Hey guys, it’ Gaba VR, and this time I’ll show you, how to produce the best bullet time videos possible
with Insta360 X3 camera, some accessories, and a lot of creative techniques.
But before jumping into it as usual, let me share some technical information with you.
First, if you find a little bit difficult to understand my English accent, don’t worry,
please turn on subtitles, so you won’t miss anything.
I upload English subtitles to all my tutorials since inception, hoping that it can make understanding easier for you.
And I know this is a huge topic, as I’ll talk about Bullet Time from A to Z,
covering the basics of the technique, the shooting equipment, camera settings, mobile and desktop workflows,
and additional tricks to improve your videos, even for professional usage.
So, I made chapters, you can find in the description or on the time-line,
so you can jump to certain parts of the video and find the most useful information to your needs in this topic.
And now let’s start with making clear what bullet time video is.
Basically it’s a slow-motion video effect, inspired by the Matrix movies.
It was among the first effects that Insta360 offered with AI editing
and provided dedicated accessories for shooting.
The basic idea is swinging the camera around you
while recording in slow mo, freezing the moment, while the camera flies around.
In the early period, there was a bullet time string,
then they added this bullet time handle, which is actually a mini tripod leg too.
Attaching it to the invisible selfie stick helps you to move the camera around you in a certain arc
and constant distance during shooting bullet time.
And of course, the latest bullet time accessory revealed was another string,
which works on a very similar way as the original one but has a different design.
Anyhow, the point of this technique is that you can move the camera on an arc,
creating a special slow-motion effect, as the camera flies around you, while freezing the moment.
With the original Insta360 One X and One X2 cameras you could shoot 4K 50 fps slow-mo, or 3K 100 fps.
But in most of the cases, I think 4K is a must-have resolution if you shoot with a 360 camera, so basically, I always shot in 4K.
That’s why it’s really cool, having an update in X3 with a higher framerate 4K bullet time option.
First let’s see how slow-motion recording works and how you can avoid blurry or unsharp videos.
In slow motion mode, your camera records with a higher speed,
capturing double or four times of the frames as in normal video recording mode.
It means, your camera needs more light than in normal situations,
and as Insta360 cameras have a fix aperture, it leads to a slower shutter speed or higher ISO.
So when it comes to bullet time effect, you have to be sure, you have good light conditions,
unless you will get a blurry video, thanks to the slower shutter speed.
If you shoot with manual settings, you can try to keep shutter speed quite fast,
but consider that you will need higher ISO, adding more noise to your video.
If you shoot with totally automatic settings, be sure, that you swing the camera with the right speed.
You know, the aim of this technique is freezing the moment,
so basically the camera should move a little bit faster than you are,
and the movement will be frozen during the camera flies around.
But if you move the camera too fast, you can get more motion blur than needed, so my advice is to shoot consciously:
slow down your movements, and swing the camera a little bit slower, too.
It will look the best if the camera is the only moving object on the scene, while all the other movements are frozen in time.
Or at least this is the original idea of bullet time, even in Matrix.
That’s why I still prefer shooting with the Bullet Time Handle and the invisible selfie stick instead of the strings,
because I can swing the camera even really slowly, if needed,
or at least I have more control over the speed than during shooting with the strings.
And how the improvements in X3 give us more options in bullet time?
Well, the slower slow motion allows us to freeze faster movements, too.
Originally there was quite a small range when bullet time videos turned out the best,
but with 120 fps X3 widened this range a little bit,
and now we can slow down faster motions too, and we can make bullet time effect in more situations,
like during skating, biking, or jumping...
Before jumping to some creative shooting tricks, let’s see, how we can edit these videos.
It’s very important to have your own preferences in editing, because it will affect your camera settings too.
If you prefer using your smartphone to create this effect, or rendering your videos with the free Insta360 desktop app
you should choose the dedicated Bullet Time mode on your camera.
In this case we can select 4K 120 fps or 3K 180 fps with the latest Insta360 X3.
In Bullet Time mode the camera will add some metadata to your videos, so the apps will recognize these videos automatically.
Just browse them on your mobile or on the desktop app, and that’s all.
On mobile you can select the so called Bullet Time Mix effect,
which puts your different Bullet Time shots together to one single video,
even creating a speed ramp effects for a nicer transition between the single shots.
You can select the output quality and export your Bullet Time Mix video.
Using Insta360 Studio on desktop, you can select the best swing for yourself, and only export that certain part of the video.
In this case you have control over the stitching options and some further settings,
but basically in this case (both on mobile and desktop), the most of the Bullet Time look is baked in the videos.
Looking at the preview images, you can see, that these are not full 360 videos,
even these raw materials are cropped somehow, focusing on the talent,
cropping out the unnecessary parts of the 360 space.
So if you wanna have more control over the angles, the field of view, the speed and further details, like horizons level,
you should shoot and edit manually.
In terms of camera settings, it means, you have access to manual shutter speed, ISO,
or even white balance settings, for a better result,
while in resolution you should select 4K 360 mode at 60 fps.
Yes, it’s a little bit disappointing, that in normal video mode, you cannot select 120 fps, yet.
I hope that they will fix it in an upcoming firmware update,
and we can get 60 fps Bullet Time in bullet time mode, and 120 fps slow motion in normal 4K 360 video mode.
But until that, automatic and manual workflows won’t be totally interchangeable.
There will be more pros and cons on both sides.
Of course, the cons in this case are the lack of 120 fps, longer post-production,
and the need for a professional video editor: Premiere Pro.
The good news is that you can drag and drop your raw .insv files even in Premiere, without any conversions.
If you install Insta360 Studio on your computer, you can also install the free Premiere Pro plugin
which allows you to handle your Insta360 videos as traditional video formats.
In this case your Bullet Time raw material is a full, spherical 360 video,
and you must add some keyframes to set up the middle point as the camera swings around.
It’s essential to create a 30 fps sequence for the 60 fps video, and slow down the footage to 50 percent.
That’s how you can get the slow-motion effect.
Then you have a lot of freedom in editing, moving the virtual camera and setting up the angles manually.
For instance, when the camera gets closer to you during the swing, you can zoom out a little bit,
and keep your talent in the same position during the whole round.
Or you have more control over the horizon, so you can keep it totally straight all the time.
And if you’d like to play around with speed ramping,
of course, you can add some slower and faster periods for a more dynamic look.
But how can we make our Bullet Times more interesting?
Doesn’t matter whether you choose the Automatic or Manual way,
there are some creative solutions you can apply during shooting or editing.
I think in some cases this weird hand position of swinging the camera can be a little bit disturbing,
and we need some tricks to hide it or give some meaning to it.
So, my first advice is trying to hide the fact, that you’re holding something in your hand to swing the camera,
and grab something in your hand or mount something on the top of your bullet time handle.
This object can be a balloon, or anything seems relevant in your situation, an umbrella, a torch, a flag or whatever.
Any relevant object in hand can help you in covering the technique
and making your Bullet Time look more natural and cooler.
Besides using some simple objects, you can go further with colorful visual effects, like using smoke bombs.
If you are interested about how to mount a smoke bomb adapter to your handle,
check out my other Bullet Time tutorial in the right top corner.
But if you don’t have any relevant objects around you to use during shooting, you can try to boost your video in post.
You can add some bubbles, smoke or even flames. And it’s safer than shooting with real fire.
Of course, you need some editing skills,
but adding such effects to your bullet time videos is easier than you might think.
In most of the cases the middle point of the video is the top of your handle,
so you don’t need to motion track so much, maybe just make some tiny adjustments.
If you’re interested about how you can add objects to your Bullet Time,
check out that video in the right top corner, I’ve already mentioned.
In that video I also show you a solution for another problem, which is the shooting angle.
If you use a bullet time handle, basically the camera will swing above your head.
If you wanna change that look you should shoot with a string, or use a small ball-head adapter
to change that angle, and position the camera in eye-level or even lower.
It may change the look of this effect drastically.
Or there’s a very cool solution to shoot extreme Bullet Time videos, just seen in Matrix.
You will look like floating in the air in a strange position.
It’s such a technique where you can combine a shooting trick with a little editing.
During shooting I use a strong monopod and small legs with a ball-head connection.
It allows me to move it in different angles.
I will use this monopod as a support to my body.
I put the legs against my back, while the end of the monopod will be stabbed into the ground.
That’s how I can float in a strange position.
But as you can see, the monopod will be visible in the video, so I must remove it with an editing trick.
It will be a very fast and easy method.
I open the video in Premiere.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a manually or automatically created Bullet Time video, the method is the same.
Duplicate the video and create a mask with the ground, next to the monopod.
Then move the whole layer a little bit, to cover the monopod.
Maybe you need to add some keyframes to finetune the mask, as the camera is spinning around,
but it’s a really fast and easy editing.
Just look at the monopod and be sure, you cover it with the upper layer properly.
This technique works fine with almost any ground, maybe except some tiles with characteristic patterns.
But if you shoot outdoors, on sand, grass, concrete, small rocks and materials like that, or even in water,
it will be very easy to remove the monopod in post.
As you can see, Bullet Time is a very fast and spectacular effect you can create even totally automatically,
or you can master it with some editing.
And of course, there are a lot of creative solutions to bring it to the next level,
using further accessories and editing tricks.
If you found this video inspiring, share your thought in the comment section,
and if you like this in-depth tutorial please hit the like button,
and for further 360 contents and tutorials, subscribe to my channel.
See you next time!