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Complicated Pleasantville Effect
Hi there.
Having shot everything with a nice warm red feel as there’s lots of red apples in the shot, the director has just had an apiphany. Yup – let’s make everything black and white apart from the apples.
Problem is, when I go through the color-corrector limit effect, everything gets picked up as well as the apples – her lips, the grass, her hands, everything has a red feel to it – and therefore gets involved in some way or another.
Ok, everything’s maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but after about 4 hour of trials, I’m pretty sure I can’t get a color selection that’ll make just the apples red and everything esle black and white.
With various garbage mattes, crops etc, I can get a lot of shots into a good enough state, but there’s various moving shots which are a bit of a mare to deal with. I guess I could key frame crops and garbage mattes to sort this – but I’m kinda hoping there’s a quicker way to do this.
Any Yoda like people out there willing to help out someone who’s finally getting to grips with FCP and wants to spread his wings?
In advance, I thank you (read like Yoda).
John
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
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11 Replies
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There is an easier and quicker way and you can find it here.
https://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_pleasantville_look.html -
Hi,
Thanks for the reply, but apart from using the 3-way rather than the plain colour corrector, that’s what I’m currently doing. But as there’s so many other items on screen that are the same colour as the apples, it’s not as effective.
Thanks anyway, I’ll persevere for the meantime.
John
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
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[John Steventon] “But as there’s so many other items on screen that are the same colour as the apples, it’s not as effective.”
I would most likely take this into After Effects at this point to have a lot more masking abilities.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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There’s simply no way around tracking a very precise matte to constrain the color info to just the apple. Best if the footage is progressive and not interlaced. Of course, it goes without saying, that this would have been easier with pre-production planning to turn this into a visfx shot, For instance, paint the apple blue for separation and then alter the color in post. The tracking work can be done in Commotion, After Effects, Combustion, etc. It can also be done in some Avids with the Intraframe Paint (Animatte) features as well as with some of the FCP matte tools, like those from CHV.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
John,
Walter is right, but if you don’t use AE, take a look at Silhouette Roto at SilhouetteFX. It is fairly easy to learn, not expensive and works right inside FCP. Most excellent Roto tool.
Have a wonderful day.
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I’d agree with Oliver that you should use your compositing software’s tracking feature on a per shot basis. Personally I’d do this with Eyeon’s Fusion, but I guess it’s the same in other programs: assign a tracking marker to every apple then attach the same roughly apple-shaped mask to each tracker. You’d go mad if you manually rotoscoped every apple.
Marc
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Welcome to the wonderful world of rotoscoping! Before computers, matte artists had to literally trace each mat one frame at a time onto tracing paper. Now that we do it on computers, it’s a little less labor intensive, but not much.
If you have Motion or After Effects, both have good mask tools that can be used to cut your mattes. If not, take a look at Silhouette Roto.
Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com -
Sounds like some complicated matte work. As the boys say, you need to rotoscope AKA cut out a new matte for every frame. It’s tedious, and maybe something you don’t have time to do. Fortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that specialize in doing this stuff. Sometimes, you can even get an eager student to help you out.
This might be too tough for you if you have little experience with mattes, might want to sub-contract the job – watch and learn the process – and do the roto work yourself next time.
Fully agree that pre-production could have solved your problems where you can plan on having only the apples in the room as red objects. All other objects would be colored other than red. Using the color corrector’s limit effects function is tough unless you have very few color tones in the shot. Typically, you’ll need to do a bit of garbage matting in the very least.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
[Kevin Monahan] “Sounds like some complicated matte work. As the boys say, you need to rotoscope AKA cut out a new matte for every frame. It’s tedious, and maybe something you don’t have time to do. Fortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that specialize in doing this stuff. Sometimes, you can even get an eager student to help you out.”
I think we might be assuming too much about the complexity. Depending on the movement and just how crisp or fuzzy the edge blend needs to be will determine this. These tasks are hardly ever total frame-by-frame painted rotoscope jobs any more. Most effects artists using rotosplining (traveling mattes). The spline points generally have to be moved or tweaks every few frames and that generally does the trick. This sort of thing can and has been done quite readily with tools like Avid’s animatte and other keyframable mattes with 20+ points.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Hi all,
To give an idea of how complicated things have got here, there is one shot where the guy’s juggling 3 apples – and it’s in front of Christmas lights (loads of red) under sodium lighting (ok, orange, but it’s still causing issues) and with scabby looking apples.
Yee hah.
And to Marc, who suggested i’d end up screaming – the men in white coats have been called.
I think I’ve managed to get around it using a (time expensive) combination of garbabe mattes, shape masks and sticking in a keyframe every three frames.
Problem is, they’ve still not Ok’d the edit – and i know they’ll want to change 50% of the shots, meaning I’ll have to do it all over again.
Referring to a post I put in a few weeks ago, this is one reason I’m easily frustrated by FCP lack of memory of a render. Though at least it remembers the keyframing!
I’ll let you all know how I got on, when I know.
Thanks for you help.
John
John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.
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