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Adding Some Life to Still Images
Hello all,
I’m curious about how some of you approach the following. When you’re mixing live footage with stills, how do you give the stills some life? For example, there is an noticeable difference between shooting some footage of a still life and taking a still photo of that same still life. The lie footage will have some grain, slight plays of light etc. A still will feel just that – still.
I ask as I am working on a project that contains some 3D. I am thinking of rendering to layers and then adding some noise and jitter to the shadow layer and see if that does anything. We’ll see ho that turns out. In the meantime, I’d like to hear what others are doing. Any plug-ins that solve this, or simply a “magic” combination of noise and jitter?
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3 Replies
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When we shoot spots, If I need a BG plate that is a lock off, I won’t bother bringing the motion cams and trying to shoot it, I’ll just grab still photos with an SLR cam. Then like you said, lay it in with a touch of noise. I’ve done it many times and you can’t tell it’s a still photo. But this is usually for a BG with moving elements in the FG so the eye is diverted from really noticing.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Agreed. (about noise).
The best thing you can do is make sure your still matches for color, contrast, luminance, gamma, etc. Tweak it with filters (or psd) until it looks perfect sitting up against the footage.You can get a lot of mileage out of subtle animated changes in lighting, like maybe creating a simulated gobo out of fractal noise overlaid with the ‘add’ transfer control with opacity set to next to nothin’. (maybe just 3-8%.) Basically, see if you can mimic some moving shadows. Keep it simple and subtle, though. If the viewer “sees” the changes, you’ll probably lose the effect.
If you’re working with graphics, you can often achieve this without even animating, just by getting your flat colors to have a little variance in character by lightly overlaying a subtle texture or wash.
-Greg
Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
Great stuff. You’re both basically doing what I’ve been doing but always good to hear what others are up to. The piece I am working on now has “real” shots, combinations of 3D and real and still 3D shots. It will have a very stylized look to it so shouldbe pretty easy to carry things over through all formats.
I did have one thought that I think I’ll try out. For matching a grain/noise pattern to a specific camera, I was thinking of simply shooting some black or lens cap and then using that as an overlay on the still footage. Might be interesting. Kind of in the same way you record the ambiance of a room for audio.
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