[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can not have fast, best quality and small file unless you spend money on a render farm. If you want small file and good quality you will have to settle for slower render times. You need a codec that allows for 2 pass encoding to get small files and good quality. 1-3 minutes to render is not a long time at all – why would you need faster render times than that anyway?

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

No, it is not. The integration should be flawless. The one thing I can think of is if your other 3d layers/objects are positioned before you create the FF layer. You need to position the FF object in 3d space using the plugin controls to match the x,y,z of the plane you are trying to match it up with. It may be that you need to reset position on all layers to “0” and re-position everything again.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Draw your rainbow in AI or PS, import in AE, make 3d layer, position it to get the perspective you need, animate a mask with feathered edge at the speed you want the rainbow to be revealed. Play with opacity and Layer Transfer modes to get the right look.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I would finish my animation of the shot without masking the puppet in the circular inset at all. Just position it on top of the circular inset and animate. I would then render a pass of just the puppet with an alpha, bring that in on top of the original comp, make visible all layers below the puppet and turn visibility off for the puppet layer/layers. Now you can mask the rendered puppet only layer to appear in the circular inset but extend the mask part where the hand reaches “over”.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Earth zoom:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/earth_zoom/

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Yes. Enable depth of field on the Camera layer and play with the aperture and focus to get the desired look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ax8s3Ftkw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w6Ah67qVqo

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

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[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You need to scroll through the clip and find several frames that have different parts of the background revealed as the dancers move. Export those frames in PS, stack them and reveal from one to another the clean parts (no dancers). Whatever can not be re-built from existing footage you will have to paint using the clone tool. All you need is a pate that tells the computer to key out similar pixels, so the part that is always covered will not matter that much.
That being said, looking at your frame I think you may have a hard one on your hands. That’s because the color luma on the dancers are pretty close to the background. Give it a shot though. If this does not work look into Roto brush tutorials.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

If you can get a clean plate (the background without the dancers) then you can try to pull a difference key. You may have one in your footage or you may have to create one in PS by cloning from various frames.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzvT9cwAYkE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3ZkNIAXbbs

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/keying-effects.html

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

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[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Good stuff!

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

AE only – like it’s been suggested, use the beam effect with glow, work at 32 bit color depth. Add a displacement/distortion using the ripple effect or a distortion map, at the tip of the barrel to add realism. A “bullet trail” may be useful to show the heat left behind by the beam.

Tudor \”Ted\” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist