Fascinating motion magazine demo highlights iPad's potential

Tablet devices, and more specifically Apple's iPad, are bound to forever alter the landscape for print and digital publishers, as evidenced by captivating concepts such as motion magazines like one being worked on by Alexx Henry Photography for Viv magazine (videos included).

Together with co-directors Cory Strassburger and Ming Hsiung, the firm recently produced a so-called "motion magazine cover" and feature spread for the all digital magazine, enabling it create content that will come to life on the iPad and other tablet devices where digital magazines are expected to thrive.

In a behind the scenes video covering the making of the motion cover that was sent to planet5D, Alexx Henry and partner Andrew Gant describe how they were able to "put motion into print" in ways never seen before.

The living art interactive motion spread was shot with Red Digital's latest RED ONE camera and new Mysterium-X sensor, allowing them to capture the energy of a still-life action shoot with the motion of a blockbuster film. In addition to action spreads, this enables them to "present a story" to readers before the final frame of their motion covers.

The production team shot all of their living models on a green screen at a high frame rate and slowed them down, so when the action stops, the textual article can appear. After constructing their own 3D environment, they composited the photography and did all the camera moves.

The end result is a motion spread that sends readers on a journey, introducing them to each article while giving them time to read or the freedom to move on at their own pace.

"As photographers, we can build off the foundations that work really well in print, because in the end, we aren't making moving pictures," Henry says. "That's what movies do. We're creating pictures that move."