Disappearing effect and drop

[Edward Troxel]

You need to mask yourself out in some way. You’ll need a background shot without you in it. Then you could use Bezier masking to cut you out of the scene and it could use the background without you in it’s place. Naturally, you’d need to make sure the mask misses the book.

Using chromakey with a greenscreen may be another option.

Edward Troxel

[Mdg_nl]

Depending on what you do with the book you might use this one:

Record a scene with you and the book on it. Draw a vertical line on the scene right in the middel of the position of the book to make it possible to let drop a book from above the upper scene edge (from a window on a higher floor), so the book starts falling out of sight of the camera. Run a few takes with you not on there and letting a book drop. When you disapear use a fade through whit effect (only a few frames long, just for the effect). Select the best take from the ones shot when dropping the book. Cut the start of this scene on the position where the book is about on the hight you held it on just before you disapeared (mind the frames that you loose due to the fade through white effect). You might need to reduce the velocity of the second scene. The book has already velocity on the moment you just drop it. According to the gravity rules it should start falling at a speed of 0. Using a velocity enveloppe this should be possible.

To make this all happen, one should select a good location. A location where it is easy to let drop a book from not too much above the camera border. If the level is too high, the velocity of the book is already that high, that it is not possible anymore to capture the fall on tape.

I used a simmilar technique to let people jump from location A to location B. If you want to see this “act”, you can see it on the web using this link:

https://www.jr-video.nl/images/stories/showcase/clips/mdgsprong.wmv

There you see a “zwarte piet” and our show host in a show where we welcome “Sinterklaas” (what you call Santa). We are first in the local sportdome and we need to “jump” to the harbour where Sinterklaas will arive. We need to go quickly, because we are allmost to late. This all pretending of course. Have fun!