I was shooting a scene where the sunlight was coming through the drapes, in stripes, and it really added to the photography on the actors faces. Before we could finish, about half way through, the sun was gone, and we were forced to finish on location, even so. So since the seen is suppose to take place in three minutes of real time, it doesn't match up, the sun being gone in a second. With AE, can I take the strips of sunlight coming in through the drapes, and paste them over the actors, on the cloudy footage, in anyway, or is this just not possible?
Is After Effects capable of doing this with the sun on film?
- Thread starter ironpony
- Start date
bruceallen
Well-known member
Depends on if the stripes are sharp or blurry and how much the actors are moving.
The trick is that the stripes aren't flat - they are deformed by the actor's face. Which is presumably moving.
Proper way to do it would be to motion-track a projection onto a 3D model of the actor's face, tracked in.
Or just reshoot
But if you can fake it and make it look good, do it! But I think a reshoot would be quicker unless those stripes were really blurry and / or the actor was practically still.
Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
I'm trying to reshoot. The scene we shot is so good, that I don't want to reshoot the whole scene, but even if I did reshoot the whole scene, there is very little guarantee that the weather will stay the same for that long. The sun changes every hour on camera, so there is not much else I can do with a reshoot. Sure I can close the blinds, but I'm tired of having so many scenes without windows, to add to the light effect. I will try to get the location the same, and reshoot the last half, cause the first half is so good, it's worth keeping.
TERRA Operative
Active member
Can you black out the window and shine a big light through a gobo or similar?
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
You'd need some number of 18K lights... from various BTS and American Cinematographer issues, that show 'sun light streaming through windows', very often there
will be a bank of big lights outside the window, just to maintain the required lighting independent of actual 'sun light'...
Perhaps lower wattage could work with higher ISO. Also put some dust in the air...
Well I am considering that but my lights look like lights shining through a window, and not the actual sun. Would I be able to amplify the light somehow and make it bigger and wider? I will have to use a lot of my lights which I am using to light the rest of the scene, though, so then those lights will be missing from the other side of the room. I'll try to do it all from alternate angles, so the lighting differences don't look as noticeable. I am trying to wait for the next sunny day, whenever that will be, and hope the actors look the same enough.
handsome pete
Well-known member
You need to get a nice concentrated beam of light on your window. Also, remember that sunlight is a different color temperature than tungsten lighting.
Well yeah that's just it, even if I could get the tungsten light right, I would change the color in post if that's doable. I am just getting familiar with after effects and don't know all of it's capabilities. I am trying to wait for the next sunny day, but the actors aren't going to keep making themselves free everyday on the chance that it might be sunny. So if it doesn't come soon, I will see about shining light through the window but not sure if it will look the same. I also used all of my lights to light the scene before, so I would probably have to remove atl least two, which will alter the interior lights from the previous footage. It would be tough to reshoot the whole thing again, as the owner of the location does not give it up for that much time. Plus my friends and I agree that what we have is so good it's worth keeping, even if we can't get the light to look the same, in all the shots.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
If you have the lights, or something of the lights, I'd suggest you test now, with whatever you can get a hold of... It may be that 'that day never comes', but you can test and be prepared... if not for this film, but for the next.
Sure. I will wait till next Wednesday but if it doesn't get bright out by then I will test. It's just I'm at work everyday till Wednesday so I can only do it then. If not I can accept the scene as is and remove the sun strips in post maybe, or shoot on Wed with the other lights and see how that goes.
Can After Effects do this? Instead of copying and pasting the strips of light, what if I just drew a line, making the shapes of the strips, on the shots that don't have them. Then color within the drawn strips, and make them the same color as the sun in the sun shots? Or make all the shots the same color to match in the strips.
Can After Effects do this? Instead of copying and pasting the strips of light, what if I just drew a line, making the shapes of the strips, on the shots that don't have them. Then color within the drawn strips, and make them the same color as the sun in the sun shots? Or make all the shots the same color to match in the strips.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
At this point, I think any attempt to simulate 'sunlight' shining on a scene where the actors may be moving in the sun light may be 'doomed'... If the sunlight is following the contour of a 'static' area of the
shot, you could perhaps 'fake' something in the manner of making a matte painting (frequently done in the olden days with paint and canvas... or glass... or composited in with negative matting magic... which can
be done far more easily with After Effects...
One suggestion above was to use a 3-D modeling program to get some sort of model, then use the 3-D program to create a sunlit scene... sounds like a lot of work... and still would not work well if the actors move
in the beams of sun light.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
This is an example. The walls directly behind the actors probably is 'real' to some degree... real lights light the actors. But the large window, sun on the wall, the ceiling, etc. was most likely painted
then 'dropped in' during optical printing.
Other techniques used painted on glass and the glass was positioned in front of the camera, the shot framed, such that the painting looked to be something off in the distance...
From: http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2010/12/put-top-on-that-set-please-ceilings.html
From the same site, here's one that shows the 'mask area', then the matte ceiling that is dropped in...
And one that may be more fitting for you 'sunlight' shot.
Here's a photoshop list of tutorials. You can 'paint' create a still then use AE to drop the still in, cut a mask to allow for the live action in one area, but use the 'painted' or heavily altered still, in the other areas.
http://slodive.com/photoshop/matte-painting-tutorials/
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bruceallen
Well-known member
1. If you want to solve this problem easily:
Put in a few days of hard work at an activity that earns money, then use that money to re-shoot, with a rented light big enough to fake the sun.
2. If you want to get really good at After Effects:
Put in more days trying to recreate the effect. Maybe make some blurry stripes in overlay mode and use the mesh warp tools to make them look like they are going around the contours of the face? Use bits of the other takes and warp them to match? That said, get good at this and you can make a career out of this. Some of the VFX stuff we've had to pull off recently has been of similar insane difficulty. It's kinda fun actually. But not easy at all.
If you want to go with route #2 you really need to start reading fxguide, behind the scenes interviews, learn what matte paintings are, etc. It's a long but enjoyable (for me at least) journey. Then post footage along with your attempts to fix and folks can help suggest solutions.
Hope this helps?
Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Okay thanks. I will have to read that. Unfortunately where I live there are no rental stores that have lights of that caliber. But I was able to recall the actors back and make the location look the same. We aimed for a somewhat sunny day, and hoped it would last. We were just going to redo the last half of the scene, where the sun was gone, and it didn't match up in real time. But as we were shooting, the sun went behind clouds in the shot. So we lucked out cause no we can use the previous footage, and it should match up close enough since we got a shot of it fading away completely.