What special effects can you perform with your HV20?

[MithrilFox]

I wanted to get an idea of what kinds of things people are capable of doing here, so that if I wanted to learn more perhaps someone could help me out.

So, post here and tell us what kind of special effects you can pull off with the camera and your video editing software (and additional stuff). Here are some ideas of effects that you might mention:

1) Vertigo effect
2) Pleasantville effect
3) "Queer Eye" effect (look it up if you don't know, it's a weird title)
4) Star Trek transporter effect
5) Ghost effect (two layers, people are very opaque)
6) Fireball / flames (person shoots fireball or becomes engulfed in flames)
7) Explosions

Any other things you can pull off?

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

1. I never watched the movie so you will have to explain the effect.
2. Easily done using the "Secondary Color Corrector" on Vegas Pro. Not as easily done with Vegas Platinum. http://www.snowglobepro.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2651
3. Dunno it.
4. Similar to this http://www.snowglobepro.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1089
5. Easily done with two tracks back to back on Vegas, as long as the same environment is captured. I've done so.
6. Most easily done with After Effects, or by buying the CoPilot GIF files.
7. Same as 6.

[rjfiske]

1. I never watched [VERTIGO] so you will have to explain the effect.


I think MithrilFox is referring to a Dolly Zoom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom). :hv20-smilie03:

I can think of a plethora of different effects thanks to VideoCopilot (http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html) and After Effects, including:
Changing the sky
Time-freeze
Demon face
Time ramping (slow then fast motion)

But those are all software-based. I'll defer to others for camera-based effects.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Ah, the dolly zoom, yeah. That's easy to do, it is not a special effect of software, but you need to shoot this way. You just dolly-out while you zoom-in slowly.

[MithrilFox]

Software effects is totally cool for this thread! Either/or is fine, software and/or camera work effects.

The "Queer Eye" effect is named after a very oddly-named show called "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which is in my opinion an incredibly inappropriate show that stereotypes men who identify themselves as gay as being fashion-savvy, while straight men are not, so they need a "queer eye" to help them dress for success. Just.. weird...

Anyway, it involves singling out an individual frame, and highlighting it through some effect like making it very bluish, or making it the only part of the scene with vibrant color (everything else is bluish). It involves using Photoshop to isolate the particular item/person, and then using that freeze frame.

Changing the sky sounds interesting. Is that done via a special plug-in/program, or can it be done reasonably with FCS?

I've seen the morphing into demon faces effect, but I can't for the life of me think of a valuable purpose for it in any of my videos... I'm sure it'd be fun, though.

[tcindie]

So long as the footage is shot with the effect in mind, there is enough coverage, and clean plates are available (or can be easily obtained or created) -- pretty much anything can be done. ;)

Most effects these days are done primarily in post production with some kind of software tweaking, however as I said above the footage must be shot with the effect in mind.

If you seriously want to pursue significant visual effects, you really should consider getting After Effects. There are a lot of other programs for doing visual effects work, but none offer quite the power and flexibility of AE. A lot of vfx people dislike AE because of the timeline interface vs. the node-based interface, but like all things it's ultimately personal preference. But, to put it in perspective, After Effects has all the functionality of both Apple Shake, and Motion.. and additional functionality that neither of them have.

Since you mentioned sky replacement, no you couldn't do it in Final Cut, though if you have shake you probably could, and possibly with motion, though I'm not totally familiar with it and was under the impression it is mostly for creating motion graphics. Anyway... sky replacement is essentially a combination of rotoscoping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping) (painting out a particular portion of the video image) and multi-point tracking or match moving (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_moving) to keep the new sky locked in position.

[DaFireMedic]

A lot of vfx people dislike AE because of the timeline interface vs. the node-based interface, but like all things it's ultimately personal preference.



I have After Effects and Combustion, I just could never get used to the Node based interface of Combustion. I just use AE now.

[tcindie]

I have After Effects and Combustion, I just could never get used to the Node based interface of Combustion. I just use AE now.

I'm on the same page with you there.. Node based never made sense to me really, and I didn't care to spend the time to get my head fully around the concept.

Kind of like Object Oriented programming.. ;) Having been a procedural programmer for several years now, OO is just a foreign concept to me. One of these days I should actually do something to fix that, seeing as it is my day job. :)

[lordtangent]

Dude, once you go nodes you never go back.

AE is great for a lot of stuff. But it's strengths are more along the lines of motion graphics and time-based stuff. (AE is one of the most savvy of "time" programs I've used) And as far as programs with a 3D camera, it is definitely one of the most accessible in terms of cost.

But comps with a lot of layers just sort of "outgrow" the AE timeline paradigm and get hard to manage.

Before you give up on nodes I'd try some other packages. There is Nuke, Shake, and Digital Fusion. Combustion is kind of a messed up program from my experience. (I don't know if they've fixed it since I had to work with it... but it was way broken... and if funny ways) I would not judge nodes based on that program.

[DaFireMedic]

I would not judge nodes based on that program.

No, no, I don't dislike nodes per say, I just never took the time to get used to them. I'm strictly a hobbyist so with the type of projects that I do, AE is just fine. I don't really concern myself too much with render order, although I might if my projects started getting real big. There is an enormous support network out there for AE, and it does what I want. I know that the programs you mentioned would as well. I could not justify the cost of another compositing prgram.

[tcindie]

I've tried Nuke Shake and Digital Fusion.. and I agree they're nice, but I don't have the time to put in (or adequate access to them) to properly learn how to use 'em. AE has a significant amount of power and is for much more than just motion graphics and time-based.. Until recently it was the only package used at The Orphanage, and they've done some very impressive work. I believe it's still their primary package, but I think they've also added some seats of Nuke as well.

Of course, if nodes are really the best way to go, you can add them to AE with Conduit (http://dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit2)... it works in Photoshop too, and if you're a mac person you also can use it in FCP and Motion, and there's a tool for realtime compositing.

I first read about it here (http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/02/conduit-is-suite-magic-bullet-was.html), on Stu Maschwitz's Blog. Stu is one of the founding members of The Orphanage, and has written a book that I really can't recommend enough, The DV Rebel's Guide: An All Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321413644/104-1065734-7706338?ie=UTF8&tag=intensitymedi-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0321413644)

[lordtangent]

Oh, I'm not dissing the power of AE at all. There are definitly times I reach for it first. And nodes in AE would be pretty great! I'm going to check out "Conduit" it sounds interesting. I mean, nodes in Photoshop! A fellow and I had conversation just the other day here at work to the effect that a major problem with photoshop is the lack of something like nodes (for doing more non-destructive stuff...layers don't quite cut it once you are used to the nodes way of thinking)