Hey there, guys!

Nice to see you again! Today I’m bringing you some crazy stuff, I promise!

This is a video that came out on the scenes a month ago, made by the talented Melissa Cha for Xander Harris’ track Night Fortress.

I’ll go straight to the point: this clip is totally nuts. It is so crazy and nicely made in its simplicity that I swear I found myself staring still at the blank screen of my computer after the video finished, wondering: «What have I just seen?».

Ok, the technique is quite basic stuff, yet very effective. As we saw very many times here on Wanna, the complexity of the things you do is not so important. The only important thing is to have a nice idea and support it with whatever you need. Big things or small things, or maybe both, it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway: the video starts with a simple super Slo-Mo. The camera shoots at 50 or 60 frames per second (given that the human eye captures the equivalent of 24 fps), then the footage is imported in AE and set to play 24, or 25, or 30 fps. This results, obviously, in a very slow video!

The rest of the video uses (apart from a clever montage, done most probably with Premiere or Final Cut) a quite creepy wavy effect mostly applied on the main character of the video.

How is it made? I’ll tell you my opinion (quite interesting that I wasn’t able to find ANY info about this video anywhere. It makes it even creepier): they shot every scene that features a distortion effect twice. The camera is still and steady in its place. First time, without the woman in it (having, doing so, the background). Second time, placing a green screen behind the scene and having the scary woman in it. This can allow to create the visual distortion on the character only, with an easy way to juxtapose it to the background, obtaining a realistic and disturbing effect.

That’s pretty much it. Once more: you don’t need big money. You may also get a bunch of random stuff taken from a city dump, throw them in front of a camera and invent some crazy, distorted, disturbing reality like the one we just saw and the deed is done!

(Ok, maybe it’s a bit more complex than that, but my point is: you can be a nobody and still make a great video without much money and without very expensive equipment)

See you soon, folks!