Special lightning effect?

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Lighting on vocalist:

Can’t find it anywhere but there was a thread somewhere with a video of a dancer interacting with virtual lights and light streaks that were lighting him up, twirling around him, etc. The point of the thread was that the lighting had to be very carefully planned and that it had to be done practically, not as a post effect, to be believable. So, to really make this work, you’d want to work out the exact way the lights are going to be placed beforehand and have a couple of assistants with bright hand-hend LED lights that can be turned on and off simulating the lighting that will come off the final lights. Then you’d sync the Christmas lights to look like they are the source of the lighting.

Christmas lights:

The most realistic option is to actually do it: Make the words out of Christmas lights on a wall.

Or then you can do it all virtually, which is unlikely to look too convincing. I can’t think of an easy way to create virtual realistic Christmas lights forming words on a wall. Adobe Illustrator path patterns are the first thing that comes to mind that would in any way make this a slightly faster thing. On the other hand’ you’re not likely to see more than the string and the lights, so you could probably make it work with Particular emitter plus Aux system on a motion path.

If you’re lucky, someone has already made a set of photos with the alphabet out of Christmas lights. Or you could do that yourself. And then composite the words letter-by-letter.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Practical effects are the best, however, with a well coordinated shoot you can get away with post effects. You will need to use small led lights to light up your actor and whatever real objects you have in your scene and then coordinate that with the virtual lights in post.
For light effects on text you may want to check out Saber – free plugin from Videocopilot.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Chaernon Adrian]

What about stills? I understand that if I want video I still need AT LEAST some physical lights to switch on and off, but it require at least 2 people and I don`t have, it would also require to actually have the lights and the impossible, I`d like to have these lights light up in different places, for example the legs, the head, etc and a lot of other problems which sadly I can`t do/afford.

I was thinking about still though. Photoshop can do wonders when it comes to compositing and maybe this could be possible with stills and just post effects. I was thinking about taking pictures with proper lighting in front of my green screen and add artificial lights so they only light one part of the subject and turn the other parts of the picture black, I KNOW for sure there was something in After Effects and even Photoshop that could do that.

After I would light up the subject from one small point, instead of using “christmas lights” I could just draw the lyrics on a background wall and blend it so it looks like it was actually written in real life.

I would rather do stills than video since my camera is a bridge made for pictures not for videos. What do you think?

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You could shoot your actor in full light on green screen and then use masks and Levels to simulate darker areas. Do a few tests and see how that works.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Blaise Douros]

https://strangergif.com/