1. It takes hours or even days to make a cinemagraph
Not anymore. Maybe if you’re rotoscoping each and every frame, but, who has the time for that? More labour time does not always equate to better quality.
Our Flixel founders fell in love with cinemagraphs back in 2011 when they first saw the work of NYC fashion-photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck. But, as Beck and Berg recently said in an interview with AdWeek. “It could take weeks in production to create a cinemagraph.”
Thus, there was one problem encountered: creating cinemagraphs was time consuming. Unless you’re a Photoshop and After Effects expert, they also require a large learning curve. From this gap in the market, they had an idea, and soon, a team of passionate individuals to push this concept from ideation to creation. Cinemagraph Pro was born, morphing into a easy-to-use professional software dedicated to fast and effective cinemagraph creation.
Try it for free. Create stunning cinemagraphs in minutes.
By Daria Khoroshavina
2. So they’re GIFs, right?
Please, please, please… Can we stop calling them GIFs? Cinemagraphs are a type of artistic medium, like photography or film. We rant about this often, but it is important to differentiate the term cinemagraph from GIF. It’s like calling a photograph a .jpeg or .png. “Wow Frank, that’s a stunning .jpeg.” Or how about, “Stanley Kubrick makes incredible .mov’s!” Sounds ridiculous, right?
For clarification, we are in no way discrediting GIFs as a great format for displaying looping videos. If you plan to showcase your cinemagraph on a big display, export out an HD video, not a GIF. For more on this rant, check out our GIF vs HD Video article.
3. There’s no market/you can’t make money from selling cinemagraphs
WRONG. There is a growing market, and now is the time to add cinemagraphs to your digital media arsenal. No, you can’t print a cinemagraph, but you can display them on any and all digital surfaces. Look around you right now. How many screens can you count? On this desk alone I can count 4.
Photographer? Add them to your photography bundle. Setup a hybrid photo booth. Sell your cinemagraphs as stock. Export the .mp4 and give it to your client to share on social media.
Marketer? Create cinemagraphs for huge digital campaigns including Facebook. They look great in emails, on social media, websites, banner ads and digital displays.
By Sherif Mokbel4. You must be a videographer to shoot cinemagraphs
We know photographers often avoid the world of video. Fear not… cinemagraphs may be a hybrid between a photo and a video, but, with Flixel, they’re easy to create. Yes, they require a short video clip and constant lighting, but they also require the artistic framing of a photograph and the ability to freeze and capture a moment in time. Photographers are just as naturally equipped for creating cinemagraphs as videographers and other visual artists are.
What you need: #1 A Camera. #2 A tripod. #3 An artistic eye. #4 Cinemagraph Pro. It’s as simple as that.
5. It’s a gimmick. It’s a phase. It’ll never last.
No, it’s a medium that’s here to stay. Facebook sure thinks so, and it’s about time the rest of the digital community gets on board. In a few years from now, you can bet that cinemagraphs will be a major contender in digital advertising. In fact, they already are. Big brands are beginning to see the potential.
Marilyn Monroe collection at Macy’s
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