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How to do THIS effect…
Alright, I don’t know what this effect is called, and if it can even be done in After Effects.
The movie “The Parent Trap,” starring Lindsay Lohan, she plays the 2 main characters, at the same time. She has to do things like, say “hi” to herself, and give herself a hug…
I want to do something similar…except I want to film myself 5 times…once playing drums, once playing guitar, once singing, and once playing bass. I then want to combine all 5 together into one so it looks like I am a one man band, playing 5 instruments at the same time.
Any help would be appreciated:
Like..how to do the effect..or even what the name of the effect is, because I can’t think of what that would be called.–jchaike
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8 Replies
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rotoscoping is your only choice unless you have a greenscreen. If for say you just wanted multiple copies of your actor to talk to eachother, the classic and easiest way is to film him in front of an still set standing at different nonintersecting points along the x axis of the screen, do this however many times you have space for, and just cut up the shots, composite, and move the seam accordingly.
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At a limited level, it’s easy. I made a film with 4 versions of myself; 3 on a couch, 1 free standing. You can find where a young man hands himself a cup of water, etc. on YouTube, and he does a good job. It is possible to make this complex, but I did it the easy way.
Basically, for the couch shot, I put a camera in place (locked down), filmed each role with dialog(made 3 runs at each, as I was shaving /cutting hair and changing, so there was no going back), then it was VERY easy to lay the 3 “characters” together with a mask between each. I fixed a little of the dialog problems using time remapping, and it worked out pretty darn good. I did have to combine 2 separate versions of dialog together, and do a little rotoscoping because the middle version held his hands wide for a “fish story”. I was able to find a place where the position was almost exact, and then morphed them slightly…
Anyway, if there is no REAL interaction, it’s easy!
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where can i find this video?
Is there a tutorial I can follow to accomplish something similar?–jchaike
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It’s not an effect, just compositing. And it requires careful setup.
If you don’t expect one shot of you to overlap with any other, you just shoot each one (with you standing in very specific positions, locked down camera), drag ’em all into a comp and draw a rectangular mask around each shot to cut out the excess.
Now if you expect overlap, you need to shoot on well-lit, saturated greenscreen so you can cut out the background behind each shot of yourself. Drag those into a comp, key out the green for all shots except the guy in the back maybe.
If you don’t shoot on greenscreen, you need to roto, which means draw a moving mask with the pen tool around yourself for each shot. It’s as painful as it sounds, especially for the length of a song. Use greenscreen and key.
But do a quick test first, so you nail down the problems before setting up the instruments and doing the whole song.
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you can find where a young man hands himself a cup of water, etc. on YouTube, and he does a good job
Any chance you could provide a link to that? I’d like to take a look. Thanks!
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Usually are used different techniques for each shot.
Two shot: you could use the half and half technique. Shot the person in one side and again, in the other side. In AE mask one side to reveal the other and that’s all. Easy.
Many people interacting in the same shot: You can use doubles with masks. At least for the ones that are far away. You can use this technique also for the “hug” scene. Just avoid the face of the fake one.
If your camera need some movement, there are two techniques.
Motion control and panning.
I guess motion control will be out of your budget.
If you are going to move the camera over a tripod, just check that your CCD is centered in the motion axis of your tripod. Then use the Two shot technique. The thing is, your camera movement is not going to be exactly the same in every shot, but with some motion tracking you can adjust it.
Difficult techniques to be explained in a single post. But you can get an idea of your options.
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I’m thinking of trying a simple pan shot (inspired by this thread) by rigging my tripod with some sort of makeshift “stops” to get as precise as possible. I’m working a zero budget, so just some sort of L-shaped device that will control the start and end points of my pan…maybe even just markings on the walls just outside of the viewable areas.
I’m really not too concerned with the timing because I can always timewarp a tad to make sure I get from A to B in the same amount of time on each take. I might even throw in a zoom or two, by God!
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This isn’t quite the one; I found a few others as “clone”… really, as described above, if you don’t interact with yourself as others, easy. If you try to pan the camera and have yourself as the front man of the band with other people… really hard; green screens, roto & all
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=after+effects+clone&search_type=&aq=f
okay… I uploaded this short version of mine, revealing the limitations of the hi-8 I shot this on, and some problems… there’s a long backstory, and it’s not great, but wanted you to know that I wan’t just talking out my a**. I had to laugh, because it showed how I act the same way over & over…
anyway, hope this is just among friends!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdTHSu7AR2g
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