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Cleaning up a car on a street in a wide shot.
I recently shot a music video and was not able to secure permits for the street we used. Thus when it came shoot day a car decided to park on the street getting into our wide shot of the street.
I know i can clean this up frame by frame in in photoshop but would like to know if there is an easier way i can do this in AE 7.
Our main character walks infront of the car and so i know i will have to roto over him but do not know how i can do this in AE.
A sample of the shot i need to clean up can be seen here http://www.ospois.com
it is the last shot in the trailer.Thanks
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11 Replies
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You’ll need to paint out the car, motion track the painted that new painted section back into the shot, then roto out the subject. Not hard, just time consuming.
This would be such a perfect project for my AE/Combustion class! I’ve got about 4 students that will need a project to work on fairly soon. I’d like to see them do something like this. Plus, it’s free labor.
Can you get in touch with me and perhaps transfer the clip to us so we can do some digital paint on it? Unless, that is, you really want to do it yourself.
Let me know!
Harry
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I would just do some slight blurring on the plate of the car, or motion track a fake plate on to it.
No sense in doing all that hard work when you don’t have to. You were shooting on a public street and I think as long as you blur out any identifying marks that will deal with any legal issues.
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I was assuming that he wanted remove the entire car from the shot.
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Yes, I should’ve read his post more closely. It would seem he didn’t want any vehicles there.
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Yes, I should’ve read his post more closely. It would seem he didn’t want any vehicles there.
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If you do want to replace the car, couldn’t you just do a one frame (Comp>Save Frame>File) Clone-fix of just that area covered by the car (or go take a pic of just that area), then motion track that onto the clip. You’d have to roto the actor, but one frame should be OK.
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That is what i originally had in mind however we shot the project with a swing-shift lens and a mini35 adapater…therefore we have an awkward plane of focus and random grain for each frame.
On top of it all i dont have access to that equipment anymore and matching up a single shot to all those frames would be close to impossible. -
Shayder’s first suggestion would be the obvious quick-fix, but it sounds least desirable (unless you use a total inside reference as License plate number like “OS POIS” or the Director’s name or Your Name… that’s crazy forget it…
Hey, I don’t know about awkward planes of focus, but does that mean you can’t create a cloned still (in PS) of the Background that’s being blocked by the car? Is it mostly the grain your worried about? If so, this from Andrew Kramer if for Blemish removal, but it shows how to make a matte to only effect specific areas of the screen then add grain as needed (he smoothes, then adds grain):
AE has Add Grain, and Match Grain, although I’ve never used either in this serious of a situation.
Gives you some more to think about anyway.
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Mike,
thanks for your help. w/ the grain i am worried about its randomness…w/ a static plate in the car’s place the grain on the pic would not match up w/ the moving grain in the video.
but yea…the license plate one is definitely a possibilities. as crazy as it sounds that could very well work as a last resort. -
I would consider grabbing the frame where he’s just about to get up and bringing this into photoshop. Clone out the car and re-create the nature strip as best as you can. Now bring the whole top section back into the original footage and use the bluring to your advantage. I would add maybe another 1-2pixel blur to the whole background and slowly blend around the half way mark where the background become foreground. Difficult to explain but the idea is the whole background is retouched, not just the part where the car was. This means you won’t have a small patch of unmatched footage as the whole top section is basically a still. Use the depth of field to aid you in bluring the line where the background reconnects to the live-action foreground. Now add/match grain to the new background to match it to the live-action forground. Roto out the actor and cross your fingers.
There is really no hard and fast rule that will result in a perfect result. Without seeing full-res footage it’s difficult to say what will be the best way but all the above suggestions are worth a try depending on how much time you have.
Either way I would use the stylistic bluring you already make use of to your advantage to cover up the paint-out and reblending of the footage. This would be way harder if you’re trying to kill an infocus foreground object 😉
Good luck – look forward to seeing what you end up with.
Alex
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