Flying witches observed in English forest.

Said to be "recently uncovered footage of two mysterious characters flying around the south of England on broomsticks." Link. (thanks, J.B.!)

[#1 posted by Chris L , February 14, 2008 12:11 AM]

That was delightful!

[#2 posted by drivenbyboredom , February 14, 2008 12:37 AM]

i dont buy it for a second
this has to be some sort of computer effects!

[#3 posted by tikal2k , February 14, 2008 12:52 AM]

the shots from the waist up don't really make any sense, otherwise it's pretty cool

[#4 posted by Takuan , February 14, 2008 1:24 AM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sa046wJK8w

[#5 posted by Jesse in Japan , February 14, 2008 1:34 AM]

I dunno, it looks suspiciously like this one scene in Return of the Jedi.

[#6 posted by fontastique , February 14, 2008 1:47 AM]

Director Jan Kounen explored the flying witches back in 1987 with this excellent trashy chase film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJR4rDy9j88&feature=related

[#7 posted by Milo Minderbender , February 14, 2008 2:09 AM]

I bet the actors are incredibly sore the next day after shooting. Also, what's with the masks?

[#8 posted by Jeff , February 14, 2008 4:45 AM]

Milo, as an experienced broom rider, I can tell you that without some good padding, supporting your body weight on the narrow edge of a broom can really hurt after a while. I use a Acme Mega Jock made specifically for such activites. Also, use some baby powder to help with chaffing.

[#9 posted by whoknew , February 14, 2008 6:17 AM]

That's really clever and must have taken a lot of work. The Kounen film is even better!

[#10 posted by mechfish , February 14, 2008 7:06 AM]

Thank you so much for the link to "Gisele Kerozene". I saw it in some animation festival in the late eighties and have remembered it ever since, but had no idea what it was called or who made it.

Youtube is awesome.

I wonder why these films are so shaky and handheld-looking -- not just for the actors (that's rather easy to explain) but for the backgrounds as well? Would one of those Make Magazine-style $10 Stedicams improve matters? Or, you know, a dolly? (Not that films like this ever have the budget for that...) Or is it an aesthetic choice? It could be that having the camera shake a bit helps to obscure the fact that the actors are mysteriously... jumpy from frame to frame, and that therefore it actually makes the whole thing look better.

[#11 posted by farrellmcgovern , February 14, 2008 7:28 AM]

Brilliant! That must have taken a lot of work! Great live action stop-motion animation in the style of Mike Jittlov!

Basically, the simplest form of this animation is that they are just jumping, and the frames where they jump are edited out, leaving only the top of their jumps, making it look like they fly!

Check out Jittlov's glow in the dark site:

http://www.wizworld.com/

[#12 posted by nanuq , February 14, 2008 7:29 AM]

They should burned just for feeding into the stereotype. Don't they know that real witches ride dustbusters these days?

[#13 posted by Cpt. Tim , February 14, 2008 7:40 AM]

not nearly high enough to play quiddich

[#14 posted by ZippySpincycle , February 14, 2008 7:46 AM]

[This comment is no longer available due to a copyright claim by the Wiccan Antidefamation League]

[#15 posted by Keneke , February 14, 2008 7:53 AM]

At least they weren't cosplaying Harry Potter.

[#16 posted by bonedad , February 14, 2008 8:08 AM]

Norman McLaren was an early master of this style of animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sa046wJK8w

[#17 posted by bonedad , February 14, 2008 8:25 AM]

Sorry, somehow missed #4 the first time through the comments.

Coffee time.

[#18 posted by John Hudgens , February 14, 2008 8:41 AM]

That was cute, but you really should spotlight the works of Mike Jittlov, or the team of Chuck Menville and Len Janson...

Jittlov's original "Wizard of Speed and Time" short: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE

Menville & Janson films:
"Vicious Cycles" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiTGIy0gENY
"Blaze Glory" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS4lozH7IYA
"Sergeant Swell of the Mounties" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38yUaV5NQ-8
"Stop, Look, and Listen" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARf3W9U3kzA

[#19 posted by whoknew , February 14, 2008 8:44 AM]

@ #10 mechfish
But given that the film is essentially stop motion, I assume made by cutting out everything but the peak of each jump, the camera would have to be perfectly still not to feel jumpy. Seems unavoidable to me.

[#20 posted by Elysianartist , February 14, 2008 8:50 AM]

Yes, yes...flying witches in the English countryside are all well and good. But what in the name of all that is holy is THIS.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5YMx5UHbk

[#21 posted by License Farm , February 14, 2008 9:00 AM]

This specific style of animation, using live actors (but not adding anything beyond straight photography) is known as pixelation. It's woefully underutilized (though I suppose anything other than CGI could claim much the same thing these days).

[#22 posted by Ian70 , February 14, 2008 10:35 AM]

This same "jump in the air while we take a frame of stop motion" technique was also used in the original video for Extreme's "Rest In Peace" as an homage to Mclaren's "Neighbours/Voisins" short film (the Extreme video was re-shot after legal discussions) and also in a recurring interstitial segment of The Frantic's classic sketch show "Four On The Floor" (which is still not out on DVD yet! What's wrong with this world?!?)

[#23 posted by searconflex , February 14, 2008 10:45 AM]

Ahhhh... Norman Mclaren....now there was a witch!

[#24 posted by certron , February 14, 2008 12:51 PM]

A long time ago, on a computer far, far away, my computer teacher showed us a video called "The Wizard of Quick and Time". I had not been able to find it for the longest time. Why is it titled as such? Because it was a demonstration of QuickTime v. 1.0 Stop motion and live motion mixed together. The wall-walking is my favorite part, and the only thing I really remembered well when I first saw it.

And... just because I remembered, I searched for it one last time, and here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6U1Xthk9dA

[#25 posted by agnot , February 14, 2008 1:13 PM]

Sort of a brute force approach to special effects.

[#26 posted by w000t , February 14, 2008 1:56 PM]

This'll get you executed in Saudi Arabia.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j1T_he6kn315GfOaiebNMjdbsaHA

[#27 posted by Village Idiot , February 14, 2008 5:55 PM]

They really did fly on broomsticks back in the day, but it was because of a salve made from a plant in the Solanaceae family (belladonna, mandrake, datura, and others) that was applied vaginally with the broomstick. Kind of gives a whole new perspective on Halloween decorations, doesn't it?

[#28 posted by ndollak , February 14, 2008 6:10 PM]

I've seen this style of animation before. Indeed, Norman McLaren used it in the 1950s, and there was a woman who more recently did some truly eye-popping animated films starring herself (can't seem to find her work in my resources, but one of her films featured her as a floating fairy who completely re-paints a house in floral patterns with a simgle magic paint-brush). Anyway, as some have correctly surmised, the original footage is much longer, as everything but the peaks of the jumps is edited out. One could try shooting a frame every time someone jumps, but that's very dicey. It's actually easier and less time-consuming on the day of shooting to just film your people jumping, then do a heckuva lot of cutting later in the editing room. In this film the shaky camera is due to the absence of a tripod, as they were shooting panning shots in the woods.

[#29 posted by rollerskater , February 15, 2008 1:36 PM]

keep the christians away from gas and piles of wood when these women are around.