KEN BURNS EFFECT: to the next level?

I know of Ken Burns / Civil War Docos: But I've never watched any of them. I've read about his "Effect": which I beilieve takes a photograph and turns it into a pan/zoom shot.

Lately I've seen this type of edit (on Speed TVs show: The Motocross Files). But it' taken to another level, by the edit to include layering (I'm guessing).

EXAMPLE: By taking a photo of a guy riding a motorcycle and creating one layer (only the outlind of the guy/bike: everything else transparent), and the 2nd layer the background. By making the background move/pan, and zoom into the guy/bike - makes for a great effect...

I'm very new to FCP, is this effect something possible in FCP/PS? If so, anyone know of a post that gives the "How To:"?

You are talking about an effect that was first made famous in a documentary (sort of) called The Kid Stays in The Picture. There was a tutorial on this out there somewhere a few years back. It mostly relies on the 3D space of AfterEffects or anything similar. (Motion maybe, I don't know, Shake is likely)

Basically it requires doing what you said but the grunt work is filling in the background where the foreground used to be so that when the viewing angle changes the BG appears continuous and distinct from the FG and noticeably further away from the viewer.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

You talking about this?

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
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You can do this in FCP. It doesn't require AE or 3D capabilities. It just requires skill in creating the multiple layer graphics files for the foreground, mid-ground and background objects.

Here's a great tutorial. Very effective...

[www.digitaljuice.com]

Good find. Like it. Digital Juice is putting up lots of great tutorials I have to admit.

Michael Horton
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yeah, thats exactly what I was talking about!

thx!

We need to find out whether it can be done with Photoshop Elements 4 and Motion 2. Anybody have any suggestions?

That is one great tutorial!

Mark

You may be able to use PSE4 to separate the images into layers (not sure), but not Motion 2 because there's no "Z-depth" & cameras / lights. I understand Motion 3 may be able to it.

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

The 2D done in The Kid Stays in the Picture doesn't require z-space or cameras, but yes, it's in Motion 3.

I guess you can fudge DOF by blurring the background layer. You can also fake a focus rack by animating the blurs on the individual layers. You can also get away with not using a camera, but the layers still have to be animated in X (the example below was done without a camera, but the layers are laid out in AE in Z-depth).

CLICK FOR EXAMPLE

IMHO, it's easier to lay it all out in Z & animate the camera properties

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

My recollection is that the movie pre-dates AE's z space capabilities. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. If the layers are separated they can move across each other and in pseudo z space by scaling. Obviously cameras add a significant enhancement.

Plus, you could really do this whole thing with PS and FCP, if you had the time, skill and patience. Scaling, distortion and keying the blurs could fake the z space to some extent if you really needed it, but you don't actually need to go into that to get the effect of the foreground picture slipping at a different rate to the background.

Just cut it out in PS, rebuild the background with the clone stamp, then bring them into FCP as a layered psd. Then keyframe the moves of each layer separately.

There's a tutorial I did on the Queer Eye effect that explains some of the methods you would need to achieve this particular look, and the rest should be fairly obvious.

The 'Queer Eye' effect