Creating a Ghost-like Effect with People

[Filmkid2003]

Hey everyone. I have a Panasonic GH-13 and I am shooting a dream sequence in the desert. I would like to experiment with making the actor look ghost-like and blurry when he walks. Not transparent, per say, but blurry, like the way moving objects become blurry in time lapse photography. Is there a way to do this with a certain shutter speed while having the camera on a tripod and recording video or is this only possible with an intervalometer and time lapse photography? Is there a way to make a blurry trail behind the actor whenever he walks or moves his arms or body to give it a dream like feeling? Thanks.

 

[Futchibon]

Shooting with an intervalometer will give you much better results than trying to capture this in camera in gh13s movie mode. They're $50 on ebay. I've experimented with shutter speeds and the like in movie mode, and the results just don't look that great.

If you're not going to get an intervalometer, I would do this in AFTER EFFECTS. You can download a free trial for 30 days, and check out videocopilot.net which had tonnes of free tutorials (Andrew Kramer, who runs the site, did the opening titles for FRINGE so he knows what he's talking about!). You can keyframe a combination of blur, light streaks, glow, time remapping, lens flare and a multitiude of other effects to get exactly what you want. Ideally you'd shoot the actor on green screen so you can have greater control over the effects on just him as opposed to the background.

Good luck.

 

[clang]

Yeah, shooting it in-camera sounds hard. An actor shot against greenscreen then blurred in post would be the obvious solution.