Larry S. evans ii
Forum Replies Created
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Very neat idea. Did it give you torn looking edges?
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
You might want to look at the CC Ball Action plug-in under Simulate in Effects. I think that comes closest to what you are looking for.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
That “poof” is generally obtained from ignitig a phosporous squib, which can be obtained at magician and theatrical supply stores. Depending on where you are located, however, there may be limits on what you can buy because it is dangerous, poisonous, and explosive, and may not be obtainable without the proper license.
If you do succeed in getting hold of it, I would recommend shooting against a black screen, something like velvet or velour that will not create artifacts from the flash. This will give you a cleaner comp than greenscreen.
After Effects has it’s own particle toolkits; while they may not be as robust as Combustions, they can with some tweaking provide serviceable explosions.
Alternatively, you might take a look at detonationfilms.com. They have a number of these kinds of effects available for free download (the server can be very slow) as well as other pyro available on DVD at a modest fee (under $20 plus shipping). I’ve used them in various projects because of the safety and liability issues involving real explosives, and depending on the shot they are quite acceptable.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
I came to After Effects when it was first introduced, and most of us in those days saw it as “animated Photoshop”.
It’s still similar in many ways, but bear in mind that to make a convincing animation, you’ll need to do all those little tricks in After Effects that you do in Photoshop to make it look like the print is actually on the side of the truck -but they’ll also have to MOVE.
For example, consider if the truck side has rivets that show through the vinyl. When one first approaches something like this, they usually think, oh, I can paint on a rivet pattern in the Photoshop image, and then just track it. This can work in some cases, where there is not a fundamental change in the angle of lighting or perspective.
Depending on how “real” you want it to look, though, a better approach might be to create a visual displacement map for the sign layer, and track that so it also follows the truck. Corner pinning will handle the perspective shifts, and you can adjust the lighting if required.
The previous post suggests a “canned shoot” where you control both the camera angles and clearances of the truck. That’s a great idea, especially for the first project, since otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to mask the print to go behind things and people. In either case, it’s a great idea to have a “clean plate” of the locales you are shooting in.
Ideally a clean plate has the same lighting conditions as the actual shoot, and little moving traffic (cars, people, birds, etc.). You can then position the clean plate on a layer above the video and use masking to eliminate background areas while giving the illusion that a lamppost or street sign is in front of the truck. A locked down tripod shot of both the clean plate and truck work best for this. Moving shots are possible, but they are best attempted by those who have some kind of motion control rig.
That is, if you wanted to have a shot of the truck coming down the street toward you and then pan the camera to follow it as it passes by and heads away in the other direction, you would want to be able to shoot your clean plate using EXACTLY the same movements at EXACTLY the same time. Computer controls are really good for that, human operators not so good. So keep that in mind when doing your shots.
Of course, you could do the shot with one pass, and then paint out the lamppost’s or mask your signage, and that’s a valid option. But it will take more time.
The previous post suggests using a solid color for the truck, but I would go a step further and suggest having your folks print up some tracking markers (black on white is great) for the corners and center point of the truckside. I’d also recommend shooting some footage at the beginning of the truck perpendicular to the camera, with all those markers in place, so that you have good lock for any movement.
There are a lot of ways to do this, some are more labor intensive than others. Just be aware that simply motion tracking the image onto the side of a truck will result in something that looks very phony. As a Photoshop guy, you’ve probably got all the tricks down to making it look right in a still. Now you just need to figure out how to get those working in motion without having to paint every frame. Fortunately After Effects is pretty easy for Photoshop folks to get a handle on.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
There are a number of ways that you can produce “interference” type effects. First I will assume that your “TV” footage is a separate layer or separate comp, and second I take you desire to “not use a plug-in” to mean you don’t want to buy a third party effects filter if you can do it yourself. I’m a believer in that to a point. Many such effects are really presets that use the After Effects toolsets and allow you to tweak variables to get the look you want. But you might also consider that having such filters can save you time (and if you are producing on deadline-money) and that is usually eventually worth the cost.
That being said, I’d direct you to Aharon Rabinowitz’s tutorial here on making “old style” TV scanlines. If you are trying to simulate a modern digital set, you’ll need to find some combination of the built-in filters that generates the random blocks that we see when the satellite goes out, but the base principles are the same.
You will also find useful the “hologram” tutorial over at Videocopilot.net. Although it is designed to simulate the Star Wars sort of effect, it includes some ways of creating distortion that may be helpful.
Otherwise, it’s really merely a matter of creating a matte or alpha channel that can be used to mix the two different video sources the way you want them.
That is, in terms of the old scan-line approach, you may find that modifying the height of horizontal gridlines interactively, and then using the results as a luma matte will cause portions of the interferring video to become more or less visible over the original.
Alternatively, you could use solids of different sizes and move then up and down on the “screen” to generate “breakthrough”. If you make them white or gray against black, then the resulting contrasts become your luma or alpha matte, and you could then pre-render this out to a clip for use. The same idea applies to “digital” blocks.
If you are looking to distort left to right, the mesh warp filter is a fairly organic approach, but you might also find using Time Displacement can give you some interesting effects.
You might also want to take a look at the Digieffects plug-ins Delirium and Damage. Delirium includes some general video distortion effects among others, and Damage is specifically designed to create the look of “bad video”. Even if you want to do it “by hand”, the movie samples shown for these plug-ins may help you crystalize your own vision of the effect.
Ultimately it comes down to a intuitive approach. You see what it is you are expecting in your head already. Now you just have to start putting together the pieces to make it look like that. I hope some of these suggested tutorials will help.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
I’ve seen this same discussion on so many boards (and heaven forbid anyone start trying to define “HD”).
I actually haven’t used this utility, because, as a lot of people have mentioned, it doesn’t instantly give you that “film look”. There are a number of other utils that create frame rate changes, ranging from free to high-priced, and well, honestly, you can render out a different frame rate from After Effects.
The legitimate need for changing frame rates is to match something that was shot in one frame rate to something that was shot in another. That is, if you had something that was shot with a video camera at 30i, and you need to comp that with film shot at 24p, you really need to change one of those frame rates.
Now, who is actually doing that?
If you shot film, and went to the time and expense of having it digitized, in today’s market you digitized it at 24p. So you edit in 24p.
If, on the other hand, you shot video and need to have it transferred back to actual film, then you are best served by paying the frequently high price of having a professional house master it out. While it still won’t be “filmic” it’s going to look better than what you’ll do with a desktop app and freeware. Additionally, you are already going to be paying that house for the print, so why not pony up the extra to make the print worth something?
I do a lot of 3D animation that gets comped to “real” footage. Every app I have, including some cheaper over-the-counter ones, allows me to output at variable frame rates, so all I have to do is match the one I’m using.
It didn’t used to be that way, and I think that’s why a lot of folks have gotten hung up on frame rates. I’ve had DP friends swear that the XL-2 with “true 24p” looks more “filmic” than the same shot made by my XL-1 at 30i, but truthfully, I don’t think the difference is significant enough to swap out the camera for that alone.
Film, and the “film look” has gained a certain cache; it lends credibility or legitimacy to a project because it generally means that you had the budget to pay for hundreds of feet of film, rented cameras, lab fees, editing time, etc. that speaks of something “bigger”.
Purists will argue for the “artfulness” of film, but then artistic purists argued that it was “too real” when it was invented, and threatened to put all the painters out of work. We ended up with the Impressionist movement from that, so it’s not all bad.
Digital tools can not only effectively mimic the look of film (largely because they must comp digital “reality” to filmed action) but can now surpass it, and the digital tools operate with the precision of the bit. Color timing effects that used to be executed only tentatively by the best labs are now becoming true narrative devices, and that is only one example of how the digital/video toolset is extending our creative capacities over “just film”.
If you want your consumer camcorder to look like a Hollywood epic, at least as much as is possible, then digital tools can help in many ways. But people shouldn’t attempt to mimic a format simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. That’s the path to artistic sterility. What if Van Gogh had spent all his time just trying to match what the camera produced? We’d be a much poorer society artistically.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
You might take a look at the “page turn” tutorial at Videocopilot.net. That’s the closest thing I’ve seen to what you are talking about. It’s not the same effect, but it might give you something to start from. Be aware that sometimes their video servers are a bit slow on delivering the older tutorials (or they used to be).
If I understand you correctly, that sort of effect almost requires a true 3D approach. That is, you’d make a flat object in a 3D application, score it or tear it so that it would rip accordingly, and then animation the curling back of the edges. You could map an image or video onto this (if say, you want the fist to punch through a previous scene in the sequence) and then render it out with an alpha channel. Of course, this method is a lot more complicated (and expensive) than trying a 2D simulation, but it would look a lot more realistic.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Actually that looks to me like they positioned artwork on several 3D layers with alpha channels, and they are moving them in 3D space.
The 3D camera can apply depth-of-field on the layers blurring them naturally as they move forward or backward out of the area of prime focus. So as the “confetti” layers move toward the camera, they become larger and fuzzier. As they move left/right and up/down the addition of motion blur causes them to look more realistic.
You could do this with particles, of course, but you could as easily do it with a few painted layers and 3D motion. That’s probably less complicated and more quickly rendered. As far as breaking the “loop effect”, since you necessarilly will have to render out the final file, you simply need to make the effects long enough to not loop for any given foreground shot.
There are means of randomizing the motion of layers using formulas and presets, and this can be a tremendous timesave compared to hand moving the various layers. Ultimately however, the final piece will be a fixed sequence. Getting the illusion of non-repitition is a matter of having a long sequence that you can place shorter clips over at different points.
At least, that’s how I would approach it. Others may have more direct solutions. There’s frequently a number of ways to skin the cat in After Effects.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
The pitchbender in Audition has a good deal more options than Soundbooth. The exact method would be difficult to describe, as this is more of an intuitive thing.
Be aware that pushing it too far in one go can create the same kind of artificial effect you are talking about. I suggest that you raise it slightly and save it to a new file, perform any cleanup required (i.e. to remove any enhanced noise), and then go back into pitchbender and take it up again. Repeat the process until you get something you like.
Note that this is still not going to be 100% perfect. If the male voice is very deep and resonant, it’s going to alway sound “phony” because you are pushing it outside of it’s normal range. Adding back some resonance (via echo or delay) once you have a pitch that sounds right can reduce the “artificial nature”, but it’s never going to sound as “real” as a real female voice would.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Joe:
In answer to your questions:
If you are using the “OnLocation” product in CS3 to record direct from your camera to a laptop, you will not be able to record audio into Audition on the same laptop (at least not that I have found). OnLocation can record audio directly through the mic input on the laptop, but when it switches to the firewire port for the camera it appears to turn the other port off, so you can’t use the line-in or mic input with something like a wireless mic.
I presume from your request that you’ve got a consumer or prosumer camera that doesn’t allow you to mount an external mic. When we shoot, we have a Canon XL-1 with microphone inputs and a consumer JVC with the onboard microphone, and no way to attach another. When we can’t shoot with the Canon due to scheduling conflicts, we use a second laptop running Audition 3, and send the input from our stage mic or wireless into it.
Audition thankfully does allow for SMPTE timecode, but because you are recording a separate audio track (and in our practice, it’s also on a separate machine), you’d be wise to adopt that old Hollywood method of creating a sync sound of some kind. A simple slate clapped worked fine for ages, and with digital technology, it’s a fairly easy matter to sync the sound from the audio track to the same sound on the camera. Once that is done, you can set an in-point on the clips and everything should sync 100%. If you simply rely on the timecode, you may get variances due to camera spin-up and operator error (i.e. the cameraman and the audio recorder don’t hit the button at exactly the same time) and so there’s going to be an offset.
Even though this sound like a great deal more complication, I’ve found that Audition recording just audio can run effectively on a less powerful (or older model) laptop, which doesn’t need to be as expensive as something you’d use for live video capture. Additionally, with USB thumb drives in the 4GB and 8GB range reaching almost “disposable” prices you can record to these for hours, and easily swap them between takes if they start to fill up. They also are easily moved to the editing bay (whether it be desktop or the video laptop), rather than having to have a huge onboard drive or external mega-disk.
Note that we are a Windows based shop (CS3 OnLocation is, last I looked, only available on Windows) and doing this with a Mac will likely have some variances. In principal, however, the same rules for shooting and syncing the soundtrack ought to apply.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions