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This for anyone who uses this - If I wanted to "clone" someone, what is the best way to do it. The idea is a room, then one person walks in, then his clone walks in and this keeps happening until the room is filled with clones of this guy.

I tried doing it the same way as you would make a ghost but it didn't quite work. Any ideas?

To do it effectively you'll need a blue screen.

I have that but I was hoping not to use it as it takes too long. If you set up the camera in the one position and didn't move it, while filming the same actor in diferent positions within the shot, couldn't you then overlap it using Premiere?
The background should stay the same but the actor will be in different places. Or is this wrong?

No, I think the perspective of the background would change too..and that's not what you want.

If the camera is static with, a wide enough field of focus then it should be OK. I've applied that trick to static imagery in the past, but not to moving image. Persepective of background won't change if background and camera are both static.

The only problem is the overlaps of background to person between layers, you would need to do a lot of clean up else parts of the background would show up as double exposures on the composite.

I think Raz was more on the nose with his blue screen technique to be honest.

Wow, you people are smart when it comes to special effects, I'm impressed!

And if you have time to spare, you can cut out one person in one sequence in Photoshop, frame by frame.

Hmmmm, I think that might be a little too time consuming.

KJ, are you going for a kind of George Micheal, Mary K Blige video effect here? (Sorry, can't remember the name of the song, but I'm sure you know what I mean.)

Cool. Get it online when you're done.

Yeah, if you didnt move the camera or the depth of the field of view then the background would stay the same. But if your gonna go to that much trouble in editing, you might as well make it easy on yourself and take a still of the background then do both actors in bluescreen.

You can set one up with a large blue sheet and have it well lit. It shoul;d work well enough for those needs, because you'd be cutting and pasting anyway.


BTW, my friend who made A Question Of Faith (a fan film I'm working on the sequal to) said he did all the lightsabers frame by frame in Photoshop, and he said it took forever! So that may not be the way you'd want to go at all.

I think that's what they do at Lucasfilm as well though... I dunno, but I can't figure out how else they're going to do it. If any of you guy know, do tell.

At the previous production company I once worked for, they had finished editing a 30 minute programme when the commisioning editor noticed there were too many brand names visible. This is not allowed due to regulations on advertising on public television. Now, all these shots were filmed hand-held with a lot of movement. The editor had to go through the programme and put a blurry patch over these brand names, frame by frame. I'm so happy I'm not an editor.

I think Lucasfiln just plot the path of the blad frame by frame and then automate the effect through proprietry software.

Probably something like that. Still a lot of frame by frame work. And then they have to make the flashes as well, allthough that's just one or two frames per hit.

LFL and ILM have it a bit easer this time around.
They have made some special equipment that attaches to the camera and tells the computer where the camera is and the focal length for every frame. They also have referance points on the wall (the yellow post-it note looking things you may have seen) that are also imputed into the computer so they get all their informatin real time and so the wont have to do any guess work or even have to go frame by frame.

All that info then goes to ILM where the backgrounds are rendered in 3d and then placed into the shot. Along wth any extra actors or CGI effects.

Yep, that's the ARRI tripod head that stores ALL the info of the camera. Very good stuff that. That way you can make numerous shots for one final shot and shoot the in EXACTLY the same way.

I think the software does all that too. There was an Episode-I documentary a while back where they talked about the new method for making the blades and the old one.

The sabres from the 70/80's had little motors in the handles that made the blades rotate to give the shimmer effect.

They showed an Episode-I scene with only the saber blades, it was from Maul/OB1 battle.

As to the time, well that's one reason why Post takes over 18 months....

Exactly, they have a lot of people working on these effects. It's still a lot of manual labor, even though it's all on a computer these days.

Also Queeg, if you could have used the new Avid on that, it would have been easy to erase all those signs.

They have a feature that grabs like frames and remembers them so you can use that for a quick edit of any background piece that you dont want, or even use it to make a steady cam effect to stop the motion of the camera and make it look as if it was shot on a tripod. Cool stuff, I can't wait to get one (saves money for 10 years starting now) they cost upwards of $10k!!!

It's a cool technique. Especially the "camera shake" removal. Rather than having to plot points, the S/W automatically plots them itself for removal. Very cool.

I've never heard of the handle's having motors. ANH they had a phosphorescent bar that was actually wired with electricity, but they were too expensive and they broke a lot. ESB and ROTJ had a different method, but they were still wired at times to make the spark.

Now they use mainly wooden sticks, and do it all in CG.

Those are the onces. The "blade" had a fluuerescent reflective layer. The idea was that by rotating the pole the reflective layer would shimmer.

The motors would break all the time due to the impact of the battle. They were only used in ANH, by the time of ESB they had come up with a better technique.

Yep, I remember the need for the change, but I had never heard of the motor. (and you had said the '80s ones had them) so that had me wondering more. I also thought that the Grafflex camera handles that were used didnt really have room for a motor, but I guess anything is possable.

And it's kinda funny that they went to all that trouble then ended up painting over it anyway (except for when Vader and Obi pointed the sabers straight at the cam) I bet the prop guy who went to all the trouble to make them was upset after all his work disapeared

Sorry, I guess that was confusing. Yes, it was just for ANH. They used the real tiny motors like in a Scalectix car. Hence why they broke so mucg. I don't even know if they actually used them in production to be honest. They may have given up on them, before then due to the breakages.

ONe thing I do remember about it was that thjey had cables running up their arms and down their backs to the battery packs to power the motors.

Yep I knew that too. And they had to do some touchups on the floor in certian shots so the cables wouldnt be seen. They were hardwired to an amp and I remember Alec saying something about being worried about having a power cable running through his costume.

Thanks for the help everyone.

RC it is a Mary J Blige/ George Micheal thing I'm looking for although with less movement. The actor is just going to walk in and sit down, or start to make coffee or read a newspaper. That's why I don't want to use bluescreen. It will take to long to synch everything up.

Well, you might try it. I know on AVID you can make two similar pics stacked on top of each other work. But you may have to wipe the clone figure and see if no lines show. You have to wipe it moveable on a timeline though. Superimposing won;t work, cos your clone will look like a ghost.

Tricky stuff, dude. Two guys in front a blue screen with a partial set may lead to the best results. Just make a set with a seat, a coffemaker and whatever equipment you have and just a bluescreen. Have the actor do both things and then add the background later. Newspaper and stuff is no problem for your chroma key.

Well it looks like it's my only choice.

The trouble is I have 5 hours to film and only 3 hours editing time. So if I mess it up then that's it.

I've never actually used bluescreen before and evertime I've seen someone do it there have been big problems with the lighting. I know for blue screen you have to have the light very even across the bluescreen but what about the background?
Should I light this any particular way?

Okay there's two ways to do that. You always need quite a distance between the bluescreen and the person you're filming. The light to light the bluescreen must not light the people you're portraying. You use your normal lights (back and front lights) to light them.

For the blue screen you need quite a bit of light. You need to have it lit evenly.
One way to do that is use big lights: HMI 550 Watts or something, or these big soft lights are even better. Depends on what you have.
There is another way which I haven't used myself yet, but I have seen it during someone else's shoot: blue lights. They are fairly long lights, but you only need two or three (depending on how big the bluescreen is) and you just put them up and it's perfect. It looks a bit weird when you look at it with the naked eye, but when you check your monitor it's perfect blue. And you can even have your actors closer to the screen as well, as long as you shield the blue light from them of course.

And 3 hours of editing.... that's not much if you're editing non-linear and keying or making effects. I don't want to worry you, but you may be short on time, no matter what effects you intend to make. Do try to get some more...

Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Yep, I was gonna say exactly what Queeq was saying. Two sets of lights, and keep a distance. Put your props in, (you may only have to do one set of props at a time. I think it will work that way).

I'd also get more editing time, or trim back some of the actions you want to have happen. Two clones will show you know how to accomplish it, but more will only take time in editing and shooting, and may be overkill for a quick project.

It's too bad you can't work on it at home (like I can )because I edit every day right now, and time FLYS! Seriously, 3 hours goes by in no time, and I can never get enough hours in a day to do what I want to.

In fact, I'll be going back to work on that movie after a couple weeks off, so I wont be around as much for a while.

Most of all have fun and try not to get over your head on a first time thing. It will only frustrate yourself and make it more stressful that it needs to be.

Working with an experienced editor may help.... but it IS short.

Thanks again. I'll try and get some more editing time but I have a habit of trying things too complicated so my tutor will probably tell me to do something else. We had to make a 30 second advert last month and mine lasted 4 minutes and took 3 hours to render.


One last question - the room which is going to be filmed seperately so it can be put in place of the blue screen. Should this be lit in a certain way? I was planning to use the natural light.

Since you're going to key it in, it basically/technically doesn't matter how you light. It won't affect the key itself, the quality of that is determined by the quality of lighting the blue screen. (if the actors wear blue in their clothes you can also use a green screen BTW).

HOWEVER, (there is always a however), to make the total picture work, you must keep in mind that you ARE lighting your actors. To make it coherent, the BEST way (and this is maybe difficult for you to achieve) is to make the shots of the room first, use that shot in a test key shot so you can fix your lighting of the actors to fit that of the room. But since you won't have time or facilities to do that, best thing is to NOT naturally light the room shot, since you won;t be naturally lighting your actors either.

*RC looks up to watch this all fly Waaaaaaayyyyyy over his head.*

NOTE: It's MUCH easier with still photography, though the principles remain basically the same....

Yes, but with still photography it is not even absolutely necessary to have a blue background. You can isolate anything by erasing what you don't want.
On moving pictures, that's a bit more complicated. And the resolution is so much lower. A TV screen is only 72 dpi.

mmmmmm...........I'm getting confused now.

The bluescreen that I have isn't a bluescreen. It's a room painted blue which we use for this.
My plan was to light the bluescreen evenly like you should, but then use the natural light in the room for the actors (so I'm not artificialy lighting the actors). I was then going to light the background room the same way.

So the background room and the actors would both be lit with natural light and only the bluescreen would need artificial light.

I don't think the bluescreen would need any artificial lighting, as long as its "blue" enough for the software to identify its blue, and remove it.

Depends on what keying software you have. But if you use natural light only, you have shadows. And the actors also cast shadows, which become blackish patches and they MAY be hard to key. So it's not so simple. The blue must be and even blue for the software to recognise ALL of it as blue.

The room can be painted, no probs. We just call it a blue screen but it's no more than a blue wall. So you're okay there.
The thing is that you need to 'separate' the actors from the background, so if you're artificially lighting the blue screen, you need to do that with the actors as well. You may have to test it, but you don't have time for that.

I always understood, though my knowledge of motion filming is limited, that you had to overlight the area, but under expose slightly to compensate.

Is that right?

I have no idea. I'm very close to ditching the whole thing.

No. You just need to light it evenly. That's all, get a nice even blue background. It's really not that hard.

Well I'll try it.

Good luck. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

What are you editing on?

Matrox? Avid? I have options of which to use.


Here's a question - The * is the camera. The two + nearest the camera are the actor sitting in a chair. The two + furthest away are the actor standing up behind the front two.

Would this work? Or would the overlapping be a problem?

Also I was told that I couldn't film the floor at any point during this. Or is this wrong?

+ +
+ +


*

Wel, with that position I wonder why you'd bother, because now you can't see the people behind it. But when you shoot them seperately with a blue screen you can move both pairs to back or front, whatever you want.

Another thing you might want to take into account is your focus. But maybe you should defocus when necessary in AVID. You can defocus there.

And yes, you can shoot the floor as long as it's not a reflective surface and it has no blue in it. Just make sure you have some light on it, although that may pose problems with the shadows if you want to merge the two shots.

I never worked with Matrox, but I'd go for AVID anyway. What kind of system is it?

I'm not sure what system it is.

Queeq that was just an example to see if it's possible to overlap people i.e one person sitting and another standing or walking behind.

You can do it, KJ. Just use the layering on AVID. You can stack several layers on top of each other. The trick is to have the background shot (which is also layered on AVID) mix on both shots. I've never done that myself, but it must be possibe I think. I can check tomorrow if you want me to, I'll just ask my editor.

yes please.

Ah good, he's out at the moment, but I'll see him in an hour or so.
Hang on.

Okay, I checked. Yes it is possible.
You can either do it by keying or better yet, use a mask for the actor-behind- shot. There's a tool on AVID that you can make all the blue white and then you can make it work. But get yourself a good an experienced editor, or you'll be screwing around a long time.
But it still takes quite a bit of work.

If you want to make it easier on yourself: shoot it in a room and edit it as split screen. But that means the actor cannot step into the side of the "other actor".