After Effects: Levitation?

[Mike Clasby]

Roto?

Andrew does a time freeze roto, here:

Freezing Time

Not that your clip had time freeze, but the dupped layer and masking should do it. A clean plate is nice. Along with adding a little shadow under the feeties.

Here’s another roto tut:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/oconnell_pete/roto/index.html

[Drzodiac]

Thanks for the input. Im just trying to find the ultimate video levitation. After effects is amazing for tv work. THANK YOU for all your help.

[Lars Director]

If the camera is locked like your example, a real plane and easy way to do this is an ordinary difference key. A single frame (take) without the talent, and a take with the talent. Add a basic shadow and… voilla.

An outdoors shoot makes it a little tricky if the light changes. The angle of the camera points preferable at the horizon, keeping the perspective errors close to not legible at all. And make sure the talent levitates at the exact focus point, it makes the key easier to perform (with some +/- choking if needed at all) and let’s you free to use some d.o.f. to.

best of luck, Lars

[Drzodiac]

Interesting. I was thinking of using a blue rope and chroma key vanishing it out, any ideas how difficult this will be and what issues may arise?

[Lars Director]

The rope’ll be attached to the talent. And with cromakey, this means the chroma being in close proximity to the talen, causing lichting differences in the color that must be separated. So this will include painting / masking /rotoing out parts of the rope. And frankly, if you’re not using a Discreet suite, but good old AFX… removing the rope is a little harder than building a reasonable diff. key.

But, if you feel more comfortable with a chroma shoot, try using a “peter pan rig”. Its a belt connected to 2 or more very thin steel or nylon cables connected to an off screen rig. These cables are so thin that choked matte within a masked range is sufficent to eliminate these cables. It’s relative simple becouse at waist level, theres probably simply clothing (no hair etc as with a vertical approach using a rope).

There’s thousands of way’s to do this, for a simple one I’d do a difference key, for a good one I’d try a peter-pan-rig. An if it’s 35mm SFX, I’d make a storyboard, and hire a Pro Rigger / Gripper to help me come up with a solution.

Good luck!

Remember, 2 day’s thinking it over and coming up with a smart solution is always cheaper than renting 2 day’s of Inferno time, to clean-up afterwards. (or financing a re-shoot)

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You shouldn’t require a blue screen for this effect.

All you need are two shots. One of the backplate on its own and the other with the guy in the shot, with the backplate behind.

The roto shouldn’t be too difficult as the guy is in a static position. I would envision no longer than an hour with perhaps another 30 minutes for contingency. A good roto artist could do it in about 15 minutes.

You’ll need to warp his feet so that his toes ar epointing sort of downwards as he levitates.

For this shot there is a very noticeable ‘bad’ frame on his right shoe just as he lands. The shadow could have been done better.

Finally, shooting with a chroma will introduce issues such as perspective matching with the backplate. And if you don’t have the equipment to do this well on the shoot then it’s going to break during post, with little alternative other than to select a new backplate which is going to take a longer time than roto-ing.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com – Adobe After Effects project files
https://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace

[Drzodiac]

Never thought about the foot warping. I did not want to roto as It seems laborious, but it may be the right way to go! Thanks!