Using the 3d “Kid in the picture” effect in video
Some folks have been asking about the cool technique used to animate the still photography for the video we made about the 20th anniversary of our photography services…
This 3d type of effect is known as ‘Kid in the Picture’ and was first extensively used in the 2002 film adaptation of Robert Evans’ book ‘The Kid Stays In The Picture’.
Producing the effect from still photographs is labour intensive and involves breaking an picture down into layers, filling in the background manually and then using the different layers to animate the image. (It’s around a half day per image once you have it animated.)
Whilst an excellent tool for animating stills when they are needed in a video, it’s more than just an expedient effect. ‘Kid in the Picture’ can work very well when included by design. When we are doing that, we can shoot images very specifically for inclusion, making the post production a lot easier.
In our short video we broke down twice as many still images as we used, choosing only the best overall results for inclusion. The best images for use are usually wide with a narrow depth of field and a clean background. Sadly these three criteria are not normally found together!
You can see the video on our photography website .
We know that video is 25 still images per second, and as such we think about our videos from our photography perspective, always looking to shoot well thought out and composed photography as a key part of our productions.
This effect is one of a number of photography techniques we can use in our videos. If you’re interested in seeing how we can help you to produce a new video, maybe using the ‘Kid in the Picture’ effect to give your corporate or business video a real twist, then contact us at Nottingham video producers and photographers Page One!
Since this video blog post was first produced, Netflix has made extensive use of this effect in their “Holding” previews.
