- Answer: Both can be seen easily at night creeping in their natural environments!
When thinking of thermal imaging, many people immediately conjure up visions of The Predator, secret agents, or the military. Thermal imaging is often used to evoke the feeling that you’re peeking in on something you aren’t really supposed to see, such as secretly revealing someone’s hidden location.
This is the mood award winning director Christian Breslauer set out to capture when creating the new music video for the The Weeknd’s song “CREEPIN’”, featuring multiple scenes shot with a FLIR A8303 thermal science camera. Thanks to FLIR’s family of high-resolution thermal imaging solutions, whether subjects are in the middle of the grasslands of Montana, like ferrets, or in the middle of a city shooting a music video. The latest music video from The Weeknd also features guest singers 21 Savage, Diddy, and Metro Boomin.
Per the script, they are unaware that they’re being watched by a mysterious woman. The video features striking thermal images of the Weekend singing while rain falls on him, Diddy’s car being followed by a drone-mounted thermal camera, and thermal closeups of 21 Savage and Metro recording lines in a warehouse studio.
To create the video, Breslauer ran through his usual workflow with the expert assistance of physicist and thermal camera operator, Austin Richards, Ph.D. First, Breslauer would position and frame the shots as he usually would; then Richards would fine tune the image to ensure it had the thermal contrast they were looking for.
“We were able to work it in fairly effortlessly into the overall concept,” Breslauer says. While they worked with one thermal palette on the monitor during the shoot, Breslauer says he appreciated being able to export his footage in multiple palettes and settings, thanks to FLIR Research Studio software. Access to additional palettes provided more flexibility when it came time to edit everything together.
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