disk formating and freeze frame?

Hello all!
Two questions

#1 - Just bought a new hard drive for an external enclosure. I was told I need to format it for the Mac. (G4 1.25GHZ mirror door/ Tiger 10.4) Anyone know how I should format it? Will disk utility do it?

#2 - I am now cursed. I cannot watch any cool video tricks without trying to figure out how they did it. I have seen this technique used a lot. Several commercials use it.
Its an action freeze frame, but the camera is moving into the frame. As the camera moves in, you begin to see "behind" the foreground elements. Almost a 3D effect. Latest sighting was the "Memphis Beat" trailer on iTunes. It occurs at the very end of the video. Is this a green screen composite effect with the foreground elements on a higher track? Any ideas? This is totally bugging me.

Rick
Should this be in the Motion Section?... is there an Effects Forum?

>Anyone know how I should format it? Will disk utility do it?

Yes. Disk Utility, "partition", set 1 partition, go to options and select "apple partition map", format to hfs+, non-journaled, non-case sensitive, and name it.



www.strypesinpost.com

rickman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> #2 - I am now cursed. I cannot watch any cool
> video tricks without trying to figure out how they
> did it. I have seen this technique used a lot.
> Several commercials use it.
> Its an action freeze frame, but the camera is
> moving into the frame. As the camera moves in,
> you begin to see "behind" the foreground elements.
> Almost a 3D effect. Latest sighting was the
> "Memphis Beat" trailer on iTunes. It occurs at
> the very end of the video. Is this a green screen
> composite effect with the foreground elements on a
> higher track? Any ideas? This is totally bugging
> me.

I'm not a motion graphics guru, so this is a rough guess (well, I've seen it done and tried it myself, but I'm no expert)...

One way, of course, would be to actually film different items and then combine them in post.

Another way, is to separate certain elements of a frame, put them on different layers (and points along the z-axis), then do camera movements for the animation. After Effects and Motion can do this. Stills are much easier to do this with, of course...

Here's one of many tutorials available on the interwebs: Virtual 3D Photos.

-Dave

That effect sounds to me like a specific camera set-up used in action films, where a number of still (or nowadays video) cameras are arranged around the action all firing at once. So it's actually filmed in a circle by, say, nine cameras at once. Then in post, you just shift from one angle to the next as the frames progress. Nothing in post (short of animation) can make you see what was not filmed by the camera, like the back of someone's head, if you were shooting the front.

Paint and roto. Lots of paint and roto.