Hey Everyone. I've got a music video we're in early stages of pre-production for and we're still trying to develop the appropriate workflow before we finalize the concept. The song is about alientation so the concept we're playing with is shooting a character that's out of sync with the world around them. We're combining sped up and timelapse photography with a character moving in slow motion or at regular speed.
I'm pretty new to this type of thing so the following is my best guess at work flow based on dozes of tutorials online. I'd love to get your input if you think there might be a better way to do this. You can see a sample of some test shots so far here below. The sample is ~10 seconds and loops so you can watch it a few times. It's pretty rough still. I was using a 1/3 second shutter speed to get the timelapse blur and forgot to bring a ND filter so it's all a bit overexposed.
https://vimeo.com/580907860/b321daad8e
Shooting:
Sony A7Siii. Locked tripod.
Shoot ~10-20 min of timelapse for reach shot. Afterwards film our hero moving through the same space at the regular or slowed down speed (120p or 240p usually). While we can keep aperture the same it's necessary to adjust the shutter speed to give the timelapse the desired motionblur.
Post:
Import footage. Create Timelapse.
Open Timelapse in Premiere as background layer/V1 Track. Open hero Shot as v2 Track. Create a mask to eliminate excess areas then send the hero track to After Effects via dynamic link (Might it be better to start in after effects then export a video file to premiere?).
Use Roto Brush 2 to mask out Hero (this is pretty tedious but seems to work. Any advice to what I ought to during shooting to make Roto Brush 2 happier would be great though!).
If there are any foreground elements that cross in front of our hero (as in this video), I then created masks in Premiere with a V3 track to make it look like the people walked in front of the hero. I have wondered whether it would be best to just try to create the whole shot in After Effects? As opposed to just using AE to rotoscop the one video track.
Also. Since I'm comping two different shots together would you recommend coloring the two shots BEFORE beginning to comp them together?
The goal here is to get the hero to properly sit within these shots. It's never going to be quite perfect--lighting won't match exactly--but I want to get as far away from the uncanny VFX look as I can. Any additional thoughts you might have are greatly appreciated!
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