I shot this series of commercials for Blackfire Flashlights, a national flashlight company that makes an innovative line of products.
I also worked on this commercial as the VFX artist. We wanted to turn still images into something dynamic and more interesting than the classic Ken Burns effect. To do this, I took advantage of parallax. Parallax is the difference in the apparent position of an object from two different lines of sight. It's critical in human vision for depth perception, and simulations of parallax have been used frequently in animation and computer graphics/web design.
In the 1930's, the multi-plane camera technique used by Disney and other animation studios created a parallax effect to add a feeling of depth to their animated scenes.
I followed a great tutorial by The Creators Project to prepare for the shoot. For each shot in the commercial, I took multiple stills:
I took an "as is" still with all the foreground and background elements. Then I removed elements from the foreground in layers and took new stills, eventually leaving just the background. If I had planned something more complicated during the shot (ex. light turning on or focus rack from background to foreground), I took additional stills (one with the light on, one with it off, one with focus on the background, one with focus on the foreground, etc).
I took the photos into Photoshop and used the "as is" still as the "base" image. I cut out the various foreground, mid-ground, and background elements and separated them into different layers. Then I used the clone tool and/or pieces from other stills to fill in the background behind each of the holes left after cutting out the foreground and mid-ground elements.
Next, I brought the layers into After Effects and essentially utilized the multiplane camera technique (but in a virtual space). I stacked the layers in 3D space, leaving some distance in between each layer. I created a camera and keyframed some subtle camera moves. Suddenly, the photo became lifelike and dynamic.
Obviously we could have just shot everything as a video instead of photos and had a natural parallax, but we wanted to use a more stylized approach and create some contrast between the beginning and end of the commercial (when we cut to live action footage).
It's a fun technique, and I'd love to see it used more often in documentaries instead of the standard zooms and pans, since it adds some life to photographs.
You can view the rest of the Blackfire commercial series below: