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How can make some changes in motion pictures?
Hello,
I had a problem and I am hoping that some people in there could help me. I am supposed to edit some films for an Educational/Religious Association. Because of the nature of this association some scenes in which the ladies covering is not complete should be edited. For instance, if one of the actresses wears a sleeveless dress the arms are to be covered. And this should be done very professionally in a way that viewers do not notify.
Obviously, to do this is not possible by editing programs, so I exported some parts of the film as TGA Sequence and took still images into Photoshop and edited the frames in Photoshop. That was a difficult way and the result was not interesting, that was because the subject was moving and, the camera angle and the scene light were changing constantly. Therefore the edited images in Photoshop were seen in a form of snaps so the outcome was not satisfactory.
Now I would like to know if there is someone who have had similar experience and could provide me a better solution. Is there any professional software for this job?
I wonder if you have any information and could help me in this matter.
I would like to thank you for your time in advance.
Regards
Shahram -
5 Replies
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In the interests of time I would recommend resizing and cropping out the offending appendages. The only other alternative I can think of to (relatively) quickly fix this is to pull a matte of the skin tone and fill it with a non-skin tone color. It would be hard to match the color of the clothing realistically, and it would probably just look like a miscolored arm… but at least it’s not technically an arm!
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Hi Darby
Thanks for your reply, I will work on your suggestion.
I hope to get more suggestion. -
I would think that if this “Educational/Religious” organization didn’t specify these restrictions until after the shoot, it would be fair to expect them to be responsible for the cost of reshooting.
In the long run, it’d be quicker (possibly even cheaper) than trying to fix this in post. -
Shahram, without seeing the footage, my best suggestion would be to replace the video with an alternate shot, meaning – keep the audio track, but use different video, possibly cut from another part in the movie (maybe you could even do something fairly simple, like flip it horizontally, or… time reverse?). I’ve seen this done even in fairly high budget films, especially when edited for broadcast (blood & gore in horror films, usually, or brief nudity). If 1/2 of the film has a woman baring her arms, then that’s not going to work, but if you have a few segments to fix, you could cut back to a scene in another portion of the film (if it’s not repeated within a few moments, it shouldn’t be that obvious), video that matches the look and feel of the rest of the shot but really is not of consequence, like a pan shot of the surroundings, etc., or import video that doesn’t belong in the film, but that you color/grain match to fit. You probably have to work with what you’re given, so if that idea doesn’t cut it, the only other way I can think of is to simply edit out those portions, which of course, won’t work if they’re essential to the story.
Good luck… although I don’t agree with the censorship to begin with – it’s your right if you’re not infringing on someone’s copyright and distributing their work illegally.
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Rhett, thanks for your comment, I already use this method, I repeat, zoom and replace some scenes but as you know it doesn
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