[Michael Szalapski]

You could just put a null object at the centre, put the arrow pointing to the coin then parent the arrow and coin to the null. Then when you rotate the null, the coin and arrow will spin around it with the arrow always facing it.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I may not be much help but those who would be able to help are going to need a bit more information. Is there an error message when it fails? If so, what does it say? Do you have it set to log things when it’s rendering? If so, what does the log say?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Create the T in Illustrator, make outlines if you need to, copy and paste the path onto a solid as a mask in AE. Animate mask.

Or use the reshape tool or any of several of the distort tools (bezier warp seems like a good choice) on the T layer.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I’ve never tried this. It certainly sounds interesting. I’ll give my thoughts.

It would be easiest and most realistic to let your actress actually get into the water. For safety’s sake it would be wise to have a SCUBA equipped diver nearby along with a lifeguard or two.
Unless of course, it’s too dangerous. Just how “tumultuous” is this ocean? If it’s too dangerous to put a woman in it, how are you planning to film it?

What is the woman going to be doing in the ocean? If she’s going to be struggling with the water ie. thrashing around, it’s going to be difficult to make it look realistic to comp a pool into ocean. I’m not sure how well a chromakey would work in a pool. Many pools have a blue color already in them which is nice, but I don’t see that (or your color) working very well, not because it wouldn’t key, but because the ocean isn’t as see-through as most pools are. Do you have a pool that has a similar level of visibility to your ocean? Perhaps you could film her in the ocean on a calmer day/calmer location with a green or blue screen behind her and rotoscope the front of her.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You didn’t link to an example, so I did a quick search on YouTube for a video and found this one.
It sounds like the one to which you refer.
I’m fairly sure they used several techniques. Keep in mind, I’m watching this on YouTube, so I can’t really look at it closely. (Especially since whoever uploaded this did it with lots of interlacing so even the HD version looks horrible.) What I’m seeing is greenscreen, rotoscoping, motion-controlled cameras, cgi models, match-moving, and a ton of planning.
Some of it was done with motion controlled cameras and two different takes; one during the “day” and one during the “night”. Then the two were composited together.
The couple in front of the dj are probably composited from a greenscreen over the dj (who may also have been composited in a similar fashion).
Some of the shots also look like the use of a cgi model. Take for example the taxi driving; suddenly the reflections on the hood are from nighttime lights rather than the daytime sky, the lights come on, etc. That looks like it may have been a 3d model of a taxi.
When she puts her finger in her mouth, that looks like a morph between shots. The actress is in (EXACTLY) the same position for two takes, then they morphed, faded, composited between the two shots.

Each shot has several tricks in it and the tricks are not so much special plug-ins as they are careful, thoughtful use of basic techniques. Of course, AE can’t do 3d models, but a lot of this could be emulated convincingly in After Effects with careful planning. It’s fairly simple to have day turn to night with two separate shots. Their trick, and the thing that makes me like this commercial, is that in most shots it’s part night, part day. Nicely composited from what I can see.

Anyway, sorry; I’m not sure I answered your question. You asked for the best way of doing this? Hire a team of professionals who have a high-end motion control rig and several 3d artists. However, I assume you want to know how to do this on your own. The best way is to practice and plan. Plan it out, try it out, re-plan and retry.
Take two shots with the camera in exactly the same position; one during the day and one during the night. Then, simply use masks to composite the two shots.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

If you import a Premiere project into AE you will see what it does. Try it.
It comes in with each cut a separate layer. It is absolutely wonderful and one of many reasons why I choose Adobe for all my video work.

The simplest way to get your work out of AE and into Premiere is to render your project out of AE using the Quicktime animation codec or some similar lossless format. Then just bring that video file into Premiere.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Your question is much too vague. When you say “ghosts” we have no idea what you mean. Do you mean just people that are kinda see-through and floating? Do you mean some sort of distorted zombie-like creature? Do you mean a plasma/energy ball-type ghost? Or do you mean like a person under a sheet kinda look?

To make anything float, hang it on a wire. If it’s an actor you want to float, the wire will need to be a bit thicker 🙂 If you want them to be see through you can shoot them on the set, then shoot the set blank and overlay the two shots. Or you could use a green screen to place the floating thing in the shot.
Of course, if it’s some ethereal blob of energy, how you place it in the shot depends on how you’re creating this ghost.

These are just a couple of suggestions, but not knowing anything about what you’re trying to achieve makes it a little difficult.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Every chroma situation is different, so what you test with one person’s footage will be very different from another’s. You should really use footage from the source that you’re planning to actually use. A test with somebody else’s footage would just waste your time.

Or wait…are you saying you just want a shot of a person? If you just need a shot of a person to place in a digital set, there are tons of stock photographs of people out there, just cut one out in Photoshop (or, heck, mask them out in AE).

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Do you have a screen shot we could look at or a copy of the file?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

So when you choose to import your footage as a composition, it doesn’t import a composition and a folder? What comes into the project window?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.