Motion Graphics

WWF Moving Still Photos

With the right technology (and talent), there’s no such thing as still photos anymore. The technique in this video is called “parallax effect,” which makes it appear that objects closer to the viewer move faster than those that are farther away. Joe Fellows from Make Productions in London made this film using still images from the World Wildlife Fund archives. As quoted in SLRLounge.com, Fellows explains, “We used Photoshop to cut out individual parts and then animated them in After Effects…There was no 3D mapping, all in 2D. There are many layers per shot, the ears, the teeth, the whiskers, the head, the body, the background are all separate layers. Then the layers are parented to one another and moved either by position or by using something called the puppet tool.” Set to the music of “What If This Storm Ends” by Snow Patrol, the result is a “high-speed” slow-motion parallax sequence film that presents a poetic, dreamlike study of nature in motion.

Public Service Campaign

Split Screen, Parallel Worlds

Lately several videos have passed our way telling a story by juxtaposing stock footage-type images on a split screen. They have no voiceovers or text, just music to set the mood. Some of the videos – such as this one issued by WWF — are quite compelling and poetic. Unfortunately, the WWF video had no production credits at the end, so we can’t tell you who made it. It does seem stylistically similar to “Symmetry” by Everynone, but that is just a guess.