Editing Techniques and Terminology for my Imagination Sequences.

Basketball Effect

I must pick a good stationary angle and capture an empty background plate. (This is a shot that has nothing moving in it). I must now have my actor move into frame and have him throw the ball out of frame. He must throw it out of frame so that i don’t need to erase the ball in the shot. I Must then ask my actor to go close up to the net and land a successful hit.  Then take a basketball image from Google that looks the same to the ball you have in the shot, change the colouring to match the lighting to the real ball, finally animate the ball going out of frame then back in and into the basketball net. However, make sure he is to the left or right on the net so that he is easily erasable. In the image above it shows that in the red circles that where the ball was i just need to take my empty background plate and the green is the successful hit.

However, in the turorial, it also suggests that if you have more time i can create the ball in 3D, capture a spherical environment map of the location for lighting so that the lighting will match the real one. Then animate a transitional motion to bridge the gap between the throw and the hit. However, this way is a way too complicated for me as i don’t know how to use 3D soft were. So I am going to follow the instructions I have found in the paragraph above.

Car Hit Effect

This effect is quite similar to the Basketball effect however i need to mask out a car and my actor for this to work.

This must all be in the open shot as the camera is tripoded and must not be moved throughout all actions. I must pick a good stationary angle and capture an empty background plate. I must now have my actor move into frame and have him stand there, for whatever reason. Then ask him to find a safe distance away from the road so that my car can drive past. Then in Post-Production have the empty background plate on the back of all the clips in after effects and mask out the actor and the car in there own layers. In the tutorial, it says to use the puppet warp tool (shown in the image above) to war the actor around the car and then follows the car as he goes off screen. However if i can film a larger car to drive passed, so that in reality his body doesn’t need to wrap around it, i wont need to do this. Alls i will need to do is follow the car off-screen, speed everything up and add some motion blur.

Car Dodge Effect

This effect is very similar to the Car hit effect however i will have to place some layer underneath each other and change so other small things around.

This also must all be in the open shot as the camera is tripoded and must not be moved throughout all actions. I must pick a good stationary angle and capture an empty background plate. I must now have my actor move into frame act like he has dodged the car and walk out of frame. Then ask him to find a safe distance away from the road so that my car can drive past. Then in Post-Production have the empty background plate on the back of all the clips in after effects and mask out the actor and the car in there own layers. However this time I will place my car above the actor layer so that it looks like the car is driving over him. Then add some simple shadows (as shown in the screenshot above) so that this looks like the car is casting a shadow on top of my actor. Then alls i need to do is rever the proses for the exciting the back of the car i just reveal my actor but with mo car shadow.

Gun Shot effect

With my gunshot effect i haven’t fully figured out what i am going to have for this yet however i will be doing some Contextual Analisis to see if i can find any ideas that i can add to this effect. However, for now, all i know how to do is the muzzle flash.

Once i have my footage of my actor acting like he is firing a gun i can then take that clip into after effects and add my effects. Firstly i must add my muzzle flash but change the blending mode so that it looks like it is in the shot. Then adjust the opacity to match the lighting. Now i need to add other effects like warping the background around the muzzle flash. This makes it look like the muzzle flash is expanding the air around the flash. I can also add some sparks coming out of the gun and smoke. Also adjusting the adjustment layers and opacity. However, if the gun is at an angle I must make sure i am matching the angle with the right muzzle flash whilst masking around the gun if necessary.

Once i have created all these effects i will record myself, and my computer screen, talking about how i created these effects in more detail and it will be a lot easier to understand.

After writing these key points i must now look Find the locations for all of my imagination sequences so that i can find locations that are suitable for me to do these effects in.