Starting The Design
Pausing the Background
To create a cinemagraph, an element of the video needs to be paused when there otherwise would be movement. Due to my enjoyment of how the birds moved along the beach, I decided that the background water and waves were the best choice to pause. I took two different frames as what I thought could work well, calm waters or a crashing wave. The calm waters have the benefit of being farther up, making the birds look like they are walking on the waters. On the other hand, the crashing wave displays an exact showing of the stillness of the background more easily. I decided ultimately to use the crashing wave in the final design due to its more exciting appeal.
Starting the Project
To make my own cinemagraph I first needed to have a video to utilize. I looked around on the internet for videos of birds and water with the idea that pausing either or would hopefully create a nice effect. On the site Vidsplay I found this video of four birds walking along a beach with waves crashing in the background. I like how'd the birds were moving, their neck and head bouncing as they took their steps. I downloaded the video and began to work on creating my design.
Creating the Cinemagraph
This was my first design of the cinemagraph, using the bird's movement and the crashing waves as a background. I limited the frame rate of the original video to 15 frames per second and shortened the video's length to around 8 seconds. By going frame by frame, I selected the bird's body and removed the background, so I would be able to have the drop back of the waves. Unfortunately, I could not include the other two birds from the original video because the waves were crashing and obscuring their feet. If I were to use those birds I might have looked like they suddenly got amputated while walking.
Final Design
This was the final design I created for my cinemagraph. The main change I created to this design compared to the last was having removing the pause after the two birds leave the frame. To do this I created three layers of the birds. The reason for this was to have the first layer start near the end of the movement, the second layer near the start, and the third layer start much later into the cinemagraph. To make the loop, I set the start and end frames to the same frame across the layers, due to the limiting frame rate this was easier to accomplish. I feel this made the cinemagraph more seamless and loop without the viewer even knowing.
