Materials
A dock and a pond.

Procedure
Instruct a man to jump off a dock. It is quite amazing what one can get people to do if one has a camera. People seem to feel quite natural and somewhat fearless in front a camera. I can’t explain it, though it would be interesting to listen to someone who can. Perhaps one of our readers is a psychologist and can illuminate this for us.

Observations
This shot is another great look at the muscles of a well toned person. The subject in question has over years of farming toned his body up quite completely. Makes for an excellent video subject for a study in bio-mechanics. I plan on subject Matt to many more indignities over the years for your viewing pleasure. Next time I think I’ll make him take a few swings with a bat at a small, round moving object. Again, the splash is wonderful as usual. The light catches it all nicely. Poor Matt in this shot was unaware that the pond was only a few feet deep, much to his surprise. Sadly I don’t have enough disk space to export the entire clip (yes I filled up yet another hard drive, over 1TB of data now!) but I still have the original so when my new drive shows up I’ll re-export this shot and do a close up on his rather surprised face. It is quite amusing.

Observations
This shot is interesting in that we get an opportunity to study something we see fairly regularly, hair, in slow motion. The momentary loss of weight in her hair as she reaches the apex of her run provides for some very interesting movement. I would love to see NASA tackle some slow motion long hair shots next time they are filming, but my guess is they have better things to film like more water drops. At any rate I think it is interesting to watch how the hair responds to the rising and falling motions of her running.

Materials
My wife….sorry, you’ll have to use your own. I suppose a girlfriend or a female friend/model might work as well.
A wheat field.

Observations
This one is great for a number of reasons, some of which for me are purely personal, though many are independent of the person. I’ll focus on the ones that don’t involve me gushing about my wife. This shot involves all kinds of dynamic goodness. The movement of the dress and hair are both fascinating to watch. You can also observe how the dress interacts with the legs as she runs. It is also incredibly interesting to study the movement of the muscles and skin as she runs. My wife doesn’t jiggle visibly when she walks, at least not to the naked eye, so it is fascinating to see how much the average body actually moves when we are in motion. I plan to do a series of bodies in motion against a gridded background so we can more closely study how much flex and give there is in the human body.

Materials
Plastic jar of mayo.
An aluminum baseball bat.

Observations
This one is neat from the aspect of seeing how built up pressure in a vessel escapes. As one would expect it takes the path of least resistance, this being the cap. But interestingly enough it also comes out of the bottom of the jar. That was a bit unexpected. I like the path of the spray itself and wish the camera had been set back a bit.

Video Direction: Aggressive
VFX/Compositing: Aggressive
Production Company: RefusedTV
Record Label: Roadrunner Records

Materials
A wood framework window.
Black tin-foil (from FilmTools)
Gun powder
Kerosene

Procedure
This was a fun shot to make. We first built the framework and the flu to guide the fire. We then filled a small metal bowl (about 12″ in diameter) with 1/2lb of gun powder and misted it with kerosene to slow the reaction down. We also sprayed the sides of the enclosure with kerosene to leave give the impression that the fire was burning the wood frame.

Observations
This was an absolute blast for us to film. We don’t often get people asking us to do specific shots for them so this was especially fun for us, not only did we get to make something for a really nice music video but we got a chance to do a bit nicer setup than we ordinarily do (this happens when you have a budget). This video is a prime example of what slow motion filming is good for as it pertains to entertainment. Most of this video was filmed with a Phantom high-speed camera. Sadly, I myself have not yet had the opportunity to film with a Phantom camera but I hope that will eventually change. There are so many things that can be observed in this video that I will leave it up to the viewer to decide what is worth observing.

Materials
A dock and a pond.

Procedure
Instruct a man to jump off a dock. (Often easier said then done)

Observations
It is amazing what our bodies are capable of doing and it is even more amazing to actually observe it doing some of these things. Defying gravity, even for a short amount of time is one of these things. The force required to lift oneself up off of the ground is considerable. We generally don’t think about how much force is required but when we look at this video you can see the muscles throughout the body flexing. At around the 10s mark is probably the best examples of muscle tension. Down the front of the body you can clearly see the Pectoralis Major and Lineae Transuersae tightening up. Along the side of the body and down the arm the Deltoid is clearly striated as he pulls his arms inward. The Biceps flex as the arm is brought in, but not nearly as much as one would expect, it appears that the Deltoid is doing almost all of the work in this instance. Judging by the look on his face it seems that the facial muscles are also required to make a blind leap into some not very deep water. The splash is of course also interesting to watch but again, compared to the complexity of the body in motion the water seems completely secondary.