Getting rid of a car in my footage

[Matthew Materazzi]

see, that’s just the thing. I don’t want to replace it with anything other than the street and background that the car is “covering up.” Is this just going to take a tremendous amount of time rotoscoping and then “painting” over the car-shaped hole?
I am fairly new to AE, but I have seen Andrew Kramer’s reel at videocopilot.net and there is a scene with a baseball player walking to the dugout, and Andrew reveals what the original footage looked like, and there is a sign with writing on it near the dugout, etc.. and in his final comp, the sign is totally covered up, looking like a very professional scene. That’s what I would like to achieve with my video in the same regards as to getting rid of the car and just having the street and bg without it.
Thanks for your help,
Matt

Jesus is Lord

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Matt,

Usually when these type of effects are going to be used, the production will shoot the same shot, one with the ‘thing’ and one without the ‘thing (person/car/cantaloupe/etc)’ – then when they need to remove the ‘thing’ from the shot they will use the shot without the object in it. So instead of a big hole, you’ll have the same background.
Andrew’s tutorial works because (if memory serves) because there is part of the video that doens’t have the sign.?

None the less-From the sound of it, you probably were moving when you shot this, so not only is it subject moving, but your background is changing every frame. Not fun. So you can ‘try’ to roto out the car, then try to mask in the matching background. But you may not even have the same background to cover up every shot.

Although the viewing public is going everymore accustom to seeing rotoscoping effects, it’s still a very sophisticated and can take a long time to make it look good.

Hopefully someone might have a good idea on something else you can try, but it would be my recommendation that you find a different way to acheive what you want. Either through editing or different fx.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Matthew Materazzi]

Thanks Todd.
Yeah, I might just have to use the effect I am working on right now, which is basically duplicating the footage and masking around it with a large eliptical mask and bluring and darkening the bottom layer. It still looks sweet, though you can see the outline of a car in the dark. Oh well, I’ll learn for next time. And yes, my vehicle was moving as well. fun fun fun.
Thanks again,
Matt

Jesus is Lord