I used to call this effect a “better robot effect” but I think since I made it up I should be able to
call it something with more legitimacy than that.
Check out this video below:
Obviously I used the Fluid Video Effect (FVE) in order to make the sub-par “dancers” (a bunch
of friends moving to music for a non-important video) look somewhat coordinated and okay.
There are many other uses for this and I hope to make use of it soon, but I’ll explain what I’ve
done to the video before you begin to wonder what is so special about it.
I started with the 10 second clip of these guys literally just moving, and duplicated it in a Non-
Linear Editor (NLE and in my case Final Cut Pro).
I then took the duplicated clip and dropped the opacity down to 50%.
Next I reversed the duplicate.
Then I zoomed in pretty far on the timeline and cut at ever 3 frames (1 cut for every 3 frames
with a 10 second clip at 30 fps = 100 cuts).
Then I reversed their order which can be illustrated simply as follows:
(each number represents 3 frames) 123456789 becomes 987654321.
Then I drug those frames back over the top of the original 10 second clip and this video is the
outcome.
Essentially what is happening is that every 3 frames is being played both forward and
backward at the same time, and it creates a stop motion/frame effect while remaing fluid
(thus the name!)
For those of you very visually minded people the timeline ends up looking like this
(still using numbers to represents 3 frames)
123456789
987654321
It’s a fairly simple concept, and I may not be the first to have discovered it, but it can
create some terrific looking video. I hope to soon (as in mid-december) have a very
nice High Definition Sony A1 and will be looking to use the FVE to do more than just
making inadequate dancers look alright.
Let me know if you have any questions and also if you would like screenshots of my
timeline if it’s confusing.
Thanks for reading and good luck! (Send me the link if you use it in your videos, would
love to see it!)
- Ted
