Finals and RoughCut

Though I already been graded for this project I will still work on it. I removed the sound because it will be accompanied by music only. I wish I could have done more but after scrapping my original plan I had to rewrite a new outline for the scenes which delayed the shooting. This is a rough cut of the final product and will be improved soon.

3D and Photoshop

With free time on my hands I took an image and made it pop. I brought the image into Photoshop removed the background and brought it into After Effects. I also brought in some black silhouettes of the same images at different angles. I placed them on separate layers in After Effects and used this cool Three Dee effect. I also brought in some text from Photoshop. I moved them around and made this intro-like sequence. This turned out so well I decided to use it in my final video.

 

The Car and Me

The Task:
Use our visual effects capabilities to shoot and edit a convincing hit and run.

The How:
One man stands, step on the pedal.

A lot of things had to be done in order to get to this final composition. In testing for the cinematography of the shot I got duped into being the victim of the hit and run. We did several shots and I acted poorly in all the shots which cost the believability of the scene. The first shot I smiled and the second I didn't stay within the green screen. Finally the last shot was perfect until I began editing...

 If you didn't notice I had my hands in my pockets the entire ride. I like to pretend the car hit me so hard and fast my hands never left the pocket. Also afterwords I noticed I turn slowly before getting hit, it almost seems as if I was anticipating the hit.

Light Sabers and Rotoscoping

Turning a broomstick into a light saber sounds easy on paper and it kinda sorta is. However, there is a lot of time that goes into it. The technique we used is rotoscoping, we created a bounding polygon that outlines the broomstick. Next we moved and molded the outline to fit the stick in just about every frame. After a few other tricks you got yourself a light saber.

 

If you look hard enough, past the poor quality, you can see that I did not add a light saber effect to the portion of the stick that sticks out of  my shoulder after I fully swung the light saber. I didn't feel it was necessary for two reasons:

1. I was lazy

    &

2. I thought it did not need it. It easily passes for a portion of a light saber.

The Green Suit and Keylight

We were given a clip of one of our fellow students in green suit in front of a green backdrop and tasked with removing the green, essentially. In comes the magic of Keylight (2.0). Key light removes a selected color with amazing accuracy from a clip without disturbing the rest of the scene. However it isn't perfect so I had to bring back some color back to the invisible man's clothing. The clip should have looked like floating glasses, a jacket, and a hat but the man in the green suit was not invisible to start with so when I removed the green-ness I also removed the back of the jacket. Instead of working hard and adding it myself, I slapped in a brick wall for a background and put some funny music and called it art. Enjoy.

StopMotion and New Discoveries

This time we had to use stop motion to remove, add, or move an object or person. I tried many variations of how to remove the cell phone from the scene but neglected the key technical aspects. See if you notice them.

  

After recording while editing I discovered that the camera I used (Flip HD) has an auto lighting feature. Meaning that when I step in front of the camera to remove the cell phone from the scene the camera saw mostly darkness and adjusted by making things brighter. Not noticing this I called for the action to continue not giving the camera enough time to adjust back. Very educational.

Another thing is I asked the actress to stop then go which caused a jump. I should have asked her to stop, then reverse movement then continue again to capture her mid movement.

And finally the cell phone was not clearly visible, but that could be nit-picking.

Stunts and stuff

 In this video we were tasked with editing several shots into one continuous shot. Unfortunately the lack of different camera angles limited my ability. Instead of a seamless stunt its pretty jumpy but I did my best.

 

If you watch carefully the person who throw the victim is also seen sitting down in the last scene. I didn't even notice until it was pointed out to me, I thought that was pretty funny. Also the position of the starting throw  and the finishing throw is drastically different between shots but hopefully you didn't notice that.