Digital 'push in'... possible?

STORYTELLER32

STORYTELLER32

Well-known member
Let's say you have a piece of footage that was shot on a tripod and when you got it into post, you realized you would have liked that shot to be a slow push in.

Is it possible to do a digital push in on that scene with FCP? If so, please list the steps you think would achieve this.

Thanks
storyteller32
 
Re: Digital 'push in'... possible?

Hi Storyteller32 (what would the less formal version of this be? 'story'?, 'ST'? or just good ol' '32'? ;) ),

Obviously you're not going to be able to really get a 'push' in post (akin to a dolly shot moving the camera thru space toward the subject) - the only means I can think of for this effect in post is if you are using some sort of fake foreground elements / digital mattes that are being 'pushed' past - take a look at Ryan McFaul's 'Making of' on his GB video at www.ryantown.com for something along these lines. (Dressing room scene with fake mannequins in foreground.)

But you can fake a zoom to some extent. Is this what you're after? If so, it's pretty simple. Under the motion tab for the video clip, place a keyframe for the 'scale' attribute at both the starting and ending points of the zoom. Then set the scale to the higher number at either end depending if you are zooming in or zooming out. You can also keyframe the position attribute if you want to frame a different area than the center when you are zoomed in.

Unfortunately, I don't think FCP allows you to do any advanced keyframe interpolation on the scale attribute, so you may not be able to 'ease in' or 'ease out' of the zoom like you could in After Effects. Also neither FCP or AE are very good at scaling footage so you want to be pretty judicious in how far you zoom in before things become unacceptably soft.

I would think for most scenes if you are doing something in the range of a 10% change, it should look authentic. Just a nice subtle move. The same approach can be used to fake some pans/tilts depending upon the foreground/background elements by slightly enlarging the image and keyframing just the position from in point to out point.

Sorry if this is covering ground you're already familiar with and you meant something else altogether.

HTH,
Clayton
 
Re: Digital 'push in'... possible?

Hi Clayton,
I think "ST32" would be fine, lol... I wanted it to just be Storyteller, but it was taken.

Anyway, thanks so much for the info. I'm very much a newbie at the editing and have only about 3 weeks worth of experience in total so far. As you stated, I'm really looking for a subtle slow push in so this could work out nicely. Thanks for the instructions!

ST32 ;D
 
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