My big chromakey project

Anders Holck

Anders Holck

Well-known member
So after spending several nights in post, I have now finished my big chromakey project: a petite music video for the danish band Carlas.

We shot it over one long day in a studio, with the HVX tethered to my G5.

The video was edited in Final Cut Pro, and all post was done in AE7 using the Keylight plugin for the chroma key.
No motion control was used, only a treadmill and a small hand operated rotation bed.
All camera moves is done inside AE, except the steadicam parts in the end (all the White room stuff)

http://andersholck.batcave.net/carlas/Site/Carlas.html

(Noise, glows and Chromatic abbrevation was addid in final grade to get a macrolens look, it's not from the HVX :-))
 
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Very nice compositing. However, what were the concept guys smoking when they come up with the idea? ha ha.
 
Bonkers mad! There's some good stuff in there, and I love all the crowd duplication.

I bet you had a bit of a nightmare with the lead singers frizzy hair though?
Keylight is a top keyer - beats the pants off Primatte.

I enjoyed the music too.
 
electricpig said:
I bet you had a bit of a nightmare with the lead singers frizzy hair though?
Click to expand...

Tell me about it :-)
Actually the hair keyed pretty good at 100% size, but when I then added the head warp distortion which scaled the actual pixels to about 150-200%, it started to become sub optimal.
I belive I could have made a better hair edge by using a seperate key/layer for the head, but the project was already becomming way to complicated so all layers was done using a single key.
 
imgentertainment@mac said:
Man you got some really good AF skills. Good job I loved the video. what other plugins did you use. such as the one for the crowd.
Click to expand...

The crows was done by manually compositing a lot of precomposed 2d layers in 3D space.
The largest crowds had about 180 layers for a rendertime of 1:20 min per frame on a Quad G5.
 
Anders,

Very nice work. Really beautiful. I think some of the interactive shadows are most impressive. expecially when the lead singer is face to face with the replicated soldiers, having his rim light cast a shadow on the soldiers was a very subtle and nice touch. You definately nailed the feel of living toy soldiers. It's a sort of innocent facism... and I think I recognize the guy in the rubber mask... he seems familiar! :)

The beginning reminds me of a Gatorade commercial that is running here right now where they have a bunch of sports star's heads grafted onto 5 year old's bodies as they play basketball in a driveway. Creapy and fascinating at the same time.

This is *almost* good enough to be a reason why P2 Genie has been on hold! Now back to coding!!! <Sound of Whip Cracking>

And congrats on your first feature too, I saw the clips from your earlier post. You're turning out some terrific work, keep it up.

-filmstox

now where can I get one of those "Bad Boy" hats?
 
Yes, this project, not having my HVX this week due to it being rented, and my brand new 17" Mac book Pro are the reasons for not delivering the genie yet.
 
BTV: Did anyone notice that amazing performance by one of the actors in the end:
aholck1.jpg


Anders "Cameo's are no fun when nobody notices" Holck
 
Anders Holck said:
Tell me about it :-)
Actually the hair keyed pretty good at 100% size, but when I then added the head warp distortion which scaled the actual pixels to about 150-200%, it started to become sub optimal.
I belive I could have made a better hair edge by using a seperate key/layer for the head, but the project was already becomming way to complicated so all layers was done using a single key.
Click to expand...
You could also have thinned the key at the edges through a roto to bleed back some background - it's a shame his frizzy hair has such a rim-light. But I understand about jobs becoming too complicated for stuff like this, as there sometimes comes a point when your head hurts just trying to sort out the little details...
 
The original idea was that the first universe was located in a white room, so my onset keytest's were perfect with the rim in the hairedge.

During post we settled on the dark red planet universe, as it proved more effective, but of cause the hard rim didn't fit then.....
 
Just so you know, video budgets in Denmark are normally in the $5.000-$10.000 range, so we had to move fast....high profile videos are occasionally in the $20.000 range.
 
Anders Holck said:
Tell me about it :-)
Actually the hair keyed pretty good at 100% size, but when I then added the head warp distortion which scaled the actual pixels to about 150-200%, it started to become sub optimal.
I belive I could have made a better hair edge by using a seperate key/layer for the head, but the project was already becomming way to complicated so all layers was done using a single key.
Click to expand...


When the head warp thing ends and goes back to normal, how did you do that move around him? I need to do something similar in my movie and my only solution was a hundred some odd HVX-200s in 60P.
 
PunkMetalDrummer17 said:
When the head warp thing ends and goes back to normal, how did you do that move around him? I need to do something similar in my movie and my only solution was a hundred some odd HVX-200s in 60P.
Click to expand...

We used a small woodboard, mounted on a turtlebase from a C-stand.
The director (right) and one of the dressers rotated it by hand, and then I later hand matched that motion with the AE camera. It was actually way easier to match than I fear'ed.

Here is the setup from another shot. The actual segment used in the video was a medium shot, so you couldn't see the lower part in that:
http://andersholck.batcave.net/carlas/setup.mov
It's the director on the right side....
 
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Anders.. you have some mad skillz. Really beautifully crafted work. You do have some AE chops.. and great camerawork. Love the white room stuff.


Just wonder is we should be ready for the invasion of capt. america over here? Or if we should be offended and send over some WMDs.... lol


Such fabulous stuff here. When can we see more?
 
Anders Holck said:
We used a small woodboard, mounted on a turtlebase from a C-stand.
The director (right) and one of the dressers rotated it by hand, and then I later hand matched that motion with the AE camera. It was actually way easier to match than I fear'ed.

Here is the setup from another shot. The actual segment used in the video was a medium shot, so you couldn't see the lower part in that:
http://andersholck.batcave.net/carlas/setup.mov
It's the director on the right side....
Click to expand...

I see... Wouldn't work in my case though. I have one girl in mid-air with another one her knees on the ground, and the girl in mid-air kicks the other girl. All in slow motion, while the camera is doing a full spin around the two of them, matrix style.

The only way for this to be done is still a film array, I guess.
I was thinking Still Digital Cameras (matrix style) but I need them to be fired off in sequence instead of all at once, since I need movement in the frame.
 
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