[Blaise Douros]

Even that wouldn’t necessarily be any harder, if you can get a good track. You just place it on the helicopter, and use the XYZ positioning properties to move the text backwards in 3D space. The camera does the heavy lifting once it’s tracked, so you just have to get it positioned correctly in 3D space.

[Blaise Douros]

Sounds like you need to create a Multicam sequence.

[Blaise Douros]

As a matter of fact, I just brought this GIF into AE to test it, and I can easily get the 3D Camera Tracker to see the helicopter. Check the “Detailed Analysis” check box.

Here’s proof: 12296_helicoptertest.mp4.zip

[Blaise Douros]

I think that clip could be fine in the 3D Camera Tracker. I’ve made clips like this work before, I don’t see why this one wouldn’t. The helicopter doesn’t appear to be moving counter to the camera’s movement–if it was, THAT would screw up the 3D Camera Tracker, but it appears to be holding mostly still, so you might get good adhesion.

Otherwise, planar tracking in Mocha would probably do the trick.

[Blaise Douros]

Was the song being sung to a recording? If so, you can just multicam all nine cameras to the recorded track. Otherwise, you can right click each multicam sequence, Open In Timeline, and copy-paste and manually sync each three-camera group into the primary multicam sequence you want to use.

If the song wasn’t being sung to a recording, don’t bother–humans introduce too many tempo and pitch variations to live performances for this to be truly a useful way to edit.

[Blaise Douros]

Connect directly to your monitor via HDMI.

[Blaise Douros]

You say you’re new to VFX–unfortunately, there’s no easy way to do this. It will require learning a few different techniques in After Effects.

I’ve done something similar with After Effects’ 3D camera tracker. If you have a blacked out background, or mask off only the subject, the 3D camera tracker can sometimes be used to reverse-engineer a matchmove. Then you create a patch in Photoshop, place it on the plane of the object, and do some blending work. Here’s an example of this: 12230_ultramerino145ziptvfxbreakdown.mp4.zip

Mocha, in conjunction with After Effects, is also ideal for this kind of thing–it exports corner pin data that you can use to track a patch you’ve made in Photoshop onto a planar track.

Finally, is there any way you can do this effect practically with makeup effects on-set? It’s always great to just get it in-camera if possible.

[Blaise Douros]

No–if you’re changing anything about the file, that means re-rendering. Just bring the clip in, replace the audio, and export to a lossless format like ProRes 422.

[Blaise Douros]

Ohh, this is a GREAT trick. I’m going to remember this one.

[Blaise Douros]

It can still create problems if two closely-placed mics, one of which is out of phase, are picking up the same audio.