About freezelight - basic video lesson (RUS/ENG)

What will happen if you freeze water? That’s right, ice. And if you freeze light? Think it’s impossible? It’s possible! Moreover, it’ll look very beautiful. But what is needed to stop a ray of light? A simple contraption, something like a Hadron Collider and a small team of a few hundred scientists? You’ll be surprised, but in order to freeze light you’ll need an assortment of flashlights of different sized and colors, and a few inconspicuously dressed specialists. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And here are the freezelighters Artyom and Roman who send light to the fridge every day. We certainly weren’t joking about the flashlights. Artyom and Roman have hundreds of various lamps, LEDs and laser pointers. This device is called a light staff, this is a chandelier, and this is a cannon. All these are sources of light. That needs to be frozen somehow. There are also pants, sweatshirts and gloves lying around in the studio. Why would freezelighters need to dress in black? Is it possible to get dirty painting with light? Now that we figured out what can serve as a light source, let’s figure out how to paint with it. While a pencil is used to draw on something light-colored, rays of light can paint on something that’s dark. If darkness is a man’s friend, then a That is because the work is accomplished mostly at night or in a windowless studio. What you absolutely cannot do without is the camera. Preferably, a professional one, with plenty of manual controls and good optics. By the way, don’t get discouraged there’s a way to make the simplest digital POS camera make freezelight paintings. You just need to trick her. How? This we’ll tell you a little bit later. Now I will explain how to paint with light using the simplest example, a smiley face. Everything will take place in the light of day, so that you can see what is going on. When I turn the flashlight on, the camera captures its trace. So I turn the flashlight on, draw a circle, then turn the flashlight off, turn the flashlight on where I want to draw eyes and separately, where I want to draw a smile. This is the way to draw separate elements. The secret of freezing light paintings is in controlling three parameters these parameters can all be controlled manually in a professional camera. What are these parameters? The first parameter is the shutter speed, the time the sensor is exposed to light. The more complicated the painting, the more time is needed to create it, the longer is the exposure. If you decided to repeat Briullov’s feat and to paint “The Last Day of Pompeii”, then set the exposure to 26 years. Granted, it took Briullov three years to paint “The Last Days of Pompeii”, but in this context it’s not important. The important rule to remember is “if the exposure time is too short, the drawing will look like a pale blob”. The second parameter the freezelighter must be aware of is the sensitivity, the ISO. What concerns sensitivity, it’s all pretty simple. You should set the ISO to 100. This will minimize the amount of noise, in other words providing you with a sharp and clear picture. If you forget to do it, you will wind up with a picture full of grimy unnecessary pixels. In addition to ISO, that is the light sensitivity, one shouldn’t forget the aperture, or the f-stop. describes the amount of light passing The f-stop describes the amount of light passing through the lens. If there’s too much light and it encroaches on the freezelight photo, one should close the aperture, otherwise the photo will come out too light. This is very important — nothing should preclude the camera from clearly capturing the light. And now it’s time to reveal the secret of the freezelighters’ clothing. Why do these painters miraculously vanish from the finished work? Think back to the way Artyom and Roman are dressed. The black sweaters. With long exposure times, with motion completely blurred out, a person dressed in black will simply vanish into the surrounding darkness. On the contrary, when a person needs to show up in the shot, they will be dressed in light colors and well lit. For a person to be clearly captured and lit in the shot we use flashes the regular as well as the studio kind. Additionally, the person — the model in the shot must be dressed in light colors. Lets make a test shot with a person and some drawn lines. The lines could be whatever you wish, it all depends on the fantasy of the person waving the flashlight. What’s good about flashlights with glasses that can be unscrewed is that colored film can be put is such flashlights. flashlights. Why did we cut these films out in irregular shapes, rather than circles? In order to get a more complex texture of light. Now let’s grow a flower on our Now let’s grow a flower on our improvised flower bed. In order to do this I will use two colored flashlights, a green one and an orange one First I choose a spot, where I want to plant the flower. And I put my finger there. flashlight and draw the first leaf, the The secret of freezelighters’ success is good coordination and a well-developed spatial orientation. I take a green flashlight and draw the first leaf, the second leaf and the stem. Then I memorize the spot where I finished drawing the stem, so as to place there an orange flower. Then I draw the flower itself. With these sharply pointed leaves. A flower blooms… and comes alive. That’s because if you set your mind to it, you can make an animation, sequentially drawing it frame by frame. Frozen light comes alive and turns into a music video. Cartoon heroes and objects start to inhabit the real world. Remember, we promised to reveal the full potential of the digital POS cameras? Now the freezelighters will explain how to trick a simple camera into freezing a light painting. Artyom and Roman will create a itself. With these sharply pointed leaves. Not everyone has such excellent cameras. A lot of people have these point-and-shoot cameras. It possible to capture light paintings with them too: Set the camera to Night Photo modus. Set. Close the lens with a palm of your hand. Press the release button half-way. Camera doesn’t see anything, so it opens the aperture to its maximum setting and extends the exposure time as much as it can. Then we take the hand away from the lens without releasing the release button, turn the lights off and paint. Artyom and Roman will create a freezelight painting especially for Galileo. First, Roman will do a draft. This is a TV-tower, with waves of broadcast going out in the sky in all directions. A rocket is flying in the center. Stars are all around. All this is pretty simple. But to create the Galileo inscription it will be necessary to first practice writing it reversed, a mirror reflection. You’ll need to spend some time in front of the mirror. It’s time to realize the freezelight painting in the “Galileo”-style. Artyom and Roman have now agreed on their respective tasks and did a practice run, working out the sequence of passing flashlight to each other. Now we practice the sequence. Roman erects the TV-tower. Artyom joins in and marks the starting point for the Galileo inscription. A flashlight with correct color is passed into Artyom’s hands and he begins writing the name of our program, while Roman is sending around electromagnetic waves. Now the rocket is being launched and stars light up in the sky! The practice is over, now the same in total darkness! Done! We’ve had all sorts of paintings presented to us. But a painting with so much light in it this is a first!