a scanner darkly look. how to begin?

S

seantree

Well-known member
Just looking for some basic info on the look utilized in the upcoming "a scanner darkly" film. I've been wanting to utilize a look like this only in black and white. are the VFX guys painting over each frame of the footage? god, i hope not. I read that they have some in house software to assist. So is there a certain technique i should be looking into? I can use both AE and combustion. thanks
 
I think they're painting over each frame pretty much, though there's probably a bit of keyframing meaning it might only be every few frames for slow moving stuff and backgrounds might only be painted once for non-moving shots.

Pretty crazy, but they have a lot of money. I'd recommend tracing using flash or something; no plug in will achieve this look. (Unless you want to dress your actors in black and white only with white make up and black lipstick, etc, in which case a really bad aproximation would be possible in AE with greenscreening.)
 
thanks. I thought that is what they were doing, but was not sure. I may try combining some photoshop layers using the find edge tool and various other tools to acheive what i'm after. I'm not sure I want to roto that many frames :/ thanks again.
 
yes, the scanner darkly guys are using a piece of software that aids in getting that look. from what i hear there is a definitly some hand holding that people have to do to keep it going.

i was thinking about this as well...how could you do this in a low budget way.

if you light your actors and sets a certain way, with hard shadows...no fluorescent. and have all the characters in makeup..nothing drastic, just to smooth out the skin and get rid of the imperfections and changes in skin color...kinda like a maxheadroom kinda thing i guys. i bet then you might be able to up the contrast and add some edge enhancements...you mighe at least get a bit closer to that look. you would still probably need to trace some of the edges to enhance it.
 
The word around Austin's film community -or- running joke per sey is that if you can draw a stick figure they would probably hire you to work on Scanner Darkly as an animator!

Only means they're a little short handed and have been for a while. That's the word, anyways.
 
hey seantree...i just tried messing around in after effects to see if i could get anything that has a sort of scanner darkly kinda vibe...heres what i got...i call it ghetto darkly.

http://www.rich-lee.com/temp/sdtest_01small_CD.mov

http://www.rich-lee.com/temp/sdtest_02small_CD.mov

first i just did some minmax adjustments to a layer on the bottom, this sort of blends all the detail together...then its basicly just extracting different colors or messing with luma keys, then doing a edge enhancment on each bit of color you have pulled out and adjusted, that gives it the pencil outline thing. bluring the color after you have keyed it or extracted it will help smooth out the edges as well...which will help to get rid of the jaggies. the ae cpmosition gets pretty complex even for something like dis...anyway, i dunnoo...oh, and also grain makes the color flicker so thats kind of a *****...but it looks kinda cool...so whateva...

its not great...but i kinda sorta works...

peace
 
rich, looks very cool to me. thanks for the tip. I'm working on a scene right now but gotta hit the sack. I should have something to show after working on it fo a few hours tomorrow. thanks again.
 
I've been thinking about that look to, unfortunetly I haven't had AE since version 5 over 4 years ago..... I've been thinking about using the look in a future music video, Rich your stuff looks good, all I've been able to come with is more of a cartoonish thing which takes forever, I have to output each frame then apply the filter indiv... then bring it back in... I know scanner darkly uses a program from this company but it's not for sale until 2006 aparantly
 
those look great. I'm thinking I'm going to be stuck painting over each frame manually. I am looking for more of an anime style than anything. I did some tests in C3 last eve, still have a few things to wrap up then i'll post screens
 
Was playing with AE a bit...

This isn't anything like SD, but looks kinda cool

1.jpg

2.jpg
 
Here's a little screengrab from something like this I've been wroking on - basically the face grows from start to finish - gonna comp in a backround soon ... god so painfully slow...
vectoring29la.jpg
 
export your footage as a tiff or png footage from after effects, open as a sequence in photoshop, first convert to grey scale and adust your levels and brightness/contrast using an action, then create an action to apply cutout filter to each image (you will have to do some fine adjustment) create another action to filter accent edges
then save your sequence. You may have to go back and touch up some frames, but this should save you some time.
 
The software they used is call Rotoshop and it's developed by MIT graduate Bob Sabiston. Wired had a good article on all the troubles they have encountered, and still are. Here's the link: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/scanner.html.

Silhouette FX makes some paint and roto software that I've used the demos for and it looks promising and it's able to achieve these looks. Scanner was shot with 3-4 DVX's and was traced over by the artists frame by frame. One of the DP's posts here on the board, but I forgot his name.

Link to Silhouette FX: http://www.silhouettefx.com/index2.htm
 
Why bother with all this crazy software?
Here is a better solution.

Paint directly on your actors! Think of the time this will save. No rotoscoping to do..just hit record.
I bet those idiots at Scanner Darkly never even thought of that. HA.
 
I read an article in Filmmaker magazine that said the animators for a scanner darkly worked on getting that look for over a year
 
here's my ghetto versiom

http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/ghettoscanner.mov

exported each frame as tiffs, opened in photoshop

applied the Poster Edges filter to a frame and tweaked to the following settrings
used the Edge thickness 2
Edge intensity 0
Posterization 2
then opened a bunch of frames and
hit
Apple F (apply filter with settings again)
Apple W (close)
Enter (after save prompt).
104 times.

It would probably look better if I applied it to footage with Infinite Depth of Field.
This filter likes hard edges so it wasn't sure what to do with thingst that were out of focuse due to 35mm adatpor.

Not too bad for ghetto version.
 
Policar said:
Pretty crazy, but they have a lot of money.
Click to expand...

They actually had almost no money, and employed anyone who had basic drawing skills. The "basic drawing" people then were given a strict set of guidelines on how to draw the scenes, and some scenes were even shot without backgrounds or anything- because the whole thing is being Rotoshopped.

Rotoshop is a software that was developed for an indie film that was mentioned earlier in the thread. Some have said that they leave some frames out. That isn't exactly true. About every five frames, the artist will trace everything on the frame, and color it to match, but with their style added. There isn't just some filter, it actually includes drawing. Then, they skip a couple, (if there's a lot of action, they'd probably have to trace every frame) and the Rotoshop software kind of fills in the blanks off of the template the artist has just traced. It's complicated.

The many established actors such as Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Robert Downey agreed to take a large paycut because, they're technically not in the movie. Everything is pretty much animated. I suggest if you really wanna go for the feel of "Scanner Darkly" you can do this:

1. Get a Tablet
2. Import your video at the highest setting, finished editing, into Flash 8 Professional.
3. Trace every frame on your tablet with the many features of Flash 8
4. Delete the video and export your animation as a DVD compatible burn format.

That takes alot of time. The thing that would take even more time is, do John's idea. For like 3 seconds of video he had 140 (nice looking, by the way) frames and it probably took him like 40 minutes to apply all the filters. You could export your final edited movie as frames and then trace them a la the Flash 8 method, or you could do John's method, just applying a filter, which I have to say did look wicked cool in its own "Scanner" inspired way.

Further educate yourself with the article from Wired:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/scanner.html?pg=1&topic=scanner&topic_set=

-zach
 
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