A short promotional film for Gateacre’s new school that is currently being built. The school will be open from September 2011 and the film is being used for marketing purposes. Evolve Productions approached the Hatch and Re-thunk to collaborate on the film.
The film was shot on a Sony HDV Z1 camera and edited in Final Cut Pro. The CGI and greenscreen footage was then comped in After Effects. The final edit was taken back into FCPro for final tweaking and then finally sent to Color for grading.
Here is a short 5 second snippet of a Stylized CCTV & type treatment for the credits to our short film ‘Vacuum’. I exported a frame from the POV (point of view) shot of the camera in the film and then took it into After Effects. Basically, I used Video Copilot’s Twitch to create the havoc in the type and then used Video Copilot’s Riot Gear to add an old style film texture to it. In both the POV shot & the Film effect, I desaturated most of the colour and then used the Curves filter to create a high contrast texture for the Type to work over!
I suppose its about time I started putting up some of my teaching resources as promised a while back. Here is a little bit about editing and some bumpf about shot sizes.
The phenomenon of editing deals with all aspects of rhythm – from the transition of one image to another or the detailed rhythm of ……
Download full article here if you want a copy – Art of Editing
I thought i’d give this a mention is i’m currently in the middle of doing a heap load of colour matching. Colour matching a shot works particularly well when comping 3D sequence into footage. All 3D software will render out super clean colour which will never match your footage. A quick way to adjust your imported sequence to match the colour setting of your footing is to correct the Levels. Apply the levels filter to your footage, in your After Effects preview window change the viewing to only see the red channel. In the Levels filter change the histogram to only adjust the RED channel. Using the sliders on the histogram, make small adjustments until your sequences matches the tone of the footage its sitting in. Do the same with the BLUE and the GREEN channels, changing the viewing space each time, then when you flick back to the full RGB channel your footage should sit a lot better within its surroundings. Final tweaks can be done using the RGB slider. When doing any kind of colour matching or even composting, give your imported sequence about 4% blur (not Gaussian.. thats another story) as most footage will never be perfectly focused and colour tends to bleed between pixels.
Today i’ve started work on a demo pitch this time involving matching moving. Match moving is very different than the planar tracking mention in my last post. All the data from the current tracking (PF Track) will be exported in 3DSM and Maya for further CGI treatment. Unlike the planar tracking, match-moving operates on point tracking system, the software can then interpret the lens on the camera, depth of field and match the exact movement of the camera. Once the data has been moved over into the next part of the pipeline, CGI and motion work can continue to be composited and built then sent back to FCP for some final finishing. An important point to note on any tracking projects is to determine before hand what tracker your going to use, all tracking software has pro’s and cons, so consider where the data is going to be use, are you tracking or match moving, are you prepping for CGI or compositing, be aware of natural markers and use them to your advantage i.e tree’s, parked cars, brightly coloured posters. All these elements will help with a solid track saving hours of manual tracking
Just finished work on the new Samsung viral, 17 shots tracked, masked, matte in 2 days. The only way this was possible was due to the amazing power of Motor and Mocha from Imagineer Systems. It took what would have been weeks work and gave me the control to produce it in two days. The software has opened up a whole new workflow for me and the confidence to deliver shots on time.
The tracking data i produced was turned into xml data then loaded into a flash based format. The additional roto mattes produced where used as masks in Flash., allowing end users to upload there own face onto a piece of video and there face would stick to the actors through out the movie. It was tough and the learning curve was steep as the deadline loomed.. Job done.. NEXT…
