Lightning effect on th edge of a person

[Yaz]

Hi

I need a little help here.
There's a shot where a person is seated at a table. He kind of fades in to where he is in the shot as some kind of transition effect in which he is transported to this specific location in the scene. I'm being asked to add lightning effect around the edge of this person to show more stylishly that he came from another place.
I'm trying to do that the last couple of hours but I haven't quite figured out how.
Can anyone help me out?
It's like in The Matrix, where Morpheus is transported to the Real World via a telephone in the subway station.
His body becomes semi-transparent with matrix numbers over his body and disappears, but in my case, its the other way around. It's when he's transported into the scene.
At first I was thinking that it's like Find Edge of that person and run a lightning effect around it... but I can't make it to work.
Now, it's not really working.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Yaz

 

[David Jimerson]

This is a shot where you're transitioning from footage of the room without him, to footage of the room with him? No greenscreen?

You'll probably have to do a rotoscope to separate him from the background. Or, you may be able to peel him out with difference masks. In any case, you'll have to do something to isolate him.

 

[Yaz]

I see. I figured out how to rotoscope the characters out, but is there an option with lightning effect in which I could put glow and lightning on the edge?

 

[Paul F]

If you have it rotoscoped, you've done the hard part. Andrew has several options for you. Take a look at his video co-pilot series. Here is one example:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/disintegration/