FX Tests

jls4

jls4

Veteran
I know people probably get tired of Test Videos, but if anyone is willing. I just put up a test video here https://vimeo.com/49548632 password is "green" (no quotes)

Basically I'd love for you to check it out and tell me any tips or things I could be missing. Here's the scenario. I plan on working on a sci fi movie soon, so I know I'll be doing green screen. The clip of the young lady was taken with a Canon 7D for another peoject I was working on and the 3D backgrounds were found online. I tried to find an images that could represent a scenario for the movie, since we haven't started making 3D backgrounds for our plates yet. I added some other effects to try and macke the scenes fit together. I'm not new to compositing but I know there could be some ideas out there that could help. I know her hair is a little blippy because of the 7D.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

https://vimeo.com/49548632
The password is green
 
not too bad, i think one of the main things that may throw off some of these shots is the depth of field. maybe try bluring the bg a bit to taste? also on some of them the bg looks a little bit washed out, in AE what i usually use the built in CC Toner. Seems to do the trick pretty well, i'm sure there are more complicated ways of doing it.
 
I think overall it's a nice job for a 7D key. Watch it on a 720 or 1080 TV and the loose hairs flickering in & out of existence will be really distracting though. I'd look into getting your hands on a camera more suited to keying. If you're not in the Red budget level, I'd look at something like the AC-130, which has full-raster chips... and a Ninja recorder of you can pull that off.

In music recording, there's a lot of talk about "glue" - stuff you apply to the overall mix (like EQ and compression) that makes all the individual tracks "sit" together. For keys, I think of "glue" often.

Beyond grading, using the 3d camera can make a huge difference on your keys.

Make your keyed layer and BG plate 3d layers, and move them apart in 3D space - move the keyed layer closer to the camera. Then re-scale everything to look correct.

Then, add a subtle camera move, and you get parallax - it's really cool how much reality that can toss in. (Push it too far and everything looks like cardboard cutouts.)

For a tense or action scenes, shoot handheld reference - just a dot on a white wall. Drop it in your comp, motion track that footage and parent the camera to it (via a null object) and DAMN - you've got handheld footage with distance parallax. Doesn't need to be all herky jerky, just subtle and when handheld would be called for. Tracking real handheld motion beats trying to fake it, too.

I did a shot for a music video where the same character needed to be an 'army' of characters. Adding the handheld track just sold it.

Here's a short VFX breakdown of a music vid I did last year (it's supposed to look a little over-the-top and "fake-ish") - towards the end you can see the layers broken apart for 4 or 5 layers of parallax - and can you spot the "panties repair"??

 
For action shots with quick cuts I'd say all of those composites were convincing and good enough. I'd agree with the 3D camera comment if the camera was handheld or there was a dolly shot, etc. The color match was fine between them all.
 
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