This week I am continuing to experiment with the techniques Light Painting, Motion Photography and Chronophotography. I am also looking into motion tracking to record a pattern.
Experiment:
White using a DSLR I tried recording myself moving so I could take that footage into After Effects to track that movement and represent it as a pattern. I used an effect called Write-On which allowed me to paste the tracking data to create a stroke as the motion occurred. (LaRonde, 2013)
Test One:
I first recorded myself walking. I then took that footage into After Effects to Track certain points as I moved. After that, I took those tracks and used the data to generate a stroke that followed the movement and left a pattern on the screen.
Reflection:
The footage had some motion blur so it was difficult to get a successful track. I could only track a couple of points easily. Places like my feet I could not tack at all as there was too much motion blur and not enough contrast. I ended up tracking my glasses as there was less blur, an then my hand. When tracking my hand it needed a bit of manual editing but otherwise the track was mostly successful. I needed to have more contrast in the subject so I can get a better/easier track and record the movement more accurately. The proximity between the dots generated shows the speed as well. the closer they are (the more it looks like a line) the slower the movement is, the more dots you can see the faster the movement.
Test Two:
I decided to test motion tracking again only this time I used tracking markers to add contrast seeing as the last test proved to be difficult with the motion blur. I attached pink paper on myself at different points so that I could track the movements of my body in different parts easier.
In After Effects I then pinpointed which markers are the clearest and would give the most difference in data compared to other tracks. I then saved the pattern with a black background to just focus on the patterns.
Reflection:
The tracking markers helped a lot and required less manual tracking from me. There was still a little motion blur but the contrast of the pink made the track work better even with the blur. I was able to track points at my ear, shoulder, wrist, knee and foot. Seeing as the tracking was easier I wanted to track more points than the first test so you can se more variation of the movements at different parts of the body. As you can see, each point/part of the body creates a different pattern based on the way that part moves. There is also more variation in proximity of the dots representing the different speeds of each movement as I walked.
Test Three:
I then did the same thing with footage of myself typing on a keyboard.
Reflection:
There was a lot of motion blur on the big movements but other than that the track was very easy with the tracking markers. I tracked two points on each hand. On the left I tracked my hand and ring finger, and on the right I tracked my thumb and ring finger. this created a very different pattern to the walk movement. It is harder to see all the movement over time as the movements are smaller but it still represents how we move when typing. The proximity of the dots are still see in some places as well showing the speed of the movement. Because of the camera angle the pattern doesn't take up the whole screen however that can be changed by filming from different angles to get the movement all over the screen space.
Conclusion:
Tracking was a very effective way of recording movement over time and creating a pattern of this motion. I will definitely continue experimenting with this technique as it shows a lot of data from the movement (e.g. position and speed). It is also a good way to compare the differences/variations in movement from different parts of the body. The whole action is one thing (e.g. walking) but each individual body part has its own action/movement (e.g. foot, head, arm). The size and colour of the stroke can also be edited so this could be an extra thing to explore if there is time.
Reference:
LaRonde, D. (2013, May 14). Use motion tracking data to generate a path/stroke - how? CreativeCow.net. Retrieved October 25, 2018, from https://forums.creativecow.net/docs/forums/post.php?forumid=2&postid=1036932&univpostid=1036932&pview=t
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