One Canon EOS 5D Mark II.  One tripod.  One tape measure.  One protractor.  A couple of friends.  That’s all you need to produce what you see above.  Conscious Minds Productions and director Sam Griffith hired a model and approached Levis (the jeans and clothing company) to pitch an idea to film a person walking across America in stop-motion.  Levis jumped on board and sponsored the shoot.  With over 1.4 million views to date, Levis made a great decision–it’s viral marketing at its finest!  Anyway.. the final product is quite impressive.  The video consists of 2,770 individual still frames, or photographs, bundled together.  The magic of stop-motion and time-lapse photography provide the awesome illusion of movement.  The 14-day shoot and the editing process that followed were extremely tedious and required much patience.  Due to the lack of expensive professional instruments, the team was forced to “MacGyver” their way through it all.  Producer Peter Cote: “We did not have any really expensive instruments to ensure really smooth orbital camera moves.  ‘I created a protractor in Photoshop printed it out and taped a piece of string to it.”  There was a fantastic behind-the-scenes video that accompanied this video on YouTube, but unfortunately it was taken down for some reason or other.  I will be sure to update this space if it pops up again.  Click here to view their their journey in Google Maps.  (Diggin’ the song?  It’s “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.)

[Via Planet5D; MailOnline]