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| Hello, I'm working on an indie film and they have presented me with some "interesting technical challenges," to put it diplomatically. The current shot I'm working on is two actors getting riddled with bullets, with no practical effects or greenscreen. I am adding blood, bullet holes, dust, smoke and glass. they are flailing about like rag dolls then go down. It lasts about five seconds. There are rows of shelves behind them with glass bottles that stay intact throughout the shot. In a separate shot, the director then pulled the bottles off the shelves using strings, and the two shots need to be composited together. If only the actors had been shot on greenscreen, this would be easy. But there are enough changes between shots that a difference key only gets me about 50% of the way there. However this ancient effect is not 32-bit, has awful controls, and it's almost impossible to get a clean difference matte; half the background is pulled into the effect and I cannot cleanly separate the actors. Of course, I could roto actors out of the scene, then lay them on top of the glasses breaking, but I'd like to avoid this. Are there any tools that are better for pulling out a motion matte from a static background other than difference matte? Or is there another way to do this I'm not thinking of? The approach I currently have going is to pull a difference key of the bottles flying off the shelves from the static shot, then to roto the actors' arms etc. in just the regions where they intersect with the bottles. This way it appears the bottles are being shot up behind the actors, as they should be. This at least saves me from having to do a full roto of each actor against the background. Would love to hear any other suggestions, thanks TG -- Animator & Editor www.teddygage.com Brooklyn |
