Water + Sound = Awesome

 

What do you get when you mix Water flowing out of a tube, and a 24hz sine wave sound from a speaker? Nothing but a weird sound, a headache, and a wet floor.... BUT, what if we shot the water, speaker contraption with a camera shooting 24 fps? Well now you get a crazy looking in-camera effect that will blow people's minds!

 In reality, nothing crazy's happening to the water, it's just weaving around a bunch. In camera, however, the water isn't behaving normally. I'm not sure how this works 100%, but I think I have a good idea. Because our camera is only shooting 24 frames per second, we're not capturing all the frames we would normally see. The water is vibrating from the 24hz sine wave, and our camera's capturing 24 fps. Coincidence? I think because we aren't seeing the whole movement of the water, the water looks suspended in mid air.

This works with other frequencies as well. At 25hz, the water appears to be flowing in slow motion, and at 23hz, the water looks like it's going backwards! While this doesn't have much to do with motion graphics, animation, or post-production, I think it's worthy of a blog post. Like Arturo keeps telling us, if you can do something in a camera, do it! I think if you can use this cool trick in an animation, your end result will look amazing!