Making "Plates"

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I was watching the making of a video on MTV the other day and they were saying that they were going to shoot about 100 extras in the street watching the band perform. The director said he was going to shoot the extras on "plates" then in post they would stack the plates to make 100 extras look like there were 1,000 extras that filled the whole street up. Is this possible with FCP.
 
Re: Making "Plates"

Yes, use the 4 or 8 point matte function to isolate each group. You need the camera locked off, the lighting to remain constant and of course the extras have to stay in their 'area' and each take that area is moved over so that you end up with the same group in 10 places. If they need to overlap then the roto becomes trickier.
 
Re: Making "Plates"

Setup camera on a tripod that's not moving.
Shoot a section of your yard with 5 people standing on right side.
After shooting 30 seconds have those people move as a group over to just left of where they were. (no overlapping) Shoot another 30 second.
Repeat until they've covered the entire yard across.
Now if you blended all of these together you'd see a large number of people in your yard.
Consider at each group as a split screen.
Place the first group in V1 timeline.
Place 2nd group in V2.
Now use the matte points to selected the second group. This esentially 'cuts it out' so they are matted on top of the first plate. You should now see 10 people. If the mattes are softened and you avoided overlaps it shoudl look real.
Now repeat with each group of people on another video layer with a matte made to cut out each group.
 
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