You probably have seen the use of the parallax effect to animate a still image. The parallax effect occurs when objects that are closer to the viewer or the camera move faster than objects that are farther away. For animating still images, this is usually done by cutting out the objects from the rest of the image and filling in the holes in the original photo. Then, you would take the object elements into an animating program like After Effects, place them in a 3D space at varying distances, and then animate with a virtual video camera.

Photographer Dave Hill is also well known for his parallax stills animation.

What Joe Fellows and Make Production created, however, is something far more special. In their video, WWF Parallax Sequence, Make Productions expertly utilized the Puppet Warp tool to add a faux high-speed slow-motion effect to their parallax sequences.

By manipulating still photos from the WWF archive we created these stunning slow motion shots. We have created a stand alone film by combining the ‘parallax’ shots from 2 existing films produced by AD Hoc Films for WWF.

WWF Parallax Sequence Film

WWF PARALLAX SEQUENCE from Make Productions on Vimeo.

Parallax animation: Joe Fellows @ Make Productions
Producer: Dan Glynn
Client: Ad Hoc Films for WWF
Animation/compositing: Make productions
Music: Snow Patrol “What If This Storm Ends?”

How it Was Done

Here are a brief explanation by Joe Fellows from the video’s comments section on how Make Production created this video:

Thanks to Small Camera Big Picture for finding this video!

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