Gnarls Barkley

[thomase]

Has anyone any idea on HOW this was made?

crazy (http://youtube.com/watch?v=UDPiIIckeGY&search=gnarls%20barkley)

[MrJustin]

With a heroic amount of patience?

Looks like a lot of the ink blots were actually filmed dispersing, you can see some of them are spreading through a liquid and some on paper.

What a cracking video, thanks for that.

[thomase]

yup but I do think there's some serious special fx going on as well, because the people you see also look as if they were drawn with ink...

[Ollie]

brilliant, i just caught a glimpse of this yesterday on tv, and it really caught my attention, but didn't know who did it, thanks for the link, cracking vid

[disassembler]

Nothing really that fancy. Just clever placement with proper inkblot selections.

[many2]

Great looking video.

As for the technique, this is not so hard to make. First and foremost : planning ! If you want to make something similar, make a storyboard first and try to determine all the shots you will need. Else, you will be shooting ink forever ;)

Then, you will need a proper setup to record your ink footage. Try different types of paper, different types of ink, mix it with water, blow it with a straw, put the surface at an angle to make some drop movements.

You will also need to shoot video of the signer or actor. Good lighting is the key here. Then, after capturing it, you will need to apply some kind of effect to turn the image into a black or white picture (as opposed to greyscale). There are many ways to do this - in after effects you could use curves or levels to achieve a similar look, or luma key a black layer using the video footage as a key reference.

You then take both the video footage of the signer and of the ink into a compositing application and you begin editing following your storyboard. Here, they have use a symmetry effect to simulate rorschach patterns - it works well but I am so tired of symmetry effects !

[thomase]

I wasn't actually planning on copying this, I was however planning on using ink or some other colour dripping onto paper before - just to use as a mask or the like. But many, thanks for your advice anyway. I thought this video was just amazing. Especially the way the compositing of the "real footage" and the ink as well as the transitions just puzzled me. I'm also quite tired of symetry stuff. But in this particular case, it works really well...

[USE]

been trying to hunt a decent copy of that video for weeks. blatantly prime for a savaging.

[SteveG]

been trying to hunt a decent copy of that video for weeks. blatantly prime for a savaging.

It's on the latest Dance release (May) from MixMash;)

[stickyhead]

Edited by Rovastar:

Stickyhead - Link to copyrighted footage again and I will ban you.