Breakdowns are where we disect the most-requested films to explain the visual techniques used, and dive into the origins of the techniques, their inspirations, and how they're made. Today, we're breaking down 'KEEP IT'. Let's dive in.

Technique: Tiny Planet

While its origins actually date back to an spherical landscape illustrations of the 18th-century, the Tiny Planet technique gained modern-day popularity from Dave Meyer's 2017 music video for Kendrick Lamar, titled 'Humble'. In the music video, we see Kendrick riding a bike while an omnidirectional camera compresses 360 degrees of footage into a sphere, mimicking someone riding a bike on a tiny planet. 

But depending on where you pin the 360 content, you can push it to be the inverse of a tiny planet, and instead show the sky as the miniaturized sphere, making it appear as though the camera were inside a hole in the ground. This technique is used in Daniel Iglesia Jr's 'KEEP IT' music video, where he used a 360 camera and distorted it to show a couple kissing in a field that appears to wrap around the entire frame. 

Here's a great tutorial on how to achieve the Tiny Planet look on your own; from content creator, James Loxton. 

 

Techniques: Fixed Camera + Arc Shot

As the name suggests, the FIXED CAMERA technique is one of the simplest techniques in filmmaking, and involves the camera being fixed to an object. In this case, the camera has been fixed to the hula hoop and to the jump rope, so that as they move, the camera — which is fixed to the object — moves with it. 

The Fixed camera technique has been used since the advent of film, but was most often used as a practical way to film cars in motion. The camera would be rigged to a car, either on the hood, or the side, and would give the impression of this fixed POV.

In my opinion, some of the most recent best examples of a Fixed camera technique are the Opening Credits in Lord of War, where the camera is 'fixed' to a bullet. Another is Ryan Staake's 'Dope Dealer' music video for ScHoolboy Q, where Staake fixed a camera to the blunt that is smoked throughout the film.

Directors that have become known for this technique are Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino 

However, like most shots, this isn't a single technique, but a combination of two. In this case, we see an X-axis arc shot in the first clip, and a Y-axis arc shot in the second. 

An ARC SHOT by nature is when the camera circles the focal point. X-axis versus Y-axis refers to the direction of the arc. 

Large productions will rent equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars. But in reality, you can achieve this look with PVC piping, or by doing something like fixing your camera to an object that is itself performing an arc movement. 

 

Technique: Scale Shift

One of my favorite techniques. As the name suggests, this involves shifting the scale of an object in the framing to a size that is either larger or smaller than normal. Smaller-than-normal is like the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and often involves people being shrunk down to insect-size scale. On the opposite size, when it's larger-than-normal, like shown, we call that giant. 

In this clip, we see our hero peering down at smaller characters. We can tell that she is larger because of her size relative to the landscape. 

This effect is actually quite easy to replicate, and often only involves clever perspective, and use of masking. In this case, she was captured on a green screen with a prop her hands on a prop that was later removed to make it appear as though she was leaning on the hills. 

The trickiest parts of this comes in making it look realistic by mimicking lighting and shadows. Realism also comes from speed. The larger you make someone, the slower they need to appear to move to make it feel realistic. You'd never see a giant walking at the speed that we walk.

 

Technique: Dolly Zoom

Possibly the most easily recognized technique. Created by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, but not perfected until 1958, when then second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts cracked the formula in Vertigo to give us this mind-bending visual. 

A DOLLY ZOOM can be created in post-production as in this case, but it's most effective when shot practically. As the name suggests, it involves zooming OUT while Dollying IN towards the subject. This creates this trippy effect that is usually used in moments of realization for a character, almost akin to a lightbulb moment In KEEP IT, the DOLLY ZOOM was broken into two shots, a plate of the character on a green screen, and a plate of the landscape. 

In Daniel's words, "We actually shot the background as a separate plate and then shot her on green, right in the spot we captured the plate. Basically, we did this because I wanted the model to look/feel slow and ethereal, with her hair blowing in slow-mo, but I wanted the background action of the compressing space "zolly" effect to be fast and dramatic. It's basically impossible to make the foreground slow while the background is fast in one shot, so we split it up by doing the dolly zoom twice -- once at a high frame rate with talent in front of green and then again at 24 to capture the background landscape. Then we simply placed her into the background plate. I think the effect worked well in the end."

Modern day directors known for using this effect often are Steven Spielberg, and Edgar Wright (to name a few). 

Technique: Mirror Shot

Surprisingly this shot is widely used enough that we wanted to give it its own subcategory under the REFLECTIONS category.

As it sounds, we categorize any shot within this where a mirror is involved within the framing. 

 

Technique: Crash Zoom

A staple of Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright, and Quentin Tarantino — the CRASH ZOOM is an unmissable zoom that often takes place in a fraction of a second. While it often involves zooming in or out from close to wide or wide to close, it could also be a quick crash zoom that doesn't change the overall framing by much.

In this instance, it is a dramatic crash zoom, going from an EXTREME WIDE shot to a MEDIUM CLOSE UP. 

 

Levitating Car Shot

This shot falls within the FLOATING or LEVITATION technique category, and gives us a bit of surrealism showing a collection of balloons lifting up the back-end of a small car. 

Shadows were added in post, as well as the car moving subtly up and down. 

 

Technique: Mixed Media Cut-out Collage

True to its name, Daniel Iglesias Jr. created a practical mixed media collage using paper and cut-outs. In his words, "This was a really fun idea to experiment with. First we captured a series of stills of the models doing the hula hoop, jump rope, and smoking actions in front of the landscape. Then we set up a green screen and captured motion takes of the same actions at low frame rates at the right shutter speed to get that effect of "burst photo" which I think helps sell the illusion that it's like a still image that's been cut out and animated to life." 

Daniel continues, "Then in the edit, we printed out the stills and I cut the models out of the photos and scanned the images back in, placed next to the motion asset which we effected to look textured like an old photo. I taped the still photos to some interesting papers for a cool background. The video has nostalgic themes of playgrounds and adolescence so I thought it would be cool to scan in real physical papers from something like coloring books or construction paper. I found this company that sells artisanal paper and went to their store to check out what they had -- it was this place called McManus and Morgan run by the cutest old man who was super passionate about fine art paper and the process of paper-making. He showed me these super cool papers made by hand in which the artist mashed different materials like candy wrappers and caution tape into the pulp and mixed it together with the fibers to create these one-of-a-kind colorful papers with flecks of interesting stuff -- if you look closely at the pics you can see gold flecks, wrappers, and other stuff in there." 

View more Behind the Scenes from this shoot below.