It took 2,500 photos and 4 days to shoot, followed by about 8 days of photoshopping & grading.
You could've cut filming time in half or doubled it if you had chosen a different engine.
Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
51–60 of 197 posts
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#52The raw complexity here is astounding. Something something electric motors are far simpler. ;)
You know what I discovered doing this! It looks more complex but there's not much chemistry or invisible magic here. It's all pieces of shaped metal that fit together and move when a piston is pushed down. In an electric car you've got chemistry that you can't see or feel, magnetic fields that are invisible and electron flow that is hidden.
but energy waves is also within the law of physics.. they just work.
My $5 coke can RC car works on the same idea as a tesla.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#53IMO what is really clever about this is that it is a "sales" video - except you dont realise you are being sold to until the end, by which time you've enjoyed the video so much, the pitch at the end is reasonable. And you've shown what the value is long before I asked myself the question "how much" - which I usually ask early in the process - but not here. At least that is how I found it... great work. Would be inter…
I can't really share conversion stuff yet. But one interesting observation off the top of my head is that my customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe, even though I deliberately steer them towards Stripe. It was a massive pain to implement Paypal and I hated every moment of it but it produced an uptick in payments.
> customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe
That's interesting. Do you have a theory about why that is?
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#54Wow. That was superb.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#55For someone like me who spent hours watching engine videos on youtube, this was an instant buy. Well done!
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
String. Coat hangers. Bits of wire. Sticks as fishing rods. We tried various ways and in the end I mainly used some conductive cotton thread that I bought from Adafruit ages ago. It was strong enough to take a lot of weight, but nice and thin too. For the heavy stuff I just had to hold it and then photoshop my legs and arms out.
That is really great - I never would have guessed how you did it. > photoshop my legs and arms out This reminds me of the first time I saw Forrest Gump . For some reason I didn't know who Gary Sinise was, and all through the movie I thought the actor playing Lt. Dan actually was a double amputee. And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that…
> And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that let him walk so naturally!
They filmed that scene first then chopped off his legs and filmed the bits that came "before".
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#57Wonderful!
How did you make those flying parts? Photoshopping out the holders?
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be as much interested in a 'making of' as I am in the final product you are making.
The amount of things to do on this project is incredible. When I embarked I thought we'd shoot 'making of' stuff all the way, but the reality is that even filming the film is hard enough work - to film the filming of the film would just be too much. I'd like to go back at the end and cover how we do some things - we really learned a lot. The other reason it's hard to do a 'making of' is that I actually don't know how…
> The other reason it's hard to do a 'making of' is that I actually don't know how to do this stuff, so we'd waste a lot of time explaining how to do it, only to discover a better way two weeks later.
That's exactly why a making of would be interesting. Here's an idea: shoot all that stuff anyway, with a single fisheye camera so that if you ever decide to do a making of you at least have some raw material to work with. Documenting this work that you are doing would have lasting value.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#59As a hearing-impaired person, I just wanted to thank you for clearly mentioning that it's subtitled. That shows it's more than just an afterthought, and seals the deal for me!
I don't understand why everyone wouldn't subtitle their content. I used rev.com and it costs $1 per minute and the results are great. So to subtitle three hours cost $240. With many non-native English speakers as customers it is a no-brainer. It's good to hear this too, because the text in that box originally said 'Filmed in 4K' and I only changed it to 'Fully subtitled' at the last moment.
They probably should. It seems to be required by law (in the US) in a lot of situations.
Re: Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D ... Can you elaborate on the process for this? I'm curious what software you're using, how many modelers you have, and if you're using 3D scanning equipment. Modeling everything by hand has to be unimaginably laborious. Incredible work by the way, you've already sold me as a customer. :)
We're making it all by hand because it needs to be relatively low poly for the app and website :) I'll write about the process when we've figured it out completely. I'd say we are about 70% done on the modeling. Rigging and animating is a whole other animal. This was the state of the engine a few days ago - all internals are done. https://twitter.com/howacarworks/status/895417122385481728
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