Do you recognize these words: stop-motion, interval recording, acceleration?

What about these? Freeze-frame, time-lapse, speed?

They're all the same thing, essentially: they offer a way to quickly observe something that actually takes a significant amount of time to complete in reality.

I decided to do an exercise in these three types of video using this poor, sad, innocent stick of butter:

When it was suggested to me to do this (by my husband), I told him that watching butter melt was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Then I paused for a moment and decided that he was right because anyone can reproduce this exact experiment at home!

My goal was to take this stick of butter and (a) do something with stop motion (b) use an interval recording and (c) see how fast I could make video play.

For starters, this entire project (from setup, to editing video finish) took five hours-- I'm an extremely fast editor if I need to be. The video itself is nearly two minutes, but the part where the butter melts is only thirty seconds!

I began by setting up both my cameras in the kitchen. My big camera (the PDX) is on the tripod. It was set to record at intervals (more on that in a moment). The Tiny One (also called "The MetaCam" since I usually use it as my wide-angle camera) is propped up on a tiny tripod almost directly behind it on the counter.

You'll notice I don't have the shotgun mic attached to the big camera. I had no intention of using any sound captured, so I took it off.

Because the angles of the cameras are slightly different, the shots of the butter are slightly different, but you'd probably not notice that if I didn't tell you.

Before I started, I decided to do the stop-motion segment, which is actually called FREEZE FRAME video. Not all cameras have this feature, so have a look in your manual. If you do have it, it's extremely fun.

STOP MOTION ANIMATION

As I state in the video, stop motion is usually animation and it's usually with clay. You've seen dozens of movies using this: Wallace and Gromit, Nightmare Before Christmas, etc. It's usually used to simulate motion of inanimate objects.

For the purposes of my video, I took the wrapper off a stick of butter.

Fascinating.

Essentially, I unwrapped a bit of the butter, pressed my remote control, and then unwrapped more of it. I repeated the process until I was done. Approximately 6 frames of video were taken of each shot. However, you actually only see five of those frames, as one is used to crossfade into the next. Thirty frames of video = one second of watching.

To make it more interesting to watch, I inserted it as PIP (Picture-In-Picture) video. I even was cute and held my hand out like I was holding it up. When recording the speaking part, this makes you feel like an idiot.

INTERVAL RECORDING

Interval recording, better known as time-lapse video, is familiar to everyone: watch an entire house being built in under a minute, watch trees drop all their leaves, star trails, etc.

The basics are that your video camera takes a few seconds of video every few minutes. Most cameras do not have this feature, it's even more unusual than freeze frame capability. A good way to fake it is with using an actual camera. Simply take a picture of the same thing repeatedly and then play it like video.

In my case, I directed my video camera to take half a second of video every thirty seconds while the butter was melting. There are two parameters you can adjust with interval recording: the length of time in between shots, and the length of the shot itself. For example, I could have made it pause and wait for ten minutes and then shoot video for two minutes. However, since this was going to be something quick, the shorter the better.

ACCELERATED VIDEO

Almost all video programs will allow you to change the speed of a video (I use Final Cut). It can be sped up (accelerated) or slowed down (decelerated, or "slo-mo"). After recording something normally, you instruct the program to adjust the speed to play faster or slower- that's it.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that if you're trying to do something special.

In my case, my interval recording was thirty seconds long, so, I had to make my accelerated video thirty seconds long as well.

Apparently it takes nearly fifteen minutes to completely melt a stick of butter.

When I forced my video clip to fit into a thirty second time space, I actually had to speed it up to over two thousand times its normal speed. The actual speed change to the clip was +2664%! WOW!!!

FILMING THE VIDEO

Originally, I had the stick of butter standing straight up on the plate, as seen in the first photo. I had the plate sitting on the stove, and even though the plate clearly says "don't put this on the stove! That means you! YES, YOU!", I put it on the burner and turned it on low.

Just in case the plate shattered I made sure to use one I thought was sort of ugly in the first place.

After two minutes, the stick of butter flopped over. In the interval recording, it looks like it's standing one moment and laying down the next. Since I didn't like the way it looked, in the final video I started the clips where the butter is already horizontally on the plate.

After fifteen minutes of watching butter melt (and hoping I didn't catch anything on fire), it was a nice puddle and that particular part of the filming was finished.

I then did my "stand up" portion of the video, where I faced the camera and talked to the audience. If you've never done this, it's a lot harder than it looks. I had to do it three times before I got it right, and, I made a mistake: I said I would show the video "side by side" for the comparison but in reality it looked a lot better to have it top and bottom.

EDITING THE VIDEO

My end video actually has five layers of video within it to make it look as cool as it does. Some of the layers are text, some are video, and one is my cute little logo that sits in the corner.

For the "butter melting comparison" I put the interval recording on the top half of the screen, and the accelerated video on the bottom half of the screen. (I originally planned to have the video side by side, which is what I actually say in the standup.)

It took me half an hour to line up what I called "the plop point", where the butter finally disappears completely and all that's showing is the puddle.

Since that on its own isn't very interesting, I used a music piece called "Cut Trance" by Kevin MacLeod, my favorite royalty free music guy. (All the sound effects and music I use are his. My intro music is "Hot Rock.")

Originally, the thought of recording butter melting and actually making something out of it struck me as ridiculous. Once I finished my project, however, I am quite pleased with it!

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