ghost rising from corpse ?

[Randall_Oelerich]

Can someone tell me the quick and dirty way (without green screen) to do a ghost effect where an actor is dead on the ground (forest floor), then we see the actor's ghost get up out of the corpse and stand up? Is it as simple as keeping the camcorder stabilized (all pan and tilt knobs locked down), framing the actor on the ground for a few seconds, then having the actor get up, stand up, then in post simply layer the footage and adjust the opacity of each layer? This is for a short film I am filming next week.

 

[TeamSeaShanty]

If the "ghost" is merely a transparent version of the actor, I'd say go with what you've said and garbage matte the background out around them.

If you want a altered look i.e. glowing blueish white look to the ghost, You will certainly want to separate the "Ghost" from the background, if not greenscreen, I would say you might consider adding a black background and then using CC to get the look you want, crush the blacks a bit and use a screen or add composite mode to the footage. "Add" and "Screen" composite modes will drop out the blacks and leave the highlights with a nice gradations through the grey's

Whatever you do, I Highly recomend you set up a test or two before hand to see what sorts of issues come up that need to be dealt with.

 

[Jackson Miller]

This is an effect where the soul is "sucked out", but you could modify it a bit or do it and still put a transparent layer of the person getting up over top.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/soul_removal/