LAWLESS TRAILER EFFECT

Does anyone know how to do the effect that appears in this video ( LAWLESS movie trailer) at 01:04 and 01:07 ?
www.dailymotion.com/video/xqd4go_lawless...nce-vo-hd_shortfilms
It's quite similar to what you can find in the movie Snatch ...

Thanx for your help !

www.rippletraining.com/categories/apple-...in-motion-5-new.html

Great!!! Thank you Simon !!!

Simon's link to the Ripple site is helpful, I never knew Motion could make the background jump to the beat of the audio track like that. Very cool effect.

In your Lawless trailer (story sure looks similar to Boardwalk Empire), we have the foreground subject move forward in Zspace, or jump towards the camera, on the beat of an impact sound effect. The dramatic sound emphasizes our subject actually growing larger in the frame. Super eye-catching!

It'd be cool in a music video to have your artist throbbing bigger with the beat.

So to set this up, as you see in the Ripple vid, I think you're first going to have to do a freeze frame export to still photo, then take that into Photoshop & isolate your subject. There are plenty of Tuts on masking, so you can scrub out the background & leave your man, or as in the first instance here, two men. Getting clean edges isn't easy, unless your subject is against a well defined background. Save your subject on a new frame that's transparent (FCPX handles transparencies). Then when your video is playing, add your freeze-frame, then the new layer on top of where he should be, add your sound effect, then on the boom, scale him up a tad. There may be a way to bypass Photoshop & do the whole thing in FCPX, someone here will chime in if that's the case. Since I've used Photoshop a bit with FCP7 in the past, that's the way I'd isolate the subject in preparation for the effect.

This way, I think you can do the whole effect in FCPX, no need for Motion. The latter is great if you want either your subject, or the background bumping to the beat of the audio track, but for a one time bump & beat, FCPX should do the trick.

However, in your Lawless trailer, that's not all that happens. On the first appearance, it begins with a white flash & the color picture freezes into forced negative (I think you'll find negative or x-ray filters in FCPX), then it switches to black & white, then the extraction & enlargement. All accompanied by a 3 shot staccato beat, sounding a lot like gunfire. Very dramatic, & fitting for the lawmen. On the second appearance we maintain some color, but there is definitely some sepia style tinting on the subject as the background goes more to black & white. Those filters can be added with keyframes I believe, though I've never actually done it. Someone here can hopefully offer advice on key framing filters to an extended still frame.

I really love this effect, it definitely makes the guy jump off the screen at you, which is the excitement they wanted for this trailer. You can be pretty certain that effect won't appear in the film.

Yeah its done using freeze frames.

That Lawless effect is a very subtly version of an effect that Guy Ritchie has been using in his films for a long time. Have a look at these extreme versions:

Effect at at 2.08:


Lots of effects starting at 1.14:

I enjoy Guy Richie's films, creative development of the gangster genre. Some of the camera tricks are superb, & his bad guys are among the most colorful & menacing. He's responsible for multiple careers, including Vinnie Jones & Jason Statham.

I think I prefer the subtle zoom in the Lawless clip to the massive jump we see here, the latter makes it look posterboard cartoon style.

However, I loved his slow motion knockout in Snatch, where the floor became deep water. Absolutely original & brilliant.

One of the earlier uses of that freeze-frame in video that I recall, was in Prince's Little Red Corvette, one of the first MTV videos in the early 80's.

BTW - in the Snatch trailer, how do they do that drag zoom effect on the guys at ringside around 1.11?

thanks