Ghost-like Special Effect

N

nefilmgroup

Member
I have a short screenplay which calls for a tricky special effect, and I was hoping I could a little assitance here.

The shot is of a ghost-like person reaching through the body of a living person. Sorta like something you'd have seen in the movie Ghost. Does anyone know how I could pull this off?
 
Both shots locked off.
Shoot the ghost on all black background.
Play around in After Effects manipulating the look of the ghost layer.
Use the black as the key or alpha channel.
Overlay the ghost and use a mask as it reaches into the other person's body.
Adjust the transparency level of the ghost to get the look you want.
Add some glow.
Done.
 
This is a great suggestion. I was thinking something along these lines, but you gave me a little more detail than I had. Thank you Andrius.
 
You don't need to lock the shot. With one or two reference points (two are needed if the camera tilts or perspective changes) in the shot of both the action shot and the ghost, you can let the camera move, including motion blur.

1. Shoot the action with two reference points constantly in the frame..... or for more effort, if they move out of the frame, you have more reference points to pick up. These are used to track the movement.
2. Shoot the ghost with reference points. these are used to track and stabilize the shot and lock it to the action shot.
3. Lock the ghost shot to the action shot using the reference points.

If that didn't make any sense, here is an example.

This shot has both the background plate and the greenscreen. Each has a reference point. It doesn't have to be an obvious target like this. It can be anything in the shot that can be picked out for reference.
The background plate is first and the green screen starts at :34. Both have a dolly in. Note that both the green screen and the background plate have bumps in the dolly shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNd3N-j-zTI

Here they are combined together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wETkYjlgmSM
 
David, Paul, Yeah...you can introduce all sorts of tracking and green screen and more layers with mist and fog and get a moco rig setup if you want, but if someone's asking this question on a forum, I thought it best to keep it simple and attainable. ...but good advice if you want to add some more movement.
 
Andrius, Most-excellent. All input is valid and useful. We have no idea what might or might not work for nefilmgroup.
 
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