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Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

petapixel.com

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Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#41

Post by scott_s »

rorrr wrote: post #38
flixic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain? Do you suggest using some kind of CG or greenscreen, or what?

They recorded the girl with green screen. Why not use these frames instead of placing her on top of glass and spending minutes per frame trying to replicate that same shot? And yes, they could've have created a simple animation (which they did anyway), and then convert it to jelly beans with a relatively simple code in Processing.

I think that for them, the art was in the physicality of it. For them, how they did it mattered.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#43

Post by scott_s »

prolepunk wrote: post #33
mbreese wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one thing they could have done that wouldn't have changed their stop-motion commitment would have been to use more than a frames worth of jelly beans. Instead they could have made one long movable landscape. Then they could have adjusted the "viewport" by moving the camera or the landscape. As it is, it looks like they moved each "pixel" for each frame.

I think that behind the scenes video doesn't give that information. Although they did shot last frame last, they didn't say that they shot them in order. Also they only shot 2300 whereas the clip at 24 fps would have taken 4920 though the 'real' frame seems to be lower. Finally moving around jelly beans is a lot easier than setting up the scene from scratch, as mentioned, a frame took 5 minutes to 3 hours to setup. t…

they didn't say that they shot them in order.

She implied it when she said that after every day, they could see the progression up until that point.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#44

Post by ghshephard »

rorrr wrote: post #8
invisiblefunnel wrote: post #5

The behind the scenes video shows details of the process. I found it fascinating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg

I can think of many ways how to make this whole process much much easier. The amount of unnecessary work they did is just insane.

It's rare that I indulge myself in making a pithy remark on HN, but this is one of those rare times I will, karma be damned.

   You're missing the point.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#45

Post by scott_s »

freemarketteddy wrote: post #14

See this post is a testament to Hacker News's decline.Not because I think that post doesnt have something interesting or intellectually arousing to say.It absolutely does.I create things too and I understand the importance of creation especially when it takes two years to make something. The reason is because of how this post got on the front page of Hacker News.In normal circumstances I can bet that this post maybe…

I voted this up and I didn't even notice that swombat posted it. I voted for it because of the artistry, but also for the attitudes towards craft and long-term projects in the making-of feature.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#46

Post by ghshephard »

TheHegemon wrote: post #17
alexwolfe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ROI is creating something incredible that you can be proud of forever. This is art! I hope people will always have the courage to create amazing things without worrying about the financials.

Well really they said it "only" took 1,357 hours. Which is roughly 62 hours a month. Even if the people were being paid $50/hour, which is unlikely considering I assume most of them will be volunteers, that comes out to about $50,000. They said they used 288,000 jelly beans. There is roughly 400 jelly beans per pound. You can buy bulk jelly beans for $85 for 10lbs. Which comes out to $61,200 for the jelly beans. I'm…

Your math is off on the Jelly beans. 288,000 / 400 = 720 Pounds. JellyBelly Jelly Beans Retail on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Jelly-Belly-Assorted-Flavors-3-Pound/d...) for $9/pound. So, even if they didn't buy them wholesale (hard to believe) - it's still only $6480 worth of jelly beans.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#47

Post by ugh »

rorrr wrote: post #38
flixic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain? Do you suggest using some kind of CG or greenscreen, or what?

They recorded the girl with green screen. Why not use these frames instead of placing her on top of glass and spending minutes per frame trying to replicate that same shot? And yes, they could've have created a simple animation (which they did anyway), and then convert it to jelly beans with a relatively simple code in Processing.

This video would be pretty uninteresting had they used artificial jelly beans. I think everyone is aware that it’s trivial to convert a simple animation to a jelly bean animation. That’s not the point. Art works by different rules. (Hey, and if you like to be a cynic about it you can also say that viral videos work by different rules. OK Go owes their fame to never taking shortcuts when creating their music videos†.)

(I think that placing the singer directly on the jelly beans allowed them to do certain tricks that would be harder to accomplish otherwise: pay attention to the lighting or the costume changes. It’s not clear to me whether using a green screen would really have saved time.)

—

† One example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#48

Post by benjoffe »

TheHegemon wrote: post #17
alexwolfe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ROI is creating something incredible that you can be proud of forever. This is art! I hope people will always have the courage to create amazing things without worrying about the financials.

Well really they said it "only" took 1,357 hours. Which is roughly 62 hours a month. Even if the people were being paid $50/hour, which is unlikely considering I assume most of them will be volunteers, that comes out to about $50,000. They said they used 288,000 jelly beans. There is roughly 400 jelly beans per pound. You can buy bulk jelly beans for $85 for 10lbs. Which comes out to $61,200 for the jelly beans. I'm…

There's a plug for the 'jelly belly' brand at the end of the video where they show their logo, I'm pretty sure that means they would have either gotten them for free or they sponsored the video.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#49

Post by derrybryson »

ScottBurson wrote: post #22

Technically, of course, this is time-lapse video, not stop-motion. Stop-motion slows things down (hence the name); time-lapse speeds them up, which is clearly what's happened here. Terminological pickiness aside, this is very cool. I wasn't aware of Kina Grannis before, and probably would have stayed that way but for this video, so it seems to be accomplishing its purpose. Edited to add: the song is pretty, too.

1) "stop-motion" has nothing to do with slowing things down, 2) it may well be "technically" time-lapse video (but not "of course"), 3) you seemed to have missed the point of both stop-motion and time-lapse video, and 4) you are an idiot.

Re: Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

#50

Post by henryprecheur »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #37

"22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people" If you consider that big budget music videos can have ~100 people working on it (casting, production crew and post crew) each putting in at least 12-16 hours, this falls right in line with the amount of people hours that's typical for a music label.

If you just look at the number of hours, it's "just" a full time job for a year:

8 hours a day * 200 working days = 1600 hours

With 30 people working just a week (5 days), we're already at 1200 hours.

Maybe they got their hours wrong? Or it's not that impressive (I'm a grumpy old man).

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