This video is brought to you by Storyblocks Video
[Jordy whistling]
[Music]
[Cinecom's intro music]
Hey folks, Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copy Cat Friday!
That's right, I cut my hair!
And not because so many of you wanted me to,
but because I just got tired of it myself.
It was my own choice!
-Your boyfriend made you do it, Jordy!
-Shut up, Yannick!
I have a girlfriend, not a boyfriend.
So, in this weekly series we recreate exciting film techniques
and visual effects from music videos, films and amazing creators around the world!
Today we're looking at the Epic Mirror Dash video from Julian Bam!
A very creative video, definitely worth checking out!
I'm gonna leave a link to his video in the description.
But now, how did they do it?
How did Julian run so fast?
So many mysteries!
But you know what's not a mystery?
Our sponsor, Storyblocks Video!
It's a complete library for any creative filmmaker
and they have made it super simple for any one to use.
There's only a single price per year, which grants you unlimited downloads,
going from high-quality stock clips,
transitions, effects, templates and so much more!
We also came across these hand drawn elements,
which are gonna be perfect for the video that we're working on today.
We are going to share some free elements by the end of the video,
but if you’re planning to create a longer mirror dash video, like Julian did,
then I could definitely recommend checking out these from Storyblocks.
For more information, you can click the first link in the description below!
[Action music kicks in]
-And we’re back at my place!
The video effect itself is not really that hard, but it's very time consuming.
All you're gonna need is a smartphone and a bathroom with a mirror.
Ideally you wanna have two cabinets or a towel or something
hanging on the outsides of the mirror,
as we're going to use that to transition to the next cut every time.
Very important is gonna be that you can lock the focus
and exposure of your phone's camera.
Some phones already have such "Pro" features built in,
if you can't find it, then try to download an app that can.
We used FilmicPro, which allowed us to control the camera completely manual.
Now let's start simple, the only that thing you have to do now is take up a pose
and run from one end to the other.
Then go that again, and perhaps take a different pose.
You could gradually change your poses,
like me and Yannick here were doing during the fight,
so that it seems like a fluent action.
Do try your best to always keep you phone at the same height
and walk as steady as possible.
You don't need to run fast, just focus on the stability.
In Adobe Premiere Pro, simply place your different shots next to each other.
Make sure that they transition smooth
by letting the cabinets swipe in front of the lens.
Next, we're going to add an effect called Warp Stabilizer to all of the shots.
This might take some time as Premiere will now analyze and stabilize your shots.
When it's done, you wanna change the smoothness to around 10%.
A minimal stabilization, which is gonna make it little bit smoother.
Then finally, select everything in your timeline, right-click and choose Nest.
This will group everything together into a new sequence.
Right-click on that nested sequence and choose Speed, Duration.
Set the speed to around 250% and that's it.
This already is gonna give you the desired effect.
However, there're many playful things that we could add to this basic idea.
Let's start off with speed.
If you want yourself to move faster,
what you could do is start by trimming your clips shorter
so that the ending and beginning do not cover the cabinet.
If you have a specific part that goes faster within your edit,
I would suggest to disable the speed increasement that we've done before
and work with Time Remapping.
That works as follows: you first right-click on the FX button of your nested sequence,
and then choose Time Remapping, Speed.
With the Pen tool from your tool box we can now add points,
on the line of the nested sequence, that represent the speed of the clip.
So, in the beginning, we drag the point up to around 250%.
But as you move faster,
we move the second point higher, to maybe around 400%.
In between you make sure that we gradually go from one speed to another.
On the end it works the exact same way,
you set a point which defines the end of the current speed,
then go a little bit further and drag a new point back to around 250%.
And that's one trick to create parts where you go faster.
You don't actually need to run faster while filming.
Now, there're several drawings that you saw in the intro
which are gonna be a great addition to any action in your video.
Basically these can be still pictures.
You can find them all over the web or on stock clips sites.
If you like to have a small animation in those drawings,
it might be a little trickier to find them online.
Storyblocks have a bunch, like we've seen before.
Anyways, there's no simple trick to get such animations or even pictures.
If you wanna create them yourself,
you're gonna have to draw them inside Photoshop or Illustrator.
Yannick made a few of these in Illustrator and then exported them to PNG files,
so that we can use them inside Premiere Pro.
From a link in the description you can download these for free, if you like so.
One of them are these stripes on the top and bottom.
We've got five of these.
You could place them on top of your nested sequence for about 2 frames.
Then you place a new stripe picture next to it and let it stay for 2 frames as well.
Keep doing this for the duration that you want.
To blow out these stripes a bit more,
you could change their blending mode to Linear Dodge, Add,
and then decrease the opacity a bit.
For even more glow, you could add a white solid in there as well
and mask out the middle part.
When you're done, invert the mask and increase its feather a bunch.
Finally, also change the blending mode to Add and decrease the opacity.
That’s gonna give you this result right here.
[Music]
Apart from these stripes, you could also add other elements, like a punch.
These you can also download,
and are again a few images that enlarge the punch over time.
Just stack them on your clip.
Now, finally one of the last things I'd like to mention
is that you could also do some creative camera movements.
For instance, let go of your smartphone.
Of course, your smartphone still needs to move as well.
So Yannick held it with a stick underneath the camera frame.
This is a brown stick that matched with the colors of the background
so that it won't take up too much attention,
and on there I had a phone mount taped to it.
Honestly, this wasn't so easy.
Julian definitely pulled out these shots fantastic, big props to him!
Another fun trick is where you slowly turn your camera around with every shot.
Putting that into a sequence gives you a nice rotation.
You could also stop mid frame
and do something fun, like suddenly going up like we did
when Yannick punched me.
And this goes of course exactly the same,
but now you jump up from the mirror every time.
And those were the tips to create a mirror dash video yourself!
It's definitely a lot of fun, and if you do make one yourself too,
make sure to upload that video to Instagram and tag us in your post,
I would love to see it!
Thank you so much for watching, thank you Storyblocks for the support
and like always:
Stay Creative!
-So, just as I was about to turn off the lights,
open the studio dome and everything,
I just realized something!
I’m wearing the wrong T-shirt!
I’m not gonna do it again, guys, no.
As you can hear, my throat is a big mess and I’m actually a little bit sick right now.