9 posts tagged “fx”
Yet another painful lesson. 1) Never color correct in 8-bit mode (which is the default for After Effects). Go to File > project settings and choose either 16-bit or 32-bit. 2) Never color correct in your editing program (such as Premier or Final Cut) because it will compress your footage; CC in After Effects.
Doing these two things will keep you from pulling out your hair trying to figure out why your beautiful footage now looks like crap.
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com
I performed my first digital makeup job. Technically, it's easy. The art of digital makeup may be a bit tougher, depending on your real makeup experience.
There are two closeups of Julia Smyth, the talented actress who plays Mom in Tooth Fairy. In the first one, she's being introduced as a Leave-It-to-Beaver kind of mom as she talks to her son. She has a slight crease between her brows which becomes magnified when she moves her head and the light hits it a certain way. On a small screen, it's not really noticeable. On a larger screen, though, it becomes more noticeable, especially when you watch it a thousand times like I have. There's nothing wrong with the crease per se; in fact, I leave it in for her second closeup when she catches her son doing something fishy. But the first closeup of her is meant as an introduction of not just the loving, nurturing mom but as a proxy to his entire perfect childhood. Julia was great for that except for the slight crease between her brows. So I took it out. :-)
It was a little tricky at first, getting it to blend but I'm satisfied with the results. And rather awed at the tweaks you can make in post. If only it was that easy in real life.
The how-to steps are the same as the instructions on my Tooth Fairy Rotoscoping entry.
Cheers,
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
Okay, that was easy to learn! Here's what I did to stabilize my footage in After Effects CS3 (I don't think this is specific to CS3):
- in the upper right corner, change the "workspace" option to "motion tracking"
- double click your sequence in the timeline so that you get it in the layer panel
- click “stabilize motion” in the tracker controls panel
- pick a high contrast feature in your frame to use as a reference and enclose it in the inner box of “track point 1” that is now on your screen. (I used a dark nail in a light piece of wood) Resize the boxes as needed by dragging the corners. The outer box is the search region which the program will use in future frames to look for your selected feature. The more your footage shakes, the larger the search region should be.
- click “options” in the tracker controls panel. Select your channel depending on how your feature point stands out from the surrounding pixels: RGB (color), luminance or saturation. (I picked RGB since my feature stood out because of its color) Click OK
- click on the "analyze forward" arrow on the tracker controls
- after it's done analyzing, save
- make sure track type is set to "stabilize" and that your "motion source" is the clip you want. Then press "apply".
- an options box will pop up with the default of X & Y. Click OK
That's it! Mine stabilized beautifully. Yay!
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
I'm still rotoscoping for Tooth Fairy. I'm learning a valuable lesson. If you plan on rotoscoping for a scene, lock off the camera if it's at all possible. It will save you, or the person you're paying by the hour, days/ weeks of work.
In theory, I knew about this rule. But there's nothing like doing the work yourself to pound these little rules into your thick skull as you slave away for hours and days on end, frame by frame, wishing you had just locked off the camera.
Today's project is wiping out fishing wire for a box that's jumping up and down "on it's own." Wiping out the wire was easy (as well as turning the shoe box label from "Naturalizer" to "Natural") but getting the background (the part that gets changed when I wipe out the wire) to not wiggle as the video runs is not so easy. It would have taken me a couple of minutes to deal with it if I had just LOCKED OFF MY CAMERA. But noooo...
The good news is that's one mistake I'll never make again.
If you want to know how to wipe out wires/ change signs/ knock out teeth in post production -- see my Tooth Fairy Rotoscoping entry.
P.S. It just occurred to me that I could try to stabilize the sequence in After Effects. Wonder which one's faster -- learning how to stabilize a sequence or rotoscoping?
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com
Hey, check it out -- I'm rotoscoping! Here are the before and after shots of Joseph in Tooth Fairy.
I used the clone tool in After Effects. The one thing about rotoscoping is that since you're painting frame by frame, you get a whole lot of practice. My later frames were so much cleaner than my earlier frames. I actually went back and touched up the earlier frames. Here's what I did (PC, After Effects CS3 (I don't think anything I did is specific to CS3), you can use Premier Dynamic Link if you have it):
1) In After Effects, in the upper right hand corner, select Workspace: Paint.
2) select the clone stamp from the top bar
3) select Aligned in the Paint panel (I tried both Aligned and not Aligned and I ended up working with Aligned. Aligned means that when you start your clone stroke, you start from the same clone source/place each time. Unaligned means your source will follow your strokes around. Play with it -- you'll see what I mean) When you work with Aligned, you may need to reselect your source -- I did this all the time.
4) choose Single Frame or Constant in the Duration choice of the Paint panel. I started with Constant which should duplicate your stroke through the entire clip but mine came out looking like the kid had severe tooth decay. So I used Single Frame which means your strokes are applied only to the frame you paint.
5) put pointer where you want to sample (in my case, it was the dark part of the mouth) and Alt click to sample it.
6) if you want to change the brush size, you can either select the brush size in the Brush Tips panel or Ctrl drag
7) move pointer where you want to "clone/erase" (in my case, it was the teeth) and drag it. If the color turns into something other than what you intended (mine occasionally turned the teeth into lip-red), reset your source point (step 5).
8) in the Time Controls panel, the line/arrow icon will take you to the next frame.
9) now repeat your clone strokes 2,000 times -- you're rotoscoping! If you don't like your latest stroke, Ctrl Z will undo it or edit/undo.
10) when I was done, I used composition/"add to render queue" to render it into my folder and opened it up from Premier.
Not saying this is the best or most efficient way to do it; just saying it's the way I did it. Have fun!
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
Here's an alternative to Detonation Films: Artbeats They have stock footage ranging from explosions to NY aerials. Detonation Films has some footage for free and some for about $7-$11 a pop. They cater to no-budget filmmakers who are having a good time and they're not shy about saying their footage isn't quite as good as Artbeats'. You gotta respect that. Artbeats sells theirs for about $200-$300 a pop.
Check out Detonation Films where you can buy pre-made explosions, blood splatters, end-of-the-world mushroom clouds. Yeah, baby!
All you have to do is learn to composite these into your film. How hard can that be? :-)
If you look closely at the photo on the right, you'll see that the guys aren't actually holding any guns.
I performed my first rotoscoping in After Effects.
Now you see it.
Now you don’t.
I tried getting rid of the blood by desaturating the red but that didn't work so well. It's amazing how much red is in this frame -- the red in her hair, the red barrette and even some red in her skin tone. So I ended up painting the blood out frame by frame. Since my old Wacom tablet didn't feel like working with my new computer, I used my mouse. Left-handed, of course. :-)
I’m on my way to becoming a wizard!
Okay, that’s a lie.
I’m on my way to becoming an apprentice, though.
This is for the cool DV rebels at the Rebel Cafe (http://rebelsguide.com/forum/index.php) who are helping me out with some effects. Thanks guys!
