Impactist: New Work

Impactist (on Hornet’s roster) has recently completed some new work, including a beautiful spot for Peace Corps.

impact.jpg

The spot has a wonderful texture and pace to it, largely owing to the fact that it was shot entirely with a hand-held digital camera. (A still camera, not a camcorder.) The slow-motion moments are perfectly realized and, when combined with the gold tinting effect, create a believable moment of introspection for each character. It’s subtle, but really well done.

Another reason Impactist wins my heart: they composed the music. I’ve always felt that music and motion graphics are two sides of the same coin. The importance of rhythm and drama are key aspects of both creative forms, not to mention the layering processes inherent in each.

Check Impactist’s site for more new work in their motion and photography sections.

Oh, and one more thing. You’ll notice that many of Impactist’s spots are available as “director’s cuts.” This is not a pretentious pose; this is the sign of a company that takes their commercial work to heart. I respect the hell out of that.

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

14 Comments

motoxpress

When you say “Digital Camera”, are you saying digital still camera or digital video?

sidewalksurfing

WOW!!!! BRAVO!!!!! gave me chills!

daniel

Digital still camera. The whole project was comprised of still images, tracked in post to keep a smooth motion. Yeah, it is badass.

joshuarule

speaking of composed music and such…what are some good links of artists/firms that do sound design and compose music for spots etc…Is there any boards like this out there for that? I have been looking to put together my portfolio for sound design/composition and wanted to see what was out there.

pauloblob

Wow… great!! Do you think they used aftfx timeward to give the slow on the footages??

willi

that was really great. can someone explain to me the still image thing? it really just looks like dv with effects on it. for example the guy outside slapping high-fives with his buds- that’s comprised of stills?

kelly_and_daniel

Thanks for the nice notes. Sounds like clarification of the project may be helpful, at least as far as the technique goes.

We shot using a digital SLR for a number of reasons. First off, the resolution. The project was finished in HD, so of course we’d need greater than HD frame size. This huge frame also was neccessary for realignment since it was all hand held to achieve the end result where we’d be able to recompose within the frame.

There was no tracking software used, no plugin trickery. The majority of the work involved frame by frame painting and reconstruction of images. A custom solution was developed and tested prior to the actual production. No motion footage was used, everything was captured using the digital SLR.

In total, over 14,000 stills were shot over two days at eight different locations around New York City.

Hope that helped to make a little more sense of it.

justin

“In total, over 14,000 stills were shot over two days at eight different locations around New York City.”

Whoa.

motoxpress

Wow. I was floored when I found out the “Corpse Bride” was photographed with DSLRs but that was stop motion. I am hoping you can extrapolate more on the process…eager to experiment now.

rothermel

extrapolate more on the process?

dude, just preplan the shots you want and hold down a trigger to your camera as you dolly around them, or whatever. its the same process as shooting video, just gives you a different more stop motion approach. its not a groundbreaking idea, just executed well.

if you can’t figure out how they did this, you might wanna take some super basic photography or video classes.

motoxpress

Thanks for your help, dude :P

kinetics

Kelly and Daniel,

Did you use the Canon EOS 1D Mark II N? I ask because of the high frame rate it shoots at. I have used the 1DS-Mark II but not the “N” and wonder what frame rate you shot at since 4fps did not give me the same level of smoothness.

travis

probably one of my all time favorite spots.

aspect

some more tech stuff please……..
did you shoot RAW or JPEG….?
what camera 1D MKII…..?
what frame rate 5fps or 8.5fps….?
would be cool to know…

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