[John_ogroat]

Hi,

The new CS3 production suite comes with OnLocation, which is meant for real time preview and HDD capture with a camcorder. Im not sure if it works with analogue sources, depends on your capture card I guess, and I only presume it lets you tweak your levels on the fly…
John

[John_ogroat]

Hmm quite tricky, could be easier if the effect was takin into consideration before the shoot,

If the face is fairly still in the shot, then i would save out a frame, open in photoshop, and on a new layer manually paint in black and white a matte. That is, ‘spray paint’ the face white where you want the flash to occur (presumably from the direction of the gun, eg if it is from the right then paint white highlights on the right of the face, right of nose, etc..) leave other parts black, and use blended greys in between.

then, in AE create a new solid that flashes for however long.. once for a single shot, lots for a machine gun etc.>animate opacity on the layer, use ‘hold’ keyframes to stop the layer from fading smoothly between flashes to get a more jerky animation.

then, bring in your photoshop matte, and place it above the flash layer in timeline. in timeline window change the flashing solid layer’s track matte to ‘photoshop pic LUMA'(photoshop has to be above it, and make sure the eye symbol is unticked so we dont see that layer).

What this does is make the flashing layer only visible where the track matte is white, and invisible where the matte is black. semi transparent in-between.

at least thats how i’d try it, not that i have had to do it before.

hope it helps,

gd luck

John

[John_ogroat]

a thousand ways to do this. You really need to start with a sketch of what you want to make before you open up AE.

A simple solution:

design a clock face in photoshop,

as a sepatate file design your clock hands

import separatly into AE

change the anchor points (pivot point) of you clock hands so that they are in the centre of your clock.

keyframe animate your clock hands to rotate. to get the timing right, first decide how long you need to count down.

e.g for 60 minutes, divide 360degrees by 60. this answer will tell you how many degrees of rotation are needed per minute.

you can then animate the clock hands to rotate by x-amount every minute. If you want the hands to move smoothly use normal keyframes, for jerky ‘ticks’ each minute, use Hold keyframes.

…….at least thats where i’d start, but i’m a newbie myself. As Dave said there’s pleanty of ways to achieve the desired effect. sketch it on paper first so you know what to try and build in AE.

[John_ogroat]

Thanks a lot guys,

I think I’ll take your advice and do it in Max, It’ll involve learning how to work partical systems, but better sooner rather than later 😉

Cheers,
John

[John_ogroat]

hmm seems like a tough one,

Would a morph into a different, black actor do the job, or does it need to be the same white actor, only black?

If the actors facial shape needs to stay the same,and if you want to be very long winded, maybe making a 3D replica of the actors facial features, and then colour it as black skin, maybe by mapping real black skin onto the 3d model, then overlaying it on AE and animating it to fade up to say 70% opacity…

If the actor is moving/talking or the camera is moving, then this approach would be a very big undertaking.
A locked off shot with no motion would be easier.

Probably not feasable, but interesting?

I think I’d go with the morph. If the actor is involved in action, then I think I’d tell ure client to quit dreaming, or phone up ILM 🙂

John