Morphing from drone shot into inside location

[Jack Long]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply. I want to take footage from my drone where the video is showing an aerial view from the drone camera flying into a store front. I would like to take another video with a dslr going into the store front and doing some specific camera movements once inside. I would like to try to morph ( not sure this is the right term ) the two videos together at the doorway so it looks seamless between the two of them.

Appreciate all your help and what you guys do!!!

[Jack Long]

Thanks for the elaboration!

The doors will be open. I’ll try to match the lighting as best as possible, but I’m not too concerned about exposure differences for this project. I’ll also try to color correct with a vector scope as much as possible.

I can match the focal lengths on the cameras and have a gimbal for the DSLR.

I am by no means an expert with this stuff, but I do find it quite enjoyable and love to tinker with these types of projects. Unfortunately, I’m not experienced enough to know the concept I should use in after effects at this point. Do you know of any tutorials out there that maybe I could apply the concept to for this? I would also be okay with trying to splice the video together with some type of cool looking effect to where it doesn’t necessarily have to be seamless.

Appreciate your time and input Dave!

[Greg Gesch]

Hi Jack, you could think about having the door closed and either going through the glass or a sign (or whatever) on the door front – this old VCP tutorial might give you some ideas:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/magic_glass/

You might even consider putting a green screen behind the door and using your DSLR footage (frozen first frame perhaps) to replace it, so the transition is smoother?

[Jack Long]

Hey Greg,

Thanks for the response! I’ll run through the tutorial to see if I can apply it to the project.

Could you explain a little bit more about using the green screen? So I would have the drone fly up to an open door and stop short of going in where there is a green screen. Then try to match the camera move as much as possible with the DSLR at the beginning walking into the shop. I would then mask the door on the drone footage, take a single frame of the door from the DSLR and use corner pin until the transition between the two different camera shots?

At the transition, would I just be trying match the frames as much as possible? I won’t be able to get an exact camera move between the two cameras to match the frames exactly. You think I should try to add some type of camera shake with an effect? Is there any effect tutorial that would look cool and mask the transition? I think the tutorial mentioned in the previous post is a single camera move.

Really appreciate your help and insight!

[Greg Gesch]

Yes what you are saying could be the way to go. If you transition by going through glass or a solid sign that gives you a little leeway in things not exactly matching. The principles in the tutorial with the shimmering effect could be the transition.