This is pretty incredible and an ingenious use of a Youtube feature for a pretty great effect. BBDO Russia did some phenomenal work here and whoever came up with the idea deserves recognition because it is insanely clever.
Start by watching the video. It’s 10 minutes long and seems like a waste of time. If the uploader was going to show us the car accident why didn’t they just post the shortened clip? So we watch for a few seconds, and when the accident doesn’t happen…what do we do as an impatient Youtuber? We “speed”. We grab the little bar and move it along to try to spot where the accident starts. But it’s at that point that you can then (and only then) see the accident take place. With the message “Don’t Rush” at the end. Pretty amazing.
But how do they do it? If you watch the video again you can see little jumps every once in awhile. It seems to happen every 4-5 seconds. This becomes very apparent when the “Don’t Rush” text comes up since the flash to all black is very noticeable. That’s the key.
So apparently how Youtube works is in its thumbnail viewer when a user sliding the bar around it shows stills of the action. Seems that it shows a screen cap of every 4-5 seconds or so to give you an idea of where you are in the video. Very handy if you’re looking for a specific moment. Most video services do something similar. I’m sure we all know it well from Netflix fast forwarding. So what the folks over at BBDO Russia did was splice in a frame of the accident into the exact frame that Youtube uses as a thumbnail, and thus when going through with the thumbnails, apparent motion does the rest and shows us the accident.
The must have taken quite a bit of time and patience to put together. And I’m sure a lot of trial and error. But the overall effect is quite amazing and definitely worth a look. Check it out for yourself below.