[Tony Silva]

are you exporting an alpha as straight/unmatted? If so do you still see them when you bring them back into AE? Not just viewing them in QT. Did you try 100% quality?

[Tony Silva]

sounds like fun, outsource it to me 😛

if you shoot it on a tripod and wanna make it look handheld, just shoot the greenscreen handheld with tracking markers, then track those in AE and apply it to your footage. You can’t get crazy with it though.

I say do tests both ways.

[Tony Silva]

I ran the first version of the plugin in 32 bit, so yeah it should work. I’ve since moved onto 64bit Vista though.

I know in premiere with the new version you have access to the metadata, but I don’t remember with AE.
ok, I just checked and yes, AE has access to the metadata also.

[Tony Silva]

you could just create a set of 3 train cars and loop them using an offset, then just use a blur effect.

[Tony Silva]

I’ve got a bucket of sand in my garage. Let me know if you wanna borrow it. And you can probably rent a leaf blower at HomeDepot.

[Tony Silva]

you need to think about how the plugin is being composited. Is the plugin using a layer blending mode? If so then you need to essentially render it out how it would look without any blending/compositing done to it so when you bring your .mov back in then you can composite it to look the same.

I would think for this case rendering out a grayscale .mov with your effect applied, then using a luma matte on a black layer would do the trick.

[Tony Silva]

I’d storyboard the whole thing first! 😛

what’s your final output? If it’s SD, then you could shoot it HD and have a lot of freedom in post for shaky quick zooms. I would shoot like 10 takes, 2 stable tripod takes, then a bunch of zooms/pans.

another trick would be to have them perform at 1/2 speed then speed it back up in post. That would give you a fast moving camera.

[Tony Silva]

there are some tutorials here about how to create a flag blowing in the wind. Should be very similar.

does the paper stay in one spot? or does it blow away off in the distance?

[Tony Silva]

absolutely hilarious!!!
Reminds me of the time I first drove a Ferrari, it would only go 60mph and would redline at 12,000rpm! Then I realized I didn’t know how to drive! Later on I learned how to shift out of first gear, then things were groovin!

Just buying more ram isn’t going to solve your long term problem of not understanding how the program works. You need to understand how AfterEffects works with motionblur/3d layers/comps/pre-comps. Comps of 3476 x 2494 and 300 layers is a gross waste of resources.(hence your slow render times) Learn about Pre-comps and PreRending them.
Good Luck.

[Tony Silva]

seems like you’d need tracking data on your subject, maybe somewhere around the waist, then parent the shadow to that and try and stabalize the Y position.

Ideally you’d have a keyed shadow in the first place. Not sure what the subject is doing, but could you just hand roto a shadow in? or roto his shape 90degrees to the lightsource?