On Saturday, Quick Chill was released onto the Byteful Video page. Yesterday, it hit YouTube. Today, it will be discussed here, at the byteful blog.
Before I discuss this movie, I highly recommend you watch the movie in it’s original large size at the Byteful Video page. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you will get an even higher quality movie because you will get a Quicktime movie instead of a Flash movie.
A Departure from Previous Movies
Quick Chill was a departure from the videos that came before it: it’s an experiment in technology as well as technique. First of all, Quick Chill is the first Byteful Video shot with the latest addition to my equipment: the FujiFilm Finepix s6000FD camera. While being a truly excellent digital camera, it also shoots 30 fps video, so for movies such as Quick Chill it’s better than hauling around both a camcorder and a digital camera.
Another difference from past movies was that Quick Chill is the first movie that takes full advantage of accelerated time, thereby saving you the time of watching the cameraman walk a distance for 7 minutes. Instead, you can grasp the entire walk in a mere 7 seconds because the clip has been accelerated to 60 times normal speed. A minute becomes a second, and this time lapse technique gives you a new perspective and also makes the journey more entertaining to watch. Careful editing is what makes this movie work.
Audio is 50% of the Experience
Music was also utilized to a much higher degree than in previous movies. To create the desired effect, time was taken to choose the music that best enhanced the emotions that were already suggested by the final cut of the movie. You can see how much music enhances the movie if you try playing the movie while the sound is muted. For those interested, the music used is modified from music originating from Apple’s Garageband music software included in iLife, so it’s entirely royalty free and that’s a good thing.
Similarities
As mentioned in The Dam Ice article, places change greatly with the passing of time. If you compare this movie to the Gale Force Kite movie, you may notice there is even one short scene that is identical to both movies. Can you spot it?
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Good and interesting film I like it.
This was quite beautiful to my eyes – snow seemed really appealing and having the movement and the moving water were very mood inspiring for me. I thought it was a watercolor effect at first (I love watercolor painting) and love that what would have been considered “low compression artifacting” aka not a good thing – actually contributed to the beauty.
I’m glad you enjoyed it.
To be honest, I wasn’t very pleased with blip.tv’s automatic flash encoding. You can see a higher quality version by looking at the quicktime version in the Byteful Video feed. Just click on the blue RSS feed in the sidebar. Though I suppose the watery effect wasn’t all that bad after all.
As you’ve said before, what matters is the energy behind the creation.
An excellent one. Music is really enhancing the effect. Like to see the quicktime version too.