usher Song : Edit Technique

[Brandon Eastman]

Just spit balling here, but maybe the extras dancing around him were told to slow their motions while Usher danced normally? Or, like you mentioned, they blended shots of a master, usher dancing through by himself, and one of extras dancing by themselves in one cohesive shot.

[Mark Suszko]

The simplest way to handle this today is with a motion control camera rig, which lets you repeat the camera motions perfectly, over multiple takes. So you’d have a pass with just the background dancers in action, a pass with foreground dancers in action, and a pass for just Usher himself in the middle-ground, nobody else in the shot. You then composite the three layers. There might also be some rotoscoping of Usher’s layer to isolate him from the background, OR, thanks to the repeatability of the motion control camera moves, you could stick Usher and the camera rig in a green screen stage and do his layer that way. It rather depends on the shooting budget and logistics more than the technical.

If you’re trying to emulate the technique for your own project, the motion-control rigs are expensive. Using portable green screens and multiple passes in layers might be your easiest solution. Also, if you can shoot very wide in 4K, you can then have some extra margin to re-time and re-position layers in the final composite, adding or changing camera moves synthetically. What you’re doing is trading expensive time on the set location for less expensive (theoretically) time spent putting it together in post. Many people and props etc. for many takes, on location, vs. one under-paid guy in the edit bay:-)

[Guri Singh]

Thanks for the positive replies.

Yeah, I want to shoot for my own project on 4k. Motion-control rig will be
expensive for sure.
I also don’t want to use the Green screen as using in between the some
sequence always waste time. If, I only use the background dancers & usher
in between as same pattern.
Suppose, One block shot for Background dancers like 100 fps & other block
shot for Usher like 30-40 fps then I blend both on editing table. Will I get
the desired results what I’m looking for…!!

Thanks

[Mark Suszko]

Yes and no. Depending on the blending modes you use, it may work but likely will give away some double-images. You’ll probably wind up having to rotoscope or mask some or all of the characters. The green screen is the way to avoid that job, or at least make the roto job go faster.

[Guri Singh]

Thanks Mark,

Yeah I do have confusion regarding the blending modes if its give me the
perfect shot after blending diff FPS.
If I try this then surely share with you my experience

Rgds