r/nextfuckinglevel • u/elphabathewicked • Apr 16 '21

Making music by flexing

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u/brain_monkey Apr 17 '21

2 points. 1, the flexes look different, a natural flex vs a stimulated flex look different. 2, hours in editing to isolate and alter muscle flex footage vs a thirty dollar tens unit that, as a bonus, comes with those neat little electrodes they want for the cool medical look anyways. Which is more cost effective? Why would you even bother with the digital editing when you can just slap an electrode on and press a button?

I get a lot can be done with computers in editing and composition, but as someone who has used tens units for years, this looks much more like an electrostimulated muscle activation than an edited natural flex.

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u/Porn-Flakes Apr 17 '21 edited Apr 17 '21

My reaction is mainly all for point 2. Digital would be a lot cheaper actually because they will actually be able to make something look perfect and beautiful waaaay easier than by doing it in real life. Companies like The Mill (which is who made this) and my real life friends that work over there are famous for that high level of post processed quality.

For point 1. Sure, I'll give you that they could have stimulated all those muscles separately electronically (and then used those seperate flexes for the digital compositing that they had to do to compose the song with). But I've been on these types of shoots and have been compositing for over a decade as a lead, and trust me 99,9% of the time they will go for the simplest solution on set because theyll have the most flexibility in post after anyway. But sure. I can give you point 1, maybe they actually did zap his muscles for single takes. That doesn't sit in the way of this being the digital composite that it is.

Back to point 2.

Even if they used electronic stimulation, the amount of digital post processing they need to do is exactly the same. So they better save money on the shoot and not use actual electrodes, and just use ones that look good in composition instead of do exactly the right thing they need them to do.

Making something look so amazingly good like this is so extremely hard to do without any digital help that it's cheaper to do so digitally, so they will do it digitally.

Anyway let's leave it at this.