Black Screen Keyer

[Nhan Nguyen dinh]

Hi Mark, I can’t wait after your message which is very clear and rich and gentle. So I send 2 images of my shooting after uploading
Thanks again
Nhan

[Nhan Nguyen dinh]

Here is my image :
href=’https://i1.creativecow.net/u/101954/nhantestblackbacground1.png’>

a href=’https://i1.creativecow.net/u/101954/nhantestblackbackground2.png’>

Cooki

[David Roth weiss]

Nhan,

Sorry, but there’s no chance at all of keying or rotoscoping this material. The flames simply make that impossible.

I doubt anyone here will disagree.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Nhan Nguyen dinh]

Hi David,
Thanks for your comment.
Anyway, I have got a lot of knowledge from all of you.
Best regards
Nhan

Cooki

[Zane Barker]

I agree compleatly. The fire and that dark hair make it imposible.

Hindsight is always 1080p

[Mark Suszko]

You guys are right, it is mostly impossible, or at least impractical. Where the fire overlaps is the worst problem. If he wanted to play with it, “just for giggles”, as we say, I would suggest this:

Select between 30 and 60 frames of the shot on your timeline, where no fire is in front of the woman, just the dark back behind her. Mark the in and out points on that 1 to 2 second clip. Using the same export dialog you just used to export the stills you’ve shown us, go to File>Export> and look for export as ” Image sequence”. I think it might be under “export using quicktime conversion”.

This will export each frame of the one second section as a separate still image, they should all go into a folder. Use the tif or tga file extension.

Hide Final Cut, or save and close it.

Turn on Adobe Photoshop.

Find that folder you just made. In Photoshop, open the first image in that exported still image sequence. Play with adjusting contrast, brightness, etc. until she looks good and looks distinct from the black in the frame. Now, using the magic wand selection tool, or the manual selection tool, see if you can cut away the black from around the woman. Take your time, get it close and careful. When all the black has been cut away or erased away with the eraser, select the empty area with magic wand, then use the color fill bucket tool to fill it with white or better, chromakey green color. Save the image over itself (same name).

Now, ask yourself how you feel about doing that another 59 times, to make the two seconds. Zoot Alours! Probably you will use foul language, that’s okay:-) Think about how long it may take you to treat the entire shot. You might take up drinking:-)

When the whole folder is processed, it can be re-imported into Final Cut, right over the spot where it was extracted from before, just be sure the still duration for your media bin is set to one frame only. From there, you can do conventional green screen you are already familiar with.

Now, there are tricks in Photoshop that will speed this process along quite a bit, automating much of the process, using recorded automated batch actions to treat the images, fiter them, and the “Extract” tool to speed drawing along the edge of the matte you’re creating is wonderful… but I’m not going to lie to you, even with all of that, this is still going to be torture to accomplish, very tedious, the results only as good as how careful you are in the cutting-out phase. Probably just do 30 frames as a learning exercise and then abandon this effort once you’ve learned what you can and cannot get away with.

This is about all the help I can offer, Bon Chance, or however you say it in France. At least you learned what NOT to do in this case, and now can go on to make fresh new original mistakes:-)

[David Roth weiss]

Frankly Mark, I don’t think it’s worth spending a second to make that work. There’s just no way that will ever be good enough to justify spending the time.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Mark Suszko]

I respect that analysis, David, I really do.

For me, it’s not so bad; I’ve had to do it two or three times, occasionally even with success; once for an entire 30 second spot, where it was the way I applied the “animated cartoon” look I wanted, with the tools I had available. Some of the tries failed because my edges wouldn’t be consistent enough and introduced distracting flickers, but in some cases that’s part of the “cut-out look”.

For some reason, I find roto like this very “zen”: with a full ipod jamming, plenty of drinks and munchies at hand, a capacious bladder and a wacom tablet, I was able to crank out frames for hours without noticing it, just in a trance. But it certainly isn’t for everyone.

I did a spot where the talent, in a medium closeup shot, had a HUGE mole on her upper lip, no kidding, the size of a US postage stamp, like Chaplin’s mustache, but offset. I hand-painted an unholy number of frames for that, TWICE, using the paint operator in old Discreet Combustion, and it was a roaring success; for days the guys and client thought I was a voodoo wizard.

But do I want to do that every week? Heck no. It’s like changing a diaper; you can get good and fast at it, but you’d rather not get so much practice:-)

[Nhan Nguyen dinh]

Hello,
Even if the black screen can replace all tasks of green screen, in my case, it won’t work :
when the character moves her arms, there are many BLACK shadows appearing on her body.
So, you are all quite right, that situation forces me to … surrend.
Thank you very much for the time you spent for me.
Best regards
Nhan

Cooki

[Nhan Nguyen dinh]

HI Dave,
It’s was not a hard lesson, on the contrary it was a very interesting lesson for me. First I dicovered how to import images on the forum from Mark, the need of study rotoscope and different techniques from you etc… I love learning and I feel less idiot each time. Second, I discovered different reactions, different feedbacks from all of you about my impossible question. Third : Creative Cow is a very great invention.
Dave, there is not at all salvage work, two takes I sent to you conform to the original script. Trying to exploit black screen was my fantasia during the post production.
Thanks all of you for your precious advises and informations.
Best regards
Nhan