motion. But I suppose you could do it by speeding up your video and just cutting out frames here and there. Maybe film it backwards and do that.

 

I was thinking the same thing as well.

[Walsingham]

Purely as a tangential suggestion, you could make your audience stay awake for about three days and nights before they watch it. That would make it FEEL as if it was all jerky.

[Gorgon]

In those same Japanese horror movies the ghost is always a girl with giant hair, which does all the killing for her. Apparently that's a rule now.

[Blarghagh]

That's a cultural thing more than anything.

[Walsingham]

That's a cultural thing more than anything.

 

Huh. I did not know that.

[Blarghagh]

I once saw a nifty program on discovery channel about a phenomenon when people wake up partially at night but their body is still asleep and their dreams/nightmares are still going on too. They said in western civilisation it often translated to U.F.O. abduction experiences but in japan it ended up as Onry

[Walsingham]

I once saw a nifty program on discovery channel about a phenomenon when people wake up partially at night but their body is still asleep and their dreams/nightmares are still going on too. They said in western civilisation it often translated to U.F.O. abduction experiences but in japan it ended up as Onry

[Amentep]

Asked my brother a bit about Stop Motion filming since he's actually done some stop motion shorts:

 

*****

 

What makes the "jerkiness" is two things:

 

a) each image in a Ray Harryhausen flick or other model work (Nightmare Before Christmas, for example) is being shot still as each image is shot. Since there isn't any motion, the eye picks that up subtly as being not quite normal. For example, look at your finger. If you move it back and forth rapidly, to your eye it blurs. If you filmed each discrete motion on a camera and showed it sped up to keep the same pace as you wiggling your finger, it would look like a still image moving rapidly, without blur, and thus it would look unnatural and jerky.

 

b) That's the main thing, but I think also poor animation that doesn't reflect natural movement well also can contribute to the jerky look. Like, with Ray Harryhausen, or Willis O'Brian in King Kong, they were great character animators, and their motion looks more realistic than, for instance, the animated creatures done in Jack the Giant Killer, which were done by younger, less experienced animators.

 

There is a way to make it less jerky, and it has been used. For Dragonslayer, they developed a way to create motion in the model when it was needed, so it blurs naturally as it flies, and that was one of the secrets as to why it looks so awesome! I think the technology continued to be used throughout big budget films of the 80's (like the alien creature at the end of Howard the Duck, things like that), but I don't think it has been used much as CGI rose to prominence and after the blue screen work of the 80's gave way to more modern special effects.

 

Human animation would follow the same principles as model animation, there really wouldn't be any major difference, except that as human beings, people would recognize what they are looking at are humans, and they'd pick up any differences in motion pretty well.

 

Don't forget one good example of human animation:

. [Mike Jittlov] actually shot and animated himself for the film, so just imagine doing that!

[Kaftan Barlast]

Im more of a CG animation fellow, but to get a more fluid jerkiness, you can just speed up some sequences while slowing others down. Pinching the timeline in places. You'll probably have to shoot the scene at higher frame rate to get more material to work with aswell. If you time-stretch 24fps film it'll look like crap. Like in even high-budget hollywood films where they have like half a second of footage and they need to fill 1.5sec so they stretch it out and it looks awful.

Edited September 25, 2009 by Kaftan Barlast

[Walsingham]

Im more of a CG animation fellow, but to get a more fluid jerkiness, you can just speed up some sequences while slowing others down. Pinching the timeline in places. You'll probably have to shoot the scene at higher frame rate to get more material to work with aswell. If you time-stretch 24fps film it'll look like crap. Like in even high-budget hollywood films where they have like half a second of footage and they need to fill 1.5sec so they stretch it out and it looks awful.

 

 

You mean like in 2001 A Space Oddysey, where they had about twenty minutes of film, and stretched it out to waste what felt like three years of my life?

[Blarghagh]

Haha. That's great! Actually, if you want to get really technical CG animation is still stop motion. You make single frames. The difference is that you add a motion blur to it. That's the reason Steven Spielberg allowed ILM to go CGI with Jurassic Park instead of stop motion and really kick off the CGI craze.

 

(Yes, I know others started it, especially James Cameron's work with it, but it really took off when Jurassic Park showed you could use it for living, breathing animals).