“7d 1000 fps “a very straight forward title, is a video shot on a 7d and later converted to 1000 fps. Filmed and directed by a young upcoming videographer named Oton Bacar. The video is focused on a bmx rider doing tricks at a skate park; the difference with Oton’s rendition of a bmx trick montage is he has slowed down specific sequences to create a mesmerizing and visually pleasing video.

The canon 7D cannot shoot at 1000 frames per second natively, instead Oton has used aftereffects in conjunction with a plugin called “Twixtor” which has the ability to slow footage down. “Twixtor works by taking your footage generally your transcoded 50fps, or 60fps footage and "guesses/interpolates" your missing/in-between frames”.

Oton Shot in 720p at 60fps on his 7D; although its sounds easy just to use “twixtor” and slow footage down, it’s defiantly not as easy as Oton makes it seem as I’ve seen many attempt and fail. That’s why I think this piece is great, all shots are so nicely framed and the soundtrack fits perfectly. Incredibly He achieved this beautiful footage with only a stock lens (Canon EFS 18-135mm).

The next video called “Arty - Kurz und Schön” was produced for the Kurz und Schoen Festival Opener “The festival is an international competition for young creatives for commercial spots, motion design, short films and mobile miniatures”. It’s another example that utilizes slow-motion wonderfully. Unsure on the techniques used to achieve the slow-motion effect (perhaps filmed with a Phantom); although it’s clearly obvious other compositing techniques were used to get the thought-provoking movements and flight of the characters.

Overall slow-motion is something I am quite interested in, I have been experimenting with “twixtor” and it is defiantly not easy to get great results. Philip Bloom a professional videographer http://philipbloom.net/ has written some guidelines to achieve appropriate footage to later implement the “twixtor” plugin.

Shooting Workflow:

1. Shoot at a fast shutter: anything 1/2000 - 1/4000s. [so your lighting needs to be good]

2. Shoot against a plain/solid colored background – sky/wall etc etc.

3. Shoot at the highest point of action. The law of nature is that what must goes up, must come down. Its the movement at the top of an arc/trajectory that works best for Twixtor because that’s when things generally move the slowest, more frames of the relevant action for Twixtor to work with.

4. When you shoot really close/tight, slow the action down manually ie – move slower and fake slow motion [all the tight sequences in 'Gravity' was done this way and then slowed down a little more with the tools]. Its easier to get good results with Twixtor when the action is shot from a distance, because of the fact that the action will happen across more frames – ie – Imagine moving your arms up and down – a distance 50 centimeters right in front of the camera – the camera will only catch SOME of that action as your arms pass by the front of the lens, for maybe 1-3 frames. However if you move away from the camera and shoot say 10-15 meters away from the lens, you would catch the ENTIRE action across say 7-10 frames – giving Twixtor more information to work with

5. Shoot at 50 or 60fps. When you shoot high-speed you give Twixtor more info to work with – it is a shame that you have to forgo resolution

6. Shoot as much as you can – try to get the action from different angles – reshoot stuff if wasn’t working, or if your settings weren’t correct.