- [Jeven Dovey] Today I'm talking about slow motion footage,
and how you do it properly so that your footage
looks epic.
(upbeat music)
One thing before we get into doing proper slow motion,
as you notice there was a different intro.
And it was going into the creator film school,
which is actually something that I'm working on right now,
and this is kind of a preview, preview launch,
I don't know what you'd necessarily call it.
But I'm building a film school,
it's gonna be nuts to bolts,
everything that you need to know
to have a career as a filmmaker and a creator.
I moved down to L.A. in 2006,
I went to film school for four years.
After that, I freelanced for a while,
I met my wife, we started our production company,
about five years ago.
And we've had a lot of success having
a production company and just building our clients up.
So what I'm doing is I'm putting all
of my information that I've learned over the years,
all my mistakes that I've made,
everything that has gotten me to this point now,
into a online school so that you guys can get up
and running and make a career out of filmmaking.
Also, for anyone who just wants to get better
at filmmaking, and just learn cameras,
and learn how all of this stuff works,
there's just gonna be a ton of info in there.
So guys, there's a link down below to
the prelaunch where you can sign up
if you wanna get notifications for when it's ready,
so make sure you go in there,
and don't miss the email updates.
Okay, slow motion, we're talking slow motion,
how you do it properly.
I actually got this question from Lindsay
and Alex, they're the ones I did the last video with.
They're traveling the world.
So what I thought would be a great idea
is take their question and make it into a video.
So how do you do proper slow motion?
It all starts with your camera
and what frame rates you're shooting at in your camera.
But before we get into high frame rates,
what we're gonna talk about
is how a camera works in general.
So you have a number of frames per second,
that you shoot at when you're shooting video.
So with the still you're just taking one still.
Click, that's one image.
For video, you're actually taking 30 images
or 24 images every second.
And when you put those next to each other
that gives you video, that gives you footage.
So 24 frames per second means
that you are shooting 24 images per second.
Okay, that is the standard for Hollywood cinema,
that is pretty much what everyone wants to do
to get that cinematic look, is 24 frames per second.
I also shoot a lot of my stuff at 30 frames per second,
because the motion is a little bit smoother,
and for me, for my production company
when I'm shooting fitness videos,
I like to have that smoother look,
I don't like the 24 look.
So I jump between both 24 and 30,
depending on what project I'm working on.
So for the context of this video,
we're gonna talk about 30 frames per second,
just because the math is a little bit easier
to understand when we talk about high frame rates.
Okay, so we're shooting at 30 frames per second.
That is what our editing timeline
will be in our editing software.
So when you want to shoot slow motion
what you need to do is shoot
at a higher frame rate than 30 frames a second.
So for example if you're shooting at 60 frames a second,
and you play that back at 30 frames per second,
it's gonna be at half-speed.
So one second at 60 frames per second
gets stretched out to two seconds at 30 frames per second,
and that gives you slow motion, half-speed footage.
So it all depends on what frame rate
you're shooting at in your camera.
Now there's two different ways
that you're gonna see the ability
to do slow motion in your cameras.
Let's talk about both of those real quick.
The first is shooting at a frame rate
and then it's going to give you a file
that is at that frame rate.
So in my Sony-RX100 you have a few different options.
You have 60, you have 30, you have 24, and you have 120.
And these are in your frame rate settings.
So we're gonna choose 120 because that is the most amount
of frames you can shoot per second
with this camera in this setting.
So we're gonna click 120 frames per second.
Now what's gonna happen is we're gonna shoot
a quick little sequence and when we play
it back in our editing software,
because the file is a 120 per second file,
it's gonna playback in real time.
So there is where it gets confusing for people,
because they might drop this clip into the timeline
and be like, "I shot it at 120 frames per second,
"but it looks like it's real time,
"it's not slow motion."
Well what you have to do is with cameras
that don't do internal slow motion,
so they're basically shooting at high frame rates,
but they're playing back at those same high frame rates.
So what you have to do is manually adjust
the footage in post.
So this is easy in Final Cut Pro.
Let's go into Final Cut and I'll show
you how to do this real quick.
Basically you have to start with your 30p timeline
or your 24, if you're doing that.
You drop your footage into the timeline,
you're gonna hit Command-R,
which is gonna bring up your retime menu for this clip.
Now when you click in here you can go to your custom,
hit automatic, and what Final Cut does
is it manually stretches the footage so
that there's one frame per second
on a 30 frame per second timeline.
So at 120 frame per second clip that you shot,
it's gonna be 4x slower on a 30 frame per second timeline.
And that's because if you take 120,
divide it by 30, that gives you four.
So it's 4x slower, because you're shooting
4x the amount of frames every second
that you would on a normal 30 frame per second timeline.
Are you guys following me?
Am I losing you yet?
I know it's a lot of numbers and a lot of math
going on here but it's pretty basic,
it's pretty easy to follow once you start playing
with this and getting it.
So if you need to do this manually,
what you'll do is just do the math
and you'll slow it down 4x or 25%
that of the original clip.
And you can do this in any editing software,
just look for your settings on how to retime your footage.
Let's go into the second way that you're going
to be able to shoot slow motion in your camera.
So for example with the GH5,
I have an option called variable frame rate.
And so what that does is it allows me to shoot
at these higher frame rates,
and then it auto-stretches the footage
so that when it's played back
it already looks like slow motion.
So with the GH5 I have the option to shoot
100 frames per second slow motion.
However, when you go into your frame rate settings,
you will see that there is no option
for 180 frames per second.
That's because when you're working with a camera
that shoots these variable frame rate options,
what you need to do is first select
your ending footage that you want.
So for example on this, we want HD footage,
1080p, at 30 frames per second.
So we're gonna click that setting.
Now we're gonna go into our menu
and find the option for variable frame rate.
And what you do here is you're gonna turn on
variable frame rate and set the frame rate
that you wanna shoot at.
So what your camera's automatically doing
is it's shooting at 180 frames per second
and then it's gonna play it back at 30 frames per second,
so it's automatically slowed down.
So now when we go into Final Cut
and we drop this clip into the timeline,
you don't have to do anything.
It's already at the proper slow motion.
So those are the two ways
that you get slow motion out of a camera.
Now let's talk about one of the biggest pitfalls
about slow motion and one of the things
that's going to give you awful looking footage.
So if you're not shooting at a high frame rate,
say you're shooting at 30 frames per second,
and you want that shot slowed down so it's slow motion.
Well what you might think you wanna do
is just make it half-speed or quarter-speed,
but all you're doing is stretching the footage.
And if you only have 30 images within a second,
and you're trying to two seconds, three seconds,
four seconds, what's happening
is there's gaps in between each shot.
And your editing software is going to try
and fill in those gaps.
Well there's nothing to fill it in,
so it's just gonna duplicate the frames
before and after each shot.
So what happens is your footage ends up just
becoming really choppy, because your 30 images
that should be playing back in one second
are now playing back in four seconds.
So for four seconds you're gonna have four
of the same shot over and over
and it's gonna give you really choppy looking footage.
So you can't take footage that's shot at 24 or 30,
and stretch it out longer to get slow motion.
It just doesn't look right.
You need to have a high frame rate option in your camera.
Now, a lot of cameras will
only shoot at 60 frames per second
which will give you half-speed.
But more and more there are other options coming out.
Like the GH5 shoots at 180,
a lot of Sony's will shoot at 120,
and then if you want specialized super high frame rates
like thousands, that's gonna be specific camera,
and they're high frame rate cameras.
And that's how you get those really cool shots of like,
a balloon popping very slowly,
or like a bullet going through something.
It's a specific special camera that are crazy expensive.
So if you want the super, super slow motion look,
you're gonna have to get a specialized camera for that.
However, a lot of cameras will slow down
to at least 4x slower, which actually looks really good.
That super buttery slow motion
is often times 120 frames per second.
Now there is one piece of software called Twixtor
that I've worked with here and there,
and what this does is it allows you
to shoot at 30 frames per second.
And instead of just duplicating
each frame in between the two pictures
that you have on your timeline,
it tries to build a frame that would be
like a middle ground between the two.
So what Twixtor is doing is it's actually
making new frames out of the two frames
you have on either side of a hole in your footage.
So, sometimes this works amazing,
and sometimes this doesn't work at all.
It all depends on what's in your footage,
and it depends on how you shoot your footage.
So if you're interested in figuring out ways
to slow down your footage, even slower
than it's possible with the frame rates
that you have, then that is an option to look at,
I'll put a link down below in the descriptions
so you guys can check out that piece of software.
But in general to shoot proper slow motion,
you have to shoot at a higher frame rate
than what you're playing back at.
So your homework right now is to go look at your camera,
go see what frame rate options you have,
and do a little bit of math to see how slow
your footage will get if you shoot
at these higher frame rates.
So if you just have 60 frames per second
that's just the only option you have
that's higher than 30 or 24,
you're gonna be able to shoot half-speed,
or a little bit more than half-speed
when you're playing in a 24p timeline.
However, a lot of cameras out there like I said
will be able to shoot at 120, or 240,
or some of these other frame rates.
So just go into your camera right now,
check out your high frame rate options,
shoot in every frame rate that your camera has,
and also look for a variable frame rate option
to see if your camera will do the frame rate conversion
in camera for you.
Go through, play with all the different frame rates
that you have in your camera,
play them back in your editing software,
and see what you like best.
That is the best way to learn,
is just to go through and play
with all these different settings.
Alright guys, I hope that was helpful
in giving you a better understanding
of how to do proper slow motion.
If you want to see more tutorials like this,
make sure you hit that subscribe button
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There's a ton of filmmaking
and camera reviews on this channel.
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And guys like I said, my creator film school is coming,
so make sure you go down in the description,
click the link, jump on that email list
because you're not gonna wanna miss it when it launches,
there's a lot going into this course.
I've got so much coming out for you.
And guys, that is it, I will see you on the next one!
(upbeat music)