Speeding through the city in a blur

[Vampiresoup]

Is there a way to take sped up footage zooming through a the city and put ablur to it where lights and things streak kinda like a trailing effect?

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[Sirius_Doggy]

Shoot with a slow shutter speed, that should add some if the blurring/streaking in the original footage.

 

[Vampiresoup]

thanks man! Um, should I shoot at the slowest shutter speed? Any after effects tricks that would help?

 

[kai]

You could try turning on frame blending. Your best option though is to shoot it correctly in camera. Very slow shutterspeed will lend you that streak you're after

 

[surf]

If I rememeber well, AE has a highlights blur effect

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

You could pull a hi-con matte of the footage and try to isolate the highlights and then use box blur to blur the highlights, and then animate the footage, if need be.

 

[Sirius_Doggy]

Slowest shutterspeed may not be the best. You'll have to experiment a little bit to find out what works best for you. You'll be able to see the results in real time.

 

[jackal2513]

shoot with slowshutter (say 1/6)
bring into after effects and delete every 5 frames (which are non-moving)
render that out uncompressed
bring it back into AE then timestretch it by around 1000-2000 (600% if you want realtime speed)
using the highest frame blending mode in AE7, then render it out again

 

[Vampiresoup]

These are great guys thanks. Is it going to be difficult if I wanted to slow the footage down to reveal people standing, staring at the camera, and then speed up again streaking down the city revealing person after person? Will the slow shutter speed effect that? and should I shoot 24p or 30p or 60i?

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

Whoa, that makes it a bit more complicated. The problem with a really slow shutter speed is that any movement is going to be blurred, unless the person stands perfectly still (hard to do for most).

One way of doing it would to shoot one pass at a normal shutter speed, then shoot another pass at a low shutter speed to get the streaks. The second pass should not have the people in it. You would then take the two plates and comp them together using a difference matte. Problem is, you would need motion control to pull it off effectively, because the camera move has got to match exactly to pull a good key.

You could always roto between the two plates, but that is very time consuming. Maybe somebody else has a suggestion.