Erik Lauritzen: Last Best Hope

lauritzen.jpg

Erik Lauritzen created an engaging photo montage for a World World II documentary entitled “Last Best Hope.” The 2.5D technique isn’t new, but Erik’s execution is one of the best I’ve seen. He does an excellent job creating believable 3D space using (I assume) camera mapping to get that extra bit of dimensionality.

For a similar approach, see Cocoe’s El Pais campaign.

Erik, by the way, lives and works in Austin, my old home. There aren’t too many motion graphics studios or freelancers in the Silicon Hills, so it’s cool to see him doing well and rocking some nice work.

Via Fubiz. Thanks for the tip, Colin Romain.

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

16 Comments

jakem

Very nicely done. Particularly like the way the grain and grime on the photos is part of the 3d space.

electric

it’s very nice. i agree with the grain on the photos being nice within the space. alot of people/ studios would spend hours trying to get rid of that, but here it really fits and becomes part of the whole experience.

oeuf

Nice work! Also love the grittiness.
Reminds of Carnivale title seq.

KGB

Looks great!
Like jakem said separating the noise with respect to Z-space was a really good idea.

It does look a little like the Carnivale intro which I liked as well. I dunno, seeing this technique is more enjoyable to when its used on old photos or an interesting subject matter.

r3awak3n

yeah this looks really good, you can do some amazing things in 2.5 D.

seen =/ scene :)

Shriek

Very nice work. I really like this style.
Someone knows who made the music?

KGB

I think its “Imogen Heap – Have You Got It In You?”

Shriek

That’s the one, thanks KGB.

John

This is beautiful…I haven’t decided if it really bugs me or not, but there are several cuts where the camera motion stops before the cut, or it cuts to a scene a second before the motion starts.

Very nit-picky though, very well done.

Babe

nice and smooth deconstructed motion. i agree with john though, i kinda wish there were transitions or different type of scene intros. there should be audio credits somewhere too.

glad comments are back…. good call j.

upstartmike

Doesn’t anyone find the music choice offesively inappropriate for the subject matter? I mean sh!t … this perky bubbly pop tune put over WW2 pictures? I felt that it made the piece about as moving as … something that doesn’t move. Regardless of whether you dig the track or not, it reminds me of when people put some contemporary rock track over what is supposed to be a period piece.

As for the grain technique? very slick … but I didn’t see anything about this that made it stand out among the gazillions of other 2.5d stuff out there. Not to mention I agree with John that it’s sloppy in a few parts … unrefined camera moves.

Carnivalle was a while ago, but it was CLASSY .. you can frame by frame that sucker and it holds up under a microscope. I see it as the pinnacle of 2.5d, everything since just seems like immitation.

Just my opinion.

alexj

I assume that this is just a montage edit of clips from the doc. So the music on this doesnt bother me – since we are viewing this out of context anyway. I think the music actually drives it pretty well as a demo.

Visually, this technique could work well to help tell a story for a documentary. This movie isnt as refined as a commercial or show open (carnivale) but I dont think it has to be – or should be for that matter.

Nice work.

jona

nice work.

off the subject, anyone know of any blogs or good links about cutting edge GUI design?

KGB

This dude does some stuff I like….not really functional GUI, but fake stuff for movies, etc…

https://www.coleran.com/

Joe Clay

I think it was very well done. Some parts could be tightened up. The music fits very well until it picks up. If they had worked on that most anything I could say about it would be moot.

I especially loved the grass. I also liked the grain, though it wasn’t part of the original images. It looks like they cleaned up the grain on the original images and applied a new layer of grain between the camera and the images. In any case, I love it.

Brett

I particularly enjoyed the little bit with the bikes and the mountains, and then the following scene with the fields approaching the house. The scenes really had a lot of depth to them, and were pretty amazingly executed.

I don’t love the music, but I think it was part of a larger documentary, and might have been presented differently within that? So that really isn’t even a complaint, I pretty much love it.

Comments are closed.