Using invisible effects to hide a stage light in Adobe After Effects

Lasers, dinosaurs and space VFX are cool, but every so often you need to roll up your sleeves to add effects that hide problematic elements in a shot.

Reflective surfaces are a great way for production equipment to wind up in a scene which ruins the illusion. Recently a friend of mine had such an issue and asked if there was anything I could do to hide a light’s reflection in a painting. To make matters worse, one of the scene’s actors moved in front of the reflection!

Follow along with me as I use the included ‪@BorisFXco‬ Mocha AE planar tracker to isolate the painting. Once I have it tracked, I bring the painting in Photoshop to make use of Content Aware Fill and then finally cut out the waiter with the Rotobrush tool.

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