battlefield simulator using kinect

kinect technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhanvWL88uc
A lot of people will be posting an advert that Microsoft made for the kinect, this advert doesn't contain anything real, they are all just concepts at the moment.
This video shows a real mod that is being developed. There are a lot of things that can be done with the kinect and it will only get better. The people making the mods will get more used to the coding and in doing so be able to do more with it.

Inspiratation

For my stop motion I was inspired by the old super 8 cameras. I have always loved how the videos are so choppy, you can imagine sitting in a small theatre with the sound of the flickering projector behind your head. On the Braun Nizo S 800 it shoot at 24fps whereas my canon 350D shot at 3fps, It was considerably slower so my movements would of had to be much slower to match it, that would have been way to hard so I walked naturally and speed the video up.

ubyk matryoshka

This music video by 'ubyk' was shot both in the traditional stop motion style, (take photo the move something) it was also shot using continuous shooting. A lot of effort will have gone into this video because it was shot outside so the space for the little russian doll was much greater.

I shot this video on a walk I went on with my family. I used continuous shooting to give more of a 'home movie' feel, I also used manual focus and on purpose went in and out of focus as I moved around, that effect has been used in movies such as 'cloverfield', I feel it gives depth to the video because you have to focus on something. The song used in this video is called 'upular' by youtube DJ, pogo.

making my video

To start your video you have to click new sequence.

once your sequence is open you have to select the images you want to add into your stop motion.

Click open, find your images and select them all.
If your images are in a file then you can drag the folder down to the timeline

(the blue bar is where you have to drag them).
Then you have to 'nest' your items (turn them all into one sequence)

once they are 'nested' you can edit the speed of the sequence instead of each single photo, saves a lot of time.

'ctrl-click' and click speed so you can speed it up because otherwise it will be very slow

6000 to 8000 is about the speed you will want with stop motion but as with most things it is based on preference.
To view your work in process you will need to render, to do this hold down the 'apple key' and press 'r'. Now this might take a while, don't worry it's not broken, rendering just sucks.
once you are happy with the video you can add audio.
Adding audio is a lot like adding pictures.
Click open

find your audio (song, sound effect, ect) it will open to the same place your pictures did. Then you simply drag it down to your timeline, below where the video is.

As you can see I have 'cut' my song slightly, I did that so that it was the same length as the video. To cut you press 'b' and when you are done you click 'a'
To end the song I added a cross fade so the song fades to silence, this makes for a gentle ending.
To add a cross fade click the end of your audio file,

 when it is selected 'ctrl-click' and select cross fade.

you can click and drag the length of the fade, if it is too short it will sound weird.

Mysteryguitarman

Mysteryguitarman is a very popular youtube star and I have been following him for a couple of years. The majority of his videos are quite a lot like this one, now it isn't the conventual way of doing stop frame animation but  I would still say it was. He takes extremely short video shots of him playing, in this case, a guitar note, when he has finished shooting all the notes to a song he edits it all together so it sounds like the song he is playing. I would like to have done something like this for my final project but because I lack the right equipment I couldn't.

Bathtub IV

This video was shot by Australian photographer/filmmaker Keith Loutit. He is known as the pioneer of the tilt shift / time-lapse technique, Loutit was the first to recognize how time and focus combine to support the powerful illusion of miniaturization in film. Loutit gained recognition with his 'Bathtub' series (number 4 is above) in which he turned his home town of Sydney into what most people think to be a model, for example, (Aw, it was so cute. My dad showed me to this, and said, "Look how real these miniatures look!" When it loaded, me, being the photography buff I am, said, "Dad, it's from a tilt-shift lens. It's all real." "But the water.." "It's a time lapse." "Aw, that ruined the magic for me." Was a top rating comment on the video).
Keith Loutit is currently working on a project called Small Worlds "Small Worlds is Loutit's most ambitious project to date, documenting the world's great cities, landscapes and monuments of the ancient world in miniature. In a time of population explosion, impacts to our environment, and concern over limited resources our world feels smaller than ever. But through Loutit's lens the world seems simple and uncomplicated, the differences between people are reduced, and obstacles seem easily overcome. By presenting a view of the world from 'the outside in' Loutit aims to tell an inspirational story of mankind working together as one. We will see cities being built, the world's great events, and daily life all in Loutit's trademark style of miniaturization." www.keithloutit.com/about.
I am a big fan of Keith's work, the wonder he creates within his videos is fantastic. I have always loved tilt shift photography and I have always loved my homeland of Australia so I would find it hard not to like Keith. I would absolutely love to have an opportunity to shoot with a tilt shift lens and I hope that some day I will get that chance.