How to cover mirror reflection?

Cameraman?s image (sitting in the back seat) can be seen in the rearview mirror next to the driver?s head. What would be the best way to mask that?

Thank you

N

Probably a rotoscoping job. You could get a small piece of vision of the mirror without a reflection in it, crop it to just the mirror area and lay it on V2 over the problem vision. With luck this is only a few seconds worth of footage, because you will then need to keyframe the movement of the mirror on V2 to match the one on V1.

Alternatively, depending on the context, use a cutaway - that is - a picture of something else like the view out the window - during the problem areas.

someone mentioned key framing to cover up the trouble spot.

not impossible, but a heck of a lot of work.
may even require a new keyframe on every frame!

in that case what you really need is a tracking plugin to "pin" a new bit of footage into the ng mirror.
that's ALSO a fair bit of work to achieve well if the mirror is also changing size and shape

there's a lot of work in masking the exact area,
maybe it;s a simple shape that can get pinned to the existing mirror, or maybe its a roto-scope job (worst case scenario)

but heck, i'm no compositing expert,
plus none of us have seen the shot, so in some ways it's a bit hard to answer.


nick

I'm guessing from your post that its a handheld shot?

This will make it more difficult to achieve but if done well will also be more helpful in covering up the composite.

In my opinion its an After Effects or Motion job (or other composition tool) - any chance you can post a clip of it up on an FTP or webserver and we can take a look and give you an idea of skills/time/apps/?


Regards

Ben

One thought would be to do a "Faux depth of field" effect using something like Joe's soft filters or a blurred mask on the edge of the screen over the rearview mirror although this might not work for the rest of the edit and also depends on the shot composition.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

If we assume a hand-held camera with a moving POV, then you might investigate a reshoot.

If the mirror is on-screen for any amount of time, it might take you many days to mask it and make it look right.

We have an entire department of the company that does this. It's not trivial.

Koz

It certainly isn't Koz - and if you want good results be prepared to get a pro in to sort it.

It is something I tend to do quite a lot though - along with wire removal, duplication of areas/items, rotoscoping/masking, etc. Especially when there isn't a possibility of a pickup/reshoot.

Without seeing the shot and knowing the shot length its nigh on impossible to give an accurate guestimate as to how much time/cost is involved.

I forgot to ask what format its on? SD, HD?


Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Quick Fix...what I would do / should be done:

* Reshoot B-Roll out the back window of a moving car - hopefully on the same street you shot the original (camera as close to the mirror as possible)

In After Effects.:

* Stabilize the B-roll reshot clip (if necessary)
* Resize / Flip (mirror reflection) & mask to taste over the bad clip / mirror
* Motion Track to the bad clip to match

This is no small task if you want it to look seamless...a lot of factors to consider. The B-Roll has to somewhat match the bouncing of the car, camera shaking, etc. There's a ton of tweaking involved. If I had the B-Roll, I could probably do the Post fix in one day...but it wouldn't be cheap

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

OK, now we need "viswiz" to prove to us he's still breathing.

Koz

of course al these options assume you want to completely hide the offending area in a way that mirrors reality (so to speak)

another approach would be to do a "cops" over the offending area.
no-one's to know it's not a publicity shy member of the public in there and not a bumbling camera operator

here's a tutorial for doing t in Motion:
javascript:;%20a%20href=
(if that link doesn't work go to the lafcpug tutorials and search for "cops"
[www.lafcpug.org]

there are plugins for this too.
cheapest one i think come from River Rock, called the Anonymizer
$50 for that plus a bundle of other plugins
[www.riverrockstudios.com]

or do it in FCP by layering up 2 copies of the clip, and adding a blur or mosaic PLUS mask shape and mask feather plugins to the top layer.
FCP has a blur, but no mosaic last time i looked.
get one of those here:
[www.mattias.nu]


nick

(From an audio guy)... Or you take care of it it in an ADR session:

(Character One) - Hey, what happened to your mirror?
(Character Two) - I don't know, after I got the car washed yesterday, it got all blurry.

-or_

(Character One) - Hey, who's that guy in the back seat with the fancy camera?
(Character Two) - I don't know... He was there when I rented the car, and he's still there.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

LOL, the last suggestion may be best

Jokes aside, thank you all very much for not leaving a stone unturned in looking for solutions to this snafu. I will go for the double-layer blur mask and make darn sure it never happens again

I still found no good sound effects for firearms, especially machine guns. I would not mind paying. Any ideas?

This interesting film has some superb Hollywoody firearms sounds?no way to contact the creators, though.

SHOOTOUT

(click on ?DIE-CAST?)

> I still found no good sound effects for firearms, especially machine guns. I would not mind
> paying. Any ideas?

I assume you already tried online sound places like www.sounddogs.com and www.soundrangers.com?

You could also build your own effects or enhance them. Christopher McQuarrie talked about working with his editor/sound mixer to make their own gunfire sounds for The Way of the Gun, and that film had some great hard-hitting gun sounds. Try EQing, combining or even distorting some percussive "pop" sounds like hitting a magazine on the floor, throwing a book, or even popping a balloon.


www.derekmok.com

Soundtrack Pro also has quite a large selection of gunfire fx. And you already own those, so the cost is nix.

soundtrack doesn't have a great selection or quality, but it was worth the 4GB of drive space, and better than the websites. thank you all.

you're welcome to use my Region Blur plugin, but you'll probably be better off with the double layer method and create your mask in photoshop to match the shape of the mirror
[homepage.mac.com]