Quick D: Mirror Ball

if you want to be an artist on the internet, Congratulations! You already are. Keep making whatever you like to make. If you want to be an artist on the internet who is popular- if that's what's important- then you must find a balance between what you like to make and what the crowd wants to see from the likes of you. The elusive viral coefficients So an artist works hard and tries different things. He might start out making some incredibly labor-intensive hyper lapses of buildings But not receive much of a reaction so he moves on to stop-motion animation and funny This is how I effects with varying degrees of audience appreciation, but he's still not Vine royalty. And then one day on a whim He posts a trick loop that changes everything Are you watching closely? A game of catch with his own reflection Ok. What? Every web community has their own way of dealing with challenging content. The Imgurians of the west will post gifts that convey complex emotions They're otherwise incapable of expressing. The Tumblrs of the north will point out ways in which your creation might be culturally offensive. The 4Chans of the south will find and post those pictures you sent to that one girl. And the citizens of the floating Metropolis of Reddit will team up and try to figure your trick out through the time-honored tradition of easily distracted debate The two schools of thought on the mirrorball video seem to be that it's either a staged shot and there's no mirror at all, just two people really tossing the ball to each other. Or that there is a mirror and some sort of VFX witchcraft is involved. Since my help on the matter has been officially requested I'm here to officially inform you that it's the latter, but before you burn the young creator of the video at the stake let's examine exactly, how he did it? it's a clever trick because it uses physics and optics to do most of the work and just a touch of digital manipulation to complete the illusion Thrown at just the right trajectory and with the right amount of force the ball hits the mirror at the apex of its arc So that the bounced reflection looks identical to what it would have looked like if the ball continued to travel past the mirror. What seems like a toss into the mirror and back is actually two Identical bounces against the mirror. During the first the camera follows into the reflection. During the second it follows back to the hand. Of course there's a second copy of the ball visible during every part of the journey And often the best use of visual effects is not to add things into the scene But to subtly take existing things away. Some judicious frame-by-frame cloning of the background is enough to hide the real ball during the second half of the first bounce and the reflected ball during the return bounce okay, let's give this a try Oh God Ok. Let's give this a try again Cool, you'd think the camera shake would make it a challenge to mask the ball But it actually helps hide the imperfections filming while performing a series of bounces in a row and then picking the most Symmetrical pair makes it possible to create a seamless loop that's highly addictive to watch ladies and gentlemen please welcome YouTube personality Captain disillusion Web videos A seamingly random jumble of ones and zeros converted into moving pictures have the power to amuse outraged and arouse us some even have the power to do all three at once, if you know what I mean And the winner of today's Internet is Mirror Ball by animator Kevin Parry this is the first award and 426 nomination for Kevin Parry coming up King Bach and Zack King

Channel: Captain Disillusion

Views: 2,615,839

Rating: 4.9584303 out of 5

Keywords: vine, trick, magic, illusion, explanation, visual effects, animation, comedy, skepticism, explained

Id: HoyMs7XXSbw

Length: 4min 26sec (266 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Creativation]

When is he getting his own television show? CD is too f'in cool and merits a wider audience.

[u/pm_me_sum_tits]

Thankfully, I only recently found this channel so every time I find a video I end up spending an hour watching the back catalog.

[u/xmintyx]

I really wish he was more popular.

[u/murphykills]

his recreation looked pretty fake, but i guess he probably didn't put as much time into making it as the vine guy.

[u/ProblematicReality]

This guy is seriously underrated.

[u/[deleted]]

Always great to see another Captain Disillusion video.

[u/gaymondboofstad]

TO VALHALLA

[u/mua_boka]

Wow I love the idea of different communities being different parts of a map. Its an interesting thought. And we are a metropolis. I wonder where facebook is on the map

[u/shaard]

His mannerisms remind me of Weyoun from DS9