If you followed my creative thing-a-day project over the past year than you already know I’m pretty interested and inspired by Slit-scan photography, or the slit-scan technique. Without getting into too much detail, in terms of video, Slit-scan is the effect where a single line of resolution, the slit, is the only representation of a particular frame in time. So, with 1920 scan-lines of resolution running horizontally across a single HD picture thats the potential for exactly 1 minute and 20 seconds worth of time, represented in 1920 consecutive slits, that can be seen on screen at any given moment.
Understand? No? That’s cool.
It’s a very hard thing to describe as well as comprehend because it deals with time visually and spatially. Once you begin to understand what’s happening, it’s like all these doors suddenly swing open inside your brain and all your left with is an insatiable curiosity for more. At least that’s what happened to me.
My favorite aspect of Slit-scan is, hands-down, the discovery process. There’s always something that surprises me. Like, I wonder what a flock of birds taking off in slomo might look like? I kind of know what the results might look like, but then, I kind of don’t. The wind rustling through the leaves? I have a hunch, but there’s really no telling until I test it out.
The downside in the past was accessibility. It began as a photography technique but you would need specialized equipment and a whole lot of patience to get a single image, let alone many images to create movement. Then, with the evolution of the partnership between video and the computer, came the ability to control the images in ways we could only imagine before. But still you’d need to be a computer programmer to even experiment with this new visual medium. In the past few years, the free open-source software called Processing has really helped the most in bringing slit-scan to the masses. Processing users have donated slit-scan scripts to the pot that others can download and try for free. The drawback was the processing speed. It took forever for your shots to render.
When I started doing my own slit-scans I actually created them in After Effects because it was a software I had experience with. The trouble was, again, render speeds. It took all night to render 30 to 40 seconds of video. Then, I got a lucky break. An amazing individual on vimeo named Carl Rosendahl shared his own code with me. It worked fast. Light years faster than my After Effects project. I still feel extremely lucky. He, understandably, instructed me not to distribute the software. Although, I hated having to turn people down. I have received various emails from people asking to see if I would be willing to share it and unfortunately I have to turn them down.
Well, today I found what could be a glowing ember of hope for all of those out there wishing to do they’re own HD slit-scans!
I was perusing the newest slit-scan videos on vimeo yesterday and I saw that Don Whitaker had uploaded some new slit-scan videos. Don has been experimenting with slit-scan for years now. I have enjoyed many of his videos in the past. In fact he has one slit-scan video that is quite popular and beautiful called “Surfing The 4th Dimension”. Check it out below! He also runs a website with his collection of free, creative commons, nature-based stock footage called Mothernaturevideos.com. He lives in Oregon and is in the habit of taking his camera with him on nature walks, capturing the beautiful scenery and coastline.
So, when I noticed that he had a new video up I checked it out. I thought it was quite beautiful but what really caught my eye was his description. He wrote that he was testing out someone else’s script and that it was about 7 times faster than his own script! Excited to read that, I followed the links to the developers blog. The develepor of this script is named Amnon Owed. He is a graphic designer living in the Netherlands who does some pretty amazing things with Processing. I totally recommend checking out his other sketches as well. I was ecstatic to find out that, in the spirit of open source, he was releasing the script to the public! Thank you, Amnon! You may not realize it but you are creating your own milestone in the history of slit-scan. There will be people out there thanking you for it.
So, for all of you out there who have wanted to try slit-scan but were either afraid of the learning curve or simply disappointed with the HD options out there, then this is the script for you! It’s really quite an easy process to perform. Even if you have no experience with Processing don’t let that scare you away. Go shoot some video, or download some clips off of Don Whitakers stock footage site and run them through this Processing code. Pretty soon you’ll be addicted to learning what other things around you might look like after slit-scans been performed on it.
Follow the instruction from Amnon’s site. Make sure you run the Memory Barrier code so that you can figure out your computers cap on memory. Also if you run the code using some HD video and it feels like it’s running a bit slow. Just wait. Amnon designed it to be batch-based which means that it renders for a while before very quickly spitting out a large number of frames, then it goes on to the next batch.
An important thing to note: Use a JPG sequence as your source. I tried using a TGA sequence because there’s less compression on that filetype but the render time was very slow. Once I tried out the JPG sequence as an alternative the render time was smoking-fast. It took just over an hour to render around a minute and a half of full HD video. That’s pretty good!
Some quick tips for shooting for slit-scan:
1. Shoot for smooth motion. The most fluid slit-scans come from material that moves smoothly. Slow motion is always a good idea.
2. Keep the camera steady. Even the tiniest camera jitter is largely pronounced after rendering it in slit-scan.
3. Shoot long takes. Slit-scans are all about time. It takes at least 1 minute and 20 seconds running at 24fps to record 1920 frames of footage. That means that you won’t even fill the whole screen up until after 1:20 minutes of time. Anything past that marker is gravy. That’s where your shot really begins.
Now finally check out Amnon’s beautiful video below, Eternalism. It was made completely from footage that he downloaded from Don Whitaker’s stock footage site Mothernaturevideos.com as well as another Creative Commons HD stock site called OpenFootage.net.
Enjoy!
Images Courtesy of Amnon Owed