TfCD - Holographic (head) Video on Smartphone

Tools

For making the smartphone viewer:

- Cutting tools (knife/scissors)

- Tape

- Transparent plastic material (could be from CD cases, but also from trash like packaging materials)

- Cardboard

For making the holographic video

- At least two cameras

- Tripods for the number of cameras

- Flash light

Step 1: Cut Materials

Cut the cardboard in a square of 6x6cm and the transparent plastic in 4 pieces like shown in the figure below.

Step 2: Tape Pieces

The next step is to tape the plastic pieces to the cardboard part in the way that is shown in the picture. After that the plastic pieces can be folded to a pyramid shape. Add some pieces of tape to the ribs to hold it together.

Step 3: Test

Now you have the hologram viewer for on your smartphone screen. On the internet there are some video examples you can use to test the viewer. We tested it with the video below. The result is shown in the other video.

Step 4: Filming

Now it is time to make our own video in order for us to create our own hologram. We chose to make a hologram of one of our heads. To really get the 3D aspect of the hologram we tried filming from different sides, in this way it is possible to walk around the hologram. The film setting is shown in the picture. The room has to be really dark, in this way there will be no background in the video otherwise this would make the hologram flat. The flash light should therefor be the only light source, we held this right under the head. We used two cameras, one to film the front and one to film the side. Because we did not use much motion in the video besides facial movements and light changes, it was possible for us to film the back of the head after filming the front (so not at the same time) and to mirror the video from the side.

Step 5: Editing

Once the the video footage is collected, it has to be edited in the way of the examples above. The different videos have to be put together and rotated in the right way. Besides that the size of the videos also needs to be in line with the way the smartphone screen will reflect in the viewer. Therefore we used a template, seen in other tutorials, with a square of 508px x 508px and the 4 rectangles around are 508px x 285,75 (this proportion is based on a 1920x1080 px canvas).

The video was made in Adobe premiere Pro. The template, made in Adobe illustrator, was put in the sequence as a still and we simply paste the video footage in there and scaled to approximately the right size. The footage of the side of the head was copied and mirrored. The whole video consist of one piece of footage (where Ilonka opens her mouth) of a few seconds and we simply copied this and reversed it so it seems that she closes her mouth again. This is then repeated to fill 30 seconds of video.

The first time we tested the video in the viewer, it still looked quite flat because the background of the room was too much showing. This is something important to consider and we eventually tried to cut out the outline of the head from the background, like is shown in the video below.