Composite Edit...How to?

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I am drumming ideas for the opening of a project I am working on. I have a picture of a baseball field that I have imported into Photoshop and altered (just removed the home run fence and everything else beyond that including the sky) and I am thinking about replacing the background with something else like clouds that I am going to speed up. This much I know how to do in FCP. Now how would I go about adding a person running around in the "outfield"? Now remember the outfield is a photograph! So would I have to shoot that person against a pretty large green screen then scale that person down so they would be at the right perspective on the screen?

I am sure it would be a lot easier to go to a baseball field and shoot someone running around in the outfield and do a 4 or 8 point garbage matte to remove and replace the sky but I'd like to learn how to do Compositing effects and interacting live video with a still photo etc.

Now I have done this to some extent! Earlier this year I made a slate that consisted of live video of a river in Philly and I took a snapshot of some orangish clouds around sunset and mixed the two together, scaled down the river a little bit and the final result looked good.

As for the baseball field, the person will not be playing baseball at all. I just need them to be running around or sitting there dancing or just simply standing there. Its just going to be the opening of a EPK I am working on if I can get my idea to work.
 
Yeah greenscreen is pretty much the only option I can think of. Definitely not something that sounds too practical. Depending on the scale etc you could probably get away with a 3D guy running around out there though.
 
Greenscreening it would probably be the easiest way.

The challenge will be in lighting your subject in a way that looks correct when you put him the field -- and then, you need to do something to the photo to make it appear dynamic and moving, like a very subtle noise pattern or something.
 
David,

Can you explain what you mean about the noise pattern? I've been trying to wrap my head around the concept of matte paintings and still backgrounds, and how they wouldn't look horribly fake and static..sounds like this 'noise pattern' thing you mentioned might just be the key..

c.r.
 
Think of it this way . . .

Take a thirty-second shot of a building or something. When you play it back, even if absolutely nothing in it moves (like leaves, or a bug, or whatever) it doesn't look like a photograph; it looks like a locked-down motion camera, because there's subtle, almost sublminal motion in it. On film, there would be grain. On video, there's video noise.

But a photo looks like a photo, because that subtle motion impression isn't there at all. There needs to be something about it to give the impression that it's not just a single instant in time.

It can be done any number of ways, and the subtler, usually, the better.
 
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