Wrong angle shot!

[Shane Ross]

50 large sounds right. Then do it like Conan O’Brien does…

Shane
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[Mark Suszko]

There is not any real hope for a convincing angle change there, sorry.

But you can work around this.

Use the second shot of him looking into the camera, freeze that at a good-looking frame, then turn it into your opening title card, by transitioning it to a graphic and adding a suitable title like:

“CEO So-and-so, on the new product rollout”

Put some dynamic music sting under it, you know the type. You could grab three stills in different poses or three soundless motion clips of him in mid-briefing, and put those, scaled down to around 20 percent, into one side (maybe a vertical stack down the left side) of the frame, and the larger still takes up 2/3 on the right side of the frame, a picture-in-picture effect.

Then transition to the side-on shot, and it should all look intentional. You could even put the audio for “hi, guys” under that still, but I wouldn’t.

You can play with the still a little: mask it to cut him away from the background and turn the background area monochrome or all white or something, do a scaling up or down of the cut-out of the guy at the same time.

There have been several times in my life where I covered a mistake like this and it wound up looking like an intentional aesthetic choice, and people loved it.

[Mark Suszko]

Like this:

The three little screens are motion video without sound, maybe offset by a few frames for a progressing filmstrip effect. You could colorize them or make them monochrome… there are a million variations on that …

A slow zoom move with the big image and flying in the title bar lower third with music, and it all starts to look like you planned it that way:-)

Be sure all other graphics and “looks” remain consistent for this to be believable as your aesthetic choice.

I made all this in fcp7 with one trip out to photoshop to cut a mask around the big still and layer that over the same shot with a blend mode/opacity change. If you took this project into Apple Motion you could REALLY sex it up more, but this should work okay as-is. Get it up and down in a few seconds and move on.

[Shane Ross]

Now THAT is how you use editing to solve this situation!

Shane
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[Mark Suszko]

Thanks Shane, that’s high praise indeed!

I don’t mean to brag, but after I edited the Zapruder film, everybody was convinced it was just one guy…:-)

Actually, it’s just okay for something thrown together – now that I look at it, I should have moved the big guy square lower and scaled it up a touch, to make it more even with the top and bottom edges of the triptych on the side. But I was just messing around. If it was for money, I’d have been more careful.

[Shane Ross]

But this was just a proposal…something you aren’t making money from. You yourself said not to do that:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/877626

(hee)

This was a good quickie to show someone the power of editing. And graphics

Shane
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[Mark Suszko]

It’s not a spec, it’s a pro bono – I get enjoyment from helping others and sharing my expertise. Paying it forward for my old TV teacher Paul Delair back in junior high.

Plus, I get so much help and knowledge from you and other COW members, I feel obligated to help someone else if I think I can. I know that sound of desperation, having been on the other end of it plenty of times. So if I can play Batman once in a while for someone here, hey, I’ll go for it.

[Shane Ross]

Hey, that’s why I post so much…I was helped out here by Jerry Hofmann and Tom Wolsky and a host of others.

Nice going Batman.

Shane
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[Andrew Kimery]

1. Great suggestion for turning lemons into lemonade, Mark.

[Mark Suszko] “I don’t mean to brag, but after I edited the Zapruder film, everybody was convinced it was just one guy…:-)”

2. Best. Sentence. Ever.

[Joseph Owens]

Thanks a lot guys. That just cost me $50,000. See if I ever buy you drinks at the NAB after party again.

I might suggest a large, slightly out of focus black&white (maybe halftone-process) background behind the
CEO-guy. Have no idea how much that cost the Scott brothers for “The Good Wife” opener… (which I admire a lot)

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.