Plate Help

This is a two part question, lol.

First, can anyone tell me the most effective way to make a plate in FCP or After Effects? (I have CS3). What looks the best and looks the most seamless?

Also, for a shot, I am having a performer sit on a park bench, he will be rapping at regular speed. But I want people to be walking past him infront of the camera in fast motion, so it looks like everyone is sped up, and the performer is maintaining the same speed throughout as he performs. I am tripped up on this because I don't know how to merge the two plates together to make this effect. How do you do something like this?

Thanks so much,

Mike

Also, if there is another place I should be posting these type of questions let me know.

>First, can anyone tell me the most effective way to make a plate in FCP or After Effects?

What kind of plate? Paper plate? Ceramic plate? Background plate? What?

You are using wrong terminology. A PLATE, or Background plate, means footage that you intend to KEY a subject into. So in the case you are asking about, you need to film the actor and the park bench against a green screen, and light it as best you can to match the background plate you shoot of people walking by. You then LAYER them, and use keying tools to key out the green and mesh the two video layers.

Or, you can film the guy moving REALLY SLOW...


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I guess the plate I am talking about is not moving the tripod and meshing two pieces of footage together to make it look like they are one. Maybe there is another name for it.

Example:

Actor stands again a wall on the left side of the frame, on the right side of the frame there is a sidewalk people are walking down. I would film the two pieces of footage separately, but don't move the tripod so they can be meshed together in post. What is this trick called? And, what do you believe is the most seamless way to make it look like the footage is one shot without people being able to notice it's two different shots? Obviously it is, but I just don't want people to be able to tell right away where the footage is meshed together. Thought maybe there was a program or something in FCP that would handle this the most effective and seamless way.

For the park bench question.

Is there a way to do this in After Effects that does not involve a Green Screen?

Thanks,

Mike

Can you provide stills? What you're describing sounds like you can easily do it with the crop tool. Layer one video over the other and use the crop tool.



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I think it can be done with the crop tool, but for some reason I feel like if you just used the crop tool you would be able to see where they two clips merge. I thought maybe there was a trick to sort of finesse them into each other a little better.

-mike

Any ideas about not using a greenscreen for the bench stuff?

The crop would work fine as long as you didn't have any light changes to deal with. It's often good to hide the crop under something vertical like a pole or the edge of a wall. If you needed to you could always feather the edges of the cropped clip.

The park bench stuff could be done by recording the song sped up, making the singer sing it faster and people walk fast past, so that when it's slowed down he looks in sync and the people are walking by at normal speed. There is maths to do this correctly however, and you're best off following a tutorial to do it.

cropping would be the most basic approach.
maybe you have a straight line in the shot, so cropping could work.

but it's going to be painfully obvious what the trick is.

better would be a division that ISNT a straight line,
then you'd use the 4 point, or more likely the 8 point garbage mattes.

still we're talking about 2 very discrete areas of the frame, with no interaction.
interaction is what sells VFX.

when you have the real-time figure BEHIND the faster-than-real-time people is when it gets interesting.
(or in front of, them or in the middle of them.)

that's when you'd need green screen.
well you don't NEED it, but it's a lot simpler than rotoscoping.

the simplest green-screen scenario would be you shoot the singer on the bench with no fg people,
then without moving the camera, you put a green screen in front of the bench, or the section your singer sits on,
and film the fg people.

matching the light in the two passes will be interesting.
would there be a flicker of shadows over the singer's face?
just something to think about.

oh, i just remembered i had a shot like this years ago (1988!) in a magazine programme i was working on.
there were a few different approaches.
one had the talking presenter standing up against a light-pole, with people zipping and zapping past.
they shot 2 passes, one at high speed, with him standing rock still,
the other in real time, with him (also rock still) doing his lines.

we just matted in his head. it was shot 16mm, so there was a bit of weave from the telecine,
but miraculously the weaves coincided.
it looked pretty weird with him rock still, but the shot was probably less than 10 seconds.


nick

oh, what Jude suggested is great, too,
if you don't need super-fast movement from the other people.

but could be hard to get good sync if you slow the song too much.


nick