Disney Research's trippy tale of immortality is ready to watch
We didn't expect Disney Research to have one of the more inventive uses of YouTube's crazy frame-rate capabilities, but here we are. The outfit's released its trippy Lucid Dreams of Gabriel short via Google's video wing and, despite it being around four months late, the filmmaking techniques are impressive in their finished form. As a quick refresher, the clip combines novel computational shutters, multiple frame rates within the same shot and high-dynamic range tone mapping to achieve its surreal look. But, in the context of a short film they distract from the story (however hippie-dippy it may be) and make Gabriel seem more like a tech demo than an actual, structured narrative; the tricks do more to call attention to themselves than they do support the action onscreen.
It's still worth checking out, though, if only to see what's possible when a director and team wants to push the limits of what movies are capable of. We've embedded the video below, just be sure to select 720p48 or 1080p48 as your resolution and you should be good to go -- maybe you should grab some special butter ahead of time to fully appreciate it, though.
