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Breathing corpse problem: how to freeze just one side of a frame, while the other side keeps playing?
I’m editing a short in which an actor plays dead. Obviously, the actor sometimes had to breathe; and obviously I can’t show a breathing corpse. Unfortunately, there’s a take I’d like to use where he’s perceptibly breathing. It’s a static (tripod) shot in which the dead body is lying on the right side of the frame, while the non-corpse actors are talking on the left side.
How might I achieve the appearance that the body isn’t breathing? There are moments where he doesn’t breathe for a couple of seconds. Could I freeze or loop just one side of the frame? If so, how? (E.g. some combo of freeze frame and overlay…?) Or, would that look way more distracting than a breathing corpse? Any other solutions within FCP 7?
Thanks.
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9 Replies
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Duplicate the picture on a new layer (video track), and use the “8 points Garbage Matte” (Effects > Matte) to isolate the corpse.
rafael -
Thanks, I’ll try to figure that out.
Before I do, any idea whether using that effect to freeze part of a frame would look weird and draw attention to itself?
This is shot on DLSR indoors so there’s no moving light to consider (or much graininess).
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A soft edge on the top layer will help hide the “seam” between the two. If the camera moves at all you will have a tough time making this work, but if it’s locked-off it might be easy.
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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As David say, make the edge soft.You can try as well to go to the matted portion with a dissolve.
You say that the camera is static, so with all that and with some action on other area of the frame, may work well.
rafael -
Thanks folks. I appreciate it. Time to go suffocate an actor.
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That’ll work too. Much more realistic. 😉
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looping a section of the film, or really running it fwd, then backward, then fwd again,
is much better than a freeze.
the frame maintains a breath of life… not in the corpse, but in the grain etcnick
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Good idea re: the loop. I used a simple Four-Point Garbage Matte on one of the shots I needed, and it looks good even as a freeze frame. Breathing begone!
Unfortunately, when I turned to the shot where it’s most needed, and there’s a problem–another actor keeps getting in the way of the corpse I need to freeze (or loop). So, I need the matte to change shape during the same take.
I don’t have After Effects or Motion. Rather than key the hell out of it to make the matte travel around, I’m wondering if I can just razor the same clip in a few places and have a differently-shaped hole every few seconds. Would that look weird? How would I deal with this in FCP 7?
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simplest approach, IMO, is to use a THIRD layer to deal with the fg actor.
you’ll need to move up from a 4-point garbage matte to 8 or even 16,
and keyframe it as the actor crosses.if the body is motionless enough during the crosses, then you are right, you wont need super accurate mattes.
nick
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