Not really a question that we've asked ourselves before, but we are glad that Lastfutre found out the answer. Using Final Cut Pro and Motion, he swapped the two dimensions in the production of this video.
We did try this many years ago with a Shake script on a G4, it would still be rendering now if we hadn't of stopped it! We did try searching for it but I'm not joking when we say the first link was TARDIS related.
The author took a train journey and whilst filming the countryside rolling by wondered what would happen if he took the first vertical line of every frame and stitched them together.
"I was sitting in a train traveling through The Netherlands recently when for some odd reason I decided I had to take a video of the landscape passing by. I had no real use for it but decided to try and make something of it. I remembered slit-scan photography, a method where a slit is moved across the picture plane essentially taking a temporal image, where different times of the scene are captured on different parts of the film.
Replicating this from a video meant taking the same column of pixels from each frame of the video and putting them next to each other. Then I decided that a still image was kind of boring really, and I explored what would happen if I took another pixel column and repeated the process. The result was a wonderful kind of movement where the far away objects would move across the width of the image faster than the ones in front. A kind of inverse parallax movement really.
To accomplish all this I saved the video as an image sequence, then I wrote a few scripts, the first of which took each frame and extracted every pixel column writing them into separate files. After ending up with about 8.7 Million one pixel wide images I took the second script to recombine them again, making as many images as the footage was pixels wide and making them as wide as the footage had frames, thus essentially interchanging time and space. After a few days I ended up with 720 images, each 12121 pixels wide and 1280 pixels high which I then loaded back in as an image sequence and performed some retiming magic on."
A pretty interesting effect coming to a pop video soon no doubt. We did find some further information about the technique which can be found on this Wiki. (link removed) Worth a look just for the precision technical drawings.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
