This is incredible. Normally just one or two of these techniques would represent a pretty impressive feat. This used 3d printing, freelensing, pixelstick lightwriting, and a custom bokeh cutout -- in addition to the cool, but more common helicopter shots, timelapse, tilt-shift, and steady cam work.
Being willing to (or maybe having the budget to) use all these techniques AND getting a consistent result is SUPER impressive.
I'm glad they pointed out that a similar shot could have been done via drone. I've been told that drones have made cool aerial sequences available to directors who don't have the budget of SNL's 40th though I'd be interested in learning more.
Photographers were using RC helicopters long before multicopter thingies that people like to call drones for some reason became trendy. These are still around and they have the lift capacity to hoist your 5D or your Red Epic on a pan/tilt rig, unlike most multicopters that can hardly lift a go pro.
He mentioned this in the article: "There are a lot of ways to shoot aerial footage these days; we could fly a DJI Phantom with a GoPro, mount a Dragon to a Freefly Cinestar drone, handhold a MoVI out an open chopper door…or we could just hire the best aerial pilot in New York – Al Cerullo – which is what we did."
My company uses a drone to "scope" land before we build. My first reaction to seeing the video is that we wasted money on a helicopter ride for a 30 sec clip.
A DJI Phantom 2 with the Zenmuse H3-3D and a GoPro 3+ or 4 can take amazingly smooth and high quality footage (example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRC-8pCCCys ). There are also drones that can fly with DSLRs.
Thanks for the hint, eventually i stumbled upon the note about Pixelstick in the article, never heard of it before. They had a successful Kickstarter last year, the video briefly introduces the tech and shows many more applications: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bitbangerlabs/pixelstic...
Now I want one!
Lots of great sequences from the 80s presented there along with on my of my all-time favorite openings - Ghost in the Shell [0].
I've always felt failing to put together a compelling opening is a missed opportunity, particularly for a series. It's a hook, a primer to put the audience in mind of the best eras and episodes every time.
As someone who enjoys both programming and video production, this is great to see on HN. In my experience, there is a lot of overlap between both skillsets. As the article makes clear, a lot of time goes into finding cool "hacks" to trick the lens into conveying a particular look via lighting, optical effects and more.
Post-production is also a very technical process that takes a lot of time and effort to get right and involves exploring the particular quirks of your editing software and tricking it to get it to do what you want. There are often little moments of discovery where you do something you weren't even sure was possible. Then there are those serendipitous moments where visuals and audio come together better than you were anticipating or could have ever planned. It's a great feeling.
I encourage any programmers out there who have even a modicum of interest in the subject to go out there and experiment. Video production can be a great creative outlet that uses a lot of the same talents and opens up new artistic pathways.
I love my Lensbaby (an older one), but the effect is a bit different. There is no light leakage behind the lens like there'd be with freelensing. You sometimes get fun and weird artifacts from light sources just outside the frame, but a subtle streak over the image where light enters the camera behind the hand-held lens ... not so much.
Is it just me or is stuff like this way harder to appreciate these days (with the ubiquity of CGI), unless you work in the industry, or see a behind-the-scenes look like this?
This is simply incredible, and yet I don't normally pay the title sequence any attention at all...
This is the pre-Tron era, where the easiest way to get a picture of a chrome logo is to build one out of brass. The starburst and light ribbon effects later in the video are similarly brilliant examples of pre-CG CG.
Now I'm reminded of the video to Justice's DVNO, which is almost entirely made of homages to '70s and '80s title effects, including a huge reference to the HBO logo sequence.
There's this cool trade off between how much you can charge for commercials, and for how long you can take up an audiences interest. The cable shows have longer intros. I think this is because of how expensive it is to shoot the footage, but they know they can capture the audience for a full hour, so they'll grab any way to get to that full hour cheaper.
Cartoons are an extreme example, being very very expensive to animate, many cartoons in Japan have an intro of almost 15 minutes, then ~25 show, then 5 minutes outro! (these are cartoons targeted at teens/adults)
I was going to add this to the list, because I think the Homeland intro is really interesting and well done. Usually I fast forward through them, but I notice something new everytime with this one.
Great post, really interesting to see how they did the shots and glad to see they opted for real footage and techniques most of the time rather than just post processing everything.
I used to shoot free form lenses, it was difficult to get a still from, shooting video would be a challenge. My (old) post on free lens shooting: https://mkaz.com/2005/01/08/homemade-lenses/
I'm really happy to see a post like this on HN. Pulling off creative in-camera shots like these are a million times more rewarding for some reason than creating/editing them in post. There's something visceral about getting the shot right in the moment.
Wow that's incredible how they combine so many techniques. The use of lenses is really innovative, I mean, people would think it's made only with special effects and it's 3D printed or done entirely manually ! Congrats.
This summer I attended one of the editing workshops put on by Adam Epstein who edits all of the film unit productions. It's incredible how fast they write, produce, edit, and turn around these projects. They are literally working from Thursday afternoon until Saturday evening to build these from scratch.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
It's really cool to see filmmakers doing their thing, even moreso if they're using really recent tech (3D printing, pixelbars, new camera stabilizers). Is that sufficient?
Dude, the entire post is crammed with interesting technical details and tricks (like how to make a custom bokeh filter? Very nicely done).
The article has nothing to do with the content of SNL itself. If you're gonna just ignore that and get back on that tired old "SNL hasn't been cool since Eddie Murphy" horse then
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
this was a really cool effect...but I never found SNL to be funny. I've never even laughed at it once. I don't understand why people laugh...that and jimmy fallon/kimmel
It used to be hilarious. I'm talking Bill Murry era. Maybe
I was young and usually stoned, but if the Saturday night was unfruitful(meaning no women); I'd rush home and watch
SNL and really got a kick out of it. Just thinking about
that "Miss Loupner" thing has me smiling.
As a viewer since season 1, SNL has always been funny but inconsistent. If you go back now and watch those early shows yes, there were some awesome sketches, but they were surrounded by a lot of duds as well.
I respect the show just for what it is. These people write and build an entire 90 minute show going from zero to rehearsals in 5 days. No other show has done this for decades and lived to tell about it.
Being willing to (or maybe having the budget to) use all these techniques AND getting a consistent result is SUPER impressive.