How to do this effect? Shadow dancing differently from person?

[Chris D’asta]

Possibly masking or keying and composite of maybe three pieces of footage. Background. Shadow. Performer. I suppose the lighting could be behind her so she actually doesn’t cast a shadow on that background but she seems pretty well lit from front and her left.

Also possible: her main performance footage was on green screen and all of the action behind her has been composited, that actually seems like an easier route.

Third option, cell or 3D animation, and masking or keying.

Just brainstorming, I would like to attempt to recreate this, thanks for sparking my curiosity!

Chris D’Asta
https://www.nanolabs.co.nr

[Kelly Basden]

I’m not certain what was done to produce this, although “green screening” is a strong possibility.

If you look at the floor to the left of the violinist (our right) there lies her shadow. The shadow on the wall may be hers, but was shot at a different time and imposed into this piece somehow.

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It’s all about the music.

[Joe Campbell]

To me it looks like some fancy cropping

[Joe Campbell]

I am just an amateur though.

[Holden Kim]

I would guess split screen for most of the time because the camera’s on the tripod making split screen effect a lot easier to do. Also the shadow and the performer don’t cross each other except a couple of times, making split screen effect once again easier way to do this. And for a few times they actually cross each other, simple mask and keyframe would do the trick I think.

[Danny Hays]

The shadow appears to be real, look where she is half on the plywood, the shadow looks real here. I think they shot the shadow and then shot her in front of a greenscreen and overlayed that onto the shadow clip. Probably didn’t use Vegas’s keyer as it’s not very good, but with perfect lighting, it is posible it can all be done in Vegas.

[Dave Lozinski]

[Danny Hays] “The shadow appears to be real, look where she is half on the plywood, the shadow looks real here. I think they shot the shadow and then shot her in front of a greenscreen and overlayed that onto the shadow clip.”

To loosely translate to make sure I understand what you’re saying…

1) they shot her in the warehouse dancing, with the camera between her and the shadow so they catch the shadow dancing around on the background and not her.

2) then they shoot her again with a green/blue screen, and then overlay that video on top of the warehouse one.

Correct?

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[Stephen Mann]

Actually quite easily done. No greenscreen needed.
(Note that the real shadow on the floor goes *away* from her dancing shadow.)

Good tripod is required. Lock the camera down and don’t touch it.

Shoot the video of the violin player. Note she is lit from the left and above.
Turn on a 1000-watt flood on the right, throwing her shadow on the plywood.
Shoot again while she does the dance routine.

In editing, you have two video tracks. Use event pan/crop on each event to show only the shadow on the left track and only the player on the right track.

Someone on the Sony forums did this recently using this process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WynnjLwpWr4&feature=player_embedded

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Dave Lozinski]

Steve:

That sounds like a great trick!

However, that doesn’t hold up in the video I posted. If you watch it, there will be several places where her shadow dances differently and overlaps the actual figure. Examples are at the 1:48 and 2:15 marks.

Thoughts?

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[Stephen Mann]

If you don’t overlap the two subjects, you can get the same effect in Vegas with the process I outlined. If you are very patient, you could keyframe a Bexier curve around the foreground person, but just avoid overlapping and you don’t need to worry about it.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com