Photocomposition

Bischofftep

Bischofftep

Well-known member
Hello, folks!

Thanks to everyone who liked "Photocomposition," my entry for the June DVXUser competition!

This was my first time behind the camera, and I'm very eager for feedback and thoughts for how to improve technique, lighting, audio, etc.

Some things that I learned already:
1) NEVER shoot with a battery-powered light left on for a whole 4 hour shoot: as the battery dies the light temperature changes dramatically! Serious color-correction was required.
2) Attempting to color key off of "white" is insane. Some of the keying towards the end is sheer frustration & sloppy. I should've used a green card in the picture frame! Next time...
3) Do your keying & special effects BEFORE you do fancy fade transitions. ::)

Congrats to all those who participated, and thanks in advance for your feedback & critique!
 
Re: Photocomposition

Good Job man! That color key looked hard. You put your hand right in the shot! I bet you thought...WHY DID I DO THAT?? :)

But you know what, these contests are HUGE learning experiences! Damn if I'll ever not bring some "Off" or "BugAway" next time I film outside!

Congrats again!
 
Re: Photocomposition

good job! what program did you use for your keying? the thumb shot was definitely a tough key. you might have had to rotoscope that shot, like kind of manually selecting the area in the frame but around the thumb. how long did the match moves take you?
 
Re: Photocomposition

Congratulation… I loved the story. Great job

I knew it would be not easy when I saw that you had your hand in front. But if you would not done that it would have not looked as real. J So I had to try it for myself how to do something like that. With the new mask feature in Vegas5 it was pretty easy to take out the hand.
But what I do not understand is what you all talk about the keying. I put the moving picture in the picture frame with PluginPac 3D Le. My sample was only a standing picture frame. Now when you walk with it, are you not just moving the picture in the picture along?? If it would be green as you all say, how would this helped you? Please explain…

Thanks

Gregor
 
Re: Photocomposition

Thanks for the feedback, all!

I used Combustion 3 Mac for the match movement & keying, and when the keying failed for the last shot where the actor set the picture down I rotoscoped it in a hurry (which is why it gets so sloppy near the end of that shot).

Match movement is easy enough in Combustion, it has a very powerful Tracker that I set up to track the four points of the "guy playing piano's hands" footage corners. (The piano playing was done by me.)

Tracking took a little longer than I'd have liked but that's probably because I'm still getting used to the program and made some poor choices from time to time on what exactly to track.

Once the picture tracked the inside corners of the frames properly, the next step was to key out the white card inside the picture frame so that it would:
a) Fit the picture frame exactly
b) Disappear behind hands & arms

I thought a bright white card would enable me to simply key out via luminance... big mistake. Since the white wasn't uniformly lit throughout the shot I had to "open up" the luminance that would get keyed out... which pulled parts of the hand, the wall, the lamp, several books... you get the idea.

What I should've done is get a bright, flourescent green card from a craft store or paint one myself (I have chroma green paint, but didn't have time to let it dry) and put THAT in the frame. Then, even with lighting variations nothing else in the shot was even close to any shade of bright green and the Discreet Keyer would've had no problem pulling the key.

Next time! :D
 
Re: Photocomposition

Liked the story and the concept. Congratulations for a nice video!

[quote author=Bischofftep link=board=contest;num=1088994109;start=0#0 date=07/04/04 at 19:21:49]
2) Attempting to color key off of "white" is insane. Some of the keying towards the end is sheer frustration & sloppy. I should've used a green card in the picture frame! Next time...[/quote]

Heh, yeah that must have been a real pain!

I used a sheet of bright green construction paper from my local drug store when I played around with keying. I also used Combustion to do the work. Very easy with the green. The problem I ran into was from improperly lighting the subjects. This caused the green to spill onto the subjects and made it tricky to key out.

Search the screen grabs/videos section of the board for my Metal Racers video if you would like to see the example.
 
Re: Photocomposition

I'm trying to watch your short, but I can't find it. I also tried looking in the contest forum with no luck... :-/
can you post it again?
 
Re: Photocomposition

Hello, Moe!

Thanks for your interest.

Here's a link to the contest entry version:
http://www.ceridwenproductions.com/Files/DVXUser-Bischofftep.mov

The "Director's Cut" full length (5 minutes) version is here:
http://www.ceridwenproductions.com/Files/Photocomposition.mov

I noticed that something went awry with the long version's aspect ratio. Not sure why. It's still watchable but is a little squashed.

I know the contest entry versions got moved from Kyle Sherman's server, but don't know where they went.
 
Re: Photocomposition

you did a very good job on matching the movement, I thought that was very well done :) you do however need to fix that keying problem 8)
 
Re: Photocomposition

Nice. There is an article in the latest Moviemaker mag about chromakeying, but it sounds like you learned plenty with your short.
 
Re: Photocomposition

Hey man, just saw your short. I dig it, i like the concept most of all.

I feel the lighting over all was too hard. It seemed to be coming almost from the camera giving it a spot light/flash bulb sort of feel. which for a piece like this doesn't work (for me anyway). Soft lighting either with a florescent or with diffusion paper over your light will help allot. putting the soft light overhead and/or another slightly above and in front of the guy would give it a more dramatic feel. or maybe bounce the light off the wall just in front of him and/or get a few more table lamps around him.

anyway, definitely check out some movies for reference when it comes to lighting.

as for the composite, yeah, its a very rough key. however, a green or blue card in it for something like this is NOT the best solution. the best thing in my experience would be to put a matte black card in the frame with a piece of glass in front. do not try to do a key, just track the the frame and composite the image you want OVER the black. and do an "add" transfer or something like that to the image your comping, this will keep all the reflections from the glass. You may need to adjust the levels and/or transparency of the image over the black card to help get it to register into the scene. I would recommend a little planning as well, if you know you want a picture comped into something like this, shoot that stuff first, then print out a still of it, place it into the frame and take a reference photo, this will help out in the compositing process later. ok, back to the black card thing, lighting will still effect the black card a bit. so if the black card goes into shadow or into a hotspot, the image you have comped over it will inherit those lighting changes. All that will help integrate the composite into the scene. then just take the time to roto out the fingers or whatever passes in front of it.

good job on your first outing! keep'em coming!

i was totally expecting to go back to the piano and see the music being magically written by an invisible hand.

Peace!
 
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