This idea came during downtime between Flying Robot Production Projects a year or so ago to advertise myself. I’ve been meaning to utilize it in a music video, but for now, it will have to work as the beginning of a digital portfolio on Youtube.

The way to create this effect low budget is pretty simple utilizing multiple shots, tracking, and expressions.

First, you need to capture video of someone moving their head around in a spiral pattern in relation to the camera holding a different mouth shape in each shot. (ah, ee, oh, t c x, f, m, and neutral)

Next, you need to track a point on the face, I used the nose, but the mouth works well enough too.

Then you need some expression wizardry I’ve provided below to time remap the footage based upon its proximity to a null object that you use to control the frame that best correlates to its position.

Apply this code to the time remap

a = 100;
b = 100;
c = 0;

p = thisComp.layer(“lookAt”).transform.position;
pp = thisComp.layer(“tracking data blank”).transform.position
n = pp.numKeys;

var counts = [10,5,123,654];
goal = p;

for(x=0;x<n;x++){
counts[x] = pp.key(x+1);
}

var closestXY = counts.reduce(function(prev, curr) {
return (length(curr, goal) < length(prev, goal) ? curr : prev);
});

for(x=0; x<n; x++){
if (pp.key(x+1) == closestXY){
c = x;
}
}

pp.key(c).time+19

Apply this code to the opacity (or something similar to control the on/off of the layer)

m = thisComp.layer(“lookAt”).effect(“mouthshape”)(“Slider”);

if (m == Math.floor((index-1)/2)){
100
}else{
0
}

If you’d like to learn more about it shoot me an email or text message.