High Speed Storytelling, The Google Chrome Speed Tests

I love super high speed, slo-mo photography. But, for the most part, the really, really slow motion stuff seemed to me to be reserved for scientific and novelty projects. I mean, how can slowing something down enough to see a hummingbirds wings in flight be used to tell a good story? Enter the Google Chrome Speed Tests.

With slow motion, the faster a camera shoots, the slower the motion when the film or video is played back at normal frame rates. For example, if you shoot something at 60 frames a second and then play it on your tv or computer at 30 frames a second, you’ve slowed it by half. For this spot, they used the Phantom v640 High Speed Digital Camera. The v640 can shoot up to 2700 frames per second at full 1920×1080 HD and up to 5,850 fps at 1280×720 HD. Silly high speed. Do the math on playing something shot at 5,850 fps at 30 frames per second. That’s sslllllooooowwwwwww.

Check out what Google put together to demonstrate the speed of their Chrome browser. This is highly creative, highly entertaining, great storytelling done with high speed photography. First up is the spot and second up is the making of video:

Making of: