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HandCrank Camera Look in “The Illusionist”
In the early scenes of the “The Illusionist” the magician as a child
wanders upon an old magician in the road who does some tricks and then disappears.The footage seems to be fluctuating as if shot by an old vintage hand crank camera.
Upon closer observation, there are several transparent layers at the top and bottom of frame
that appear to be several layers that of varying opacity and blurred.Anyone done this before?
Tips?
Can these be created in AE or should I start in PS, one layer at a time?Thnx,
SherwoodG5 Dual 2.5 GHz
6G Ram OSX 4.8
Sata drives
Final Cut Studio 5.1.1, Logic Audio 7.1
PS CS2, AE CS2 -
5 Replies
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Just a side note. Tony Scott and some others are shooting handcranked but with modern cameras and stocks. Like in Man on Fire. You can get an ARRI 435 modded so that you can turn the motor with a crank. So they do that and purposefully crank it “not very smooth” for an extreme effect. But just pointing out it doesn’t need to be an “old” camera.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
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Can you be more clear about what these transparent layers are? How can you see them if they are transparent? What do they do?
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This might be kinda obvious but it seems like a few adjustment layers for time, levels, and a faint black strobe, all pulsing at the right times should get you were you want to be. Im kind of curious about this now too though. if i figure something out i’ll post back.
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After closer examination, I created a comp in AE 720×480 w Transparent b/g – 30 sec’s.
New Solid Layer – Sepia type color, turn on Action/Title safe guides, pen tool drew vignetting vertical sides and horizontal top/bottom – random shape.
In timeline, every 10 frames, adjusted “Mask feathering” with Opacity around 70.
Copy and pasted that layer, changed the color slightly, then altered the shape (keyframes) of the new mask and the mask feathering to be dif numbers every 10 frames on this layer with a slightly dif opacity.
Making sure that my Opacity and mask feathering numbers are the same at the beginning and the end in case I want to loop the mask later.
Continuing this process varying the shape of the mask, more transparency (clearer) as the mask encroaches on the frame, less transparency (more opaque) as the layer masks shape move into action safe.
When I was done with all the layers, I opened each layer and copied the mask feathering keyframes
and then pasted them inbetween the other keyframes, offset, so the movement happened fluctuating
twice as much.Basically created a 30 second template to put on any desaturated and sepia colorized footage.
It gives the impression of a funky crank camera with semi bad glass with variable light hitting
the lens. Looks very close to footage in “The Illusionist”.G5 Dual 2.5 GHz
6G Ram OSX 4.8
Sata drives
Final Cut Studio 5.1.1, Logic Audio 7.1
PS CS2, AE CS2
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