Attention, Filmmakers: Here’s How to Create the ‘Back to the Future’ ‘Time Slice’ Effect
With his latest how-to video, Shanks shows us how to create the “time slice” effect from “Back to the Future.”
On his ShanksFX YouTube page (in association with PBS Digital Studios), the filmmaker explains, “After doing the Ghostbusters proton streams, I came up with an idea to re-create the time slice effect from ‘Back to the Future’ using stop-motion animation & light painting techniques.”
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Shanks says this is part one of three. For the second installment, he’ll cover the editing process of putting these frames and exposures together while the third installment will “deal with creating miniatures and using forced perspective for our clock tower sequence,” per Shanks, who said you can download a free trial of the stop-motion software he used here (it’s the industry standard used by Disney, Laika and Aardman).
In trying to animate a mini-van doing the “time slice” technique, Shanks said it took him “four full days to get 27 frames with about 8-14 exposures for each frame.” Maybe it would have been easier if he had a real DeLorean.
Check out his video below:
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