Sh040C Update

Here is an update on Sh040C.

I have cleaned it yesterday (by removing the rope and preparing the plate) but today I begun to add in smoke. I used my slower edited footage of atmosphere.

This is how it looks once the atmosphere is positioned, roto'd, layered and tracked:

However, this is not the look I am after because it looks very flat, slapped on top of the image, right in front of us - in our faces. POW.

So, I want to create the effect in which the atmosphere is wrapped around and intertwined with the ladder on the bottom third of the frame.

Therefore, I have to roto the ladder and composite it back on top:

I found the most effect way, instead of tracking the roto, was to simply animate the roto seen as it moves along a 2D track anyway (it is a very flat movement.) This meant that no unnecessary areas of the character were appearing on top of the ladder or other areas - creepy!

Even though this seems like a cool idea, it doesn't quite yet create the look as it doesn't make the smoke surround the ladder, it puts it behind the ladder. Therefore we need to see some smoke on top of the ladder. The best thing to do here is to take the merge of the smoke which is flat on top of the ladder and roto whispy shapes and areas of the smoke and then composite this again on top of the ladder roto.

This is the effect you are left with:

And this is the shot so far with some more colour correction testing:

What I wanted to create here was to darken it and bring out that contrast, but also not to lose the detail of the face within the darkness. In order to do this I lowered the gain of the whole piece but upped the gain of the shadows. Another notable tweak was that I also upped the gain of the highlights for more contrast and gave it a white cold and dreamy softness with a glow node. This adds to the feeling of the scene. And, this is just still in test mode and not final. I have not yet had a look at it next to the rest of the shots to see if there are any consistency issues, for example...

Sh041 Update

Regarding the previous post on this shot, said issues have been altered.

Some other particular details have been created, for example, the shadow under the additional 'conjoined' extractor fan, the repainting of the wall artefact behind the chosen re-location and a shadow on the fan as this particular fan would indeed be falling gradually out of the highly lit area.

These effects are achieved by rotoscoping, either by drawing bezier shapes, colour correcting this and compositing it on top; or cloning and painting artefacts out. Luckily this shot is very, very still and so requires no tracking whatsoever.

This is the original shot plate for comparison:

Cleanup in progress

Using Nuke's rotoPaint node, one can remove elements such as unwanted rope from their shots by using fairly simple digital painting techniques. For example, the clone tool, smear, blur and painting colour.

It is what is called 'invisible work' as it is not meant to be known to ever exist in the first place. After all, filmmaking is trickery and often staged and faked. Such techniques are to make things either more appealing or more realistic. Another good example is the light I removed in Sh041 (visible in this post.)

Here is an example of a 'Conjure' shot in progress:

I have also toyed with some colour correction, which needs some work, but for me it looks more like what I want from the shot rather than the warm image above it.

Of course it isn't as simple as painting one frame if the camera and other elements are moving. One has to track the painting into the footage, and any other painting done for areas which are out of frame in the beginning, as well as roto anything which is in front of the painted-out element. The character in this case moves on top of the rope. So he needs to be rotoscoped:

If I had left this shot without roto'ing the character and compositing this back on top of the repainting:

The area of painted wall would be on top of the arm as if a part of his arm was invisible or missing:

This is then the rotoscoped arm over the repainting:

So, this is what I have by this stage:

Hopefully this stands to demonstrate some of my compositing and cleanup processes I am using shot to shot.

Shot Consistency

Colour correction is a very good tool in the latter stages of film production to give the scene a consistent feel from shot to shot - especially when shots are taken from several different locations and made to look one of the same.

Of course, well before this, lighting is very important to be executed in exact ways location to location.

What the character wears is important as well as the location obviously appearing to be similar. If you design the set, then you can put similar or exactly the same props into the scenes.

If you design the shots for cutting in the storyboard, this subtracts any odd jump cuts that may occur in the edit.

Also, if the movements of the characters or elements join shot to shot.

Many things allow the cuts and story to flow better within a scene, and many more than these examples.

But, there is one other situation I'd like to point out: You shoot on several locations which are pretty similar, for example an alleyway, but they aren't totally similar.

Now, we did this, and we did frame steps in both alleyways to aid the cut. And, to be honest it isn't a big problem, but there is a very good way to synchronise them up using compositing.

Example of Alleyway #1

I have chosen to test cutting out one particular element from one close up shot, or mid shot, and compositing that into the wide from the other alleyway location.

Example of Alleyway #2

More on this later...