How We Made This Video - 'Indiana John and the Riders for the Lost Artifact'
Cool special effects that anyone can do - with a little thought and technique!
How to use Final Cut Express 2 to do cool chromakey effects
September 8, 2009
A couple effects from our fan film 'Indiana John and the Riders for the Lost Artifact' explained.. or more specifically, 'Making a five-year-old appear to be a punch-throwing action hero for next to nothing!' We're thinking up new ways every day, but I'll explain how a few of our more successful attempts were created!
If you haven't already, make sure you check out the film before reading on, or you will likely get very confused. ;-)
The only software used was Final Cut Express 2, which has a fairly decent chromakeyer built-in, and an occasional use of Photoshop Elements 3. Our camera is a cheap MiniDV Canon ZR70, chosen primarily for cost, but also because it features a mic-in port and decent manual controls, important things to take into consideration when choosing a camera for film making, no matter how cheap.
One of our favorite shots is Indy's fall.. It was actually one of the easiest effects as well. We used our homemade green-screen, which is nothing more than a large bed sheet stapled to a wood frame and painted flat green. Pulling a decent key is a real trick when working with lower-quality DV footage. Here's a few things that we have found to help with dirt cheap green-screening (no fancy 3-point lighting or anything):
1. Shoot your actor with the same lighting that he will be exposed to in the final shot (don't set up your green screen in the garage and film the background plates outside). Ideally, slightly overcast is better for contrast. Our action takes place outside, so we always film our green screen footage outside as well.
2. Position the green screen in the shade, and have your talent brightly lit. This will reduce the amount of 'spill' (green light reflecting onto your actor, making it impossible to get a clean edge on your key). It can be tricky to get decent lighting on your actor with a setup as I describe, as the sun will most likely be coming from behind and shading your talent. Filming in slightly overcast conditions helps. You can also use large sheets of poster board or other reflective material positioned off-camera to bounce light back onto your actor. We usually shoot green screen footage at about mid-day, so that the shadow problems aren't as bad. You can set up the screen against the shady wall of a building and then film at a slight angle to it, so that the sun is coming over the shoulders of your actor instead of directly from behind.
3. Position your talent as far from the screen as possible to limit the aforementioned spill problem. Six feet or more is ideal.. Obviously, the size of your screen will limit the distance you can move away from it.
4. Try shooting with a shallow depth of focus. Keeping the screen out of focus will blend the color together better and hide small imperfections like dirt and hair, which can interfere with a good key. Some tips for getting a shallow depth of focus if you have a camera with manual controls would be widening the iris (highest f-stop as possible), and cranking up the shutter speed. Also film as close to your subject as possible.
Okay, back to our falling effect! Nothing looks more horrible on a close-up of someone moving quickly through the air than having the camera 'locked on' to the subject (i.e., our actor 'fixed' in the middle of the screen, with the background zooming by). Your effect will look like it came straight out of an episode of 'Greatest American Hero'.. :-)
You can do some animating to your falling character in post, but it's easier just to film the actor hand-held, and keep a flowing motion in mind.
Another thing we added to the effect to try and sell it was wind from underneath, provided by a medium-sized leak blower. The blowing shirt really adds an illusion of movement! We than filmed our background footage. I simply stood at the bottom of the largest hill we have and zoomed in real close. A quick pan from the top of the hill to the bottom provides the speeding background. If your background shot doesn't run long enough, you can easily loop it with a swipe transition. After a fair bit of tinkering with the chroma keyer, your effect is done! A bit of motion blur might also look nice.
Another effect that turned out well is Indy's kick to the biker's face. This was actually a very simple trick using the age-old split-screen technique. It's so basic you can barely call it a special effect, but when used carefully it's very effective! The process we used was simple but a little hard to describe, so I threw together a few pics to describe it.
The camera was locked off on a tripod (don't forget to set manual focus and aperture so nothing changes between takes)! The final shot was made from two separate shots. One of Indy kicking a standing (actually kind of squatting) biker who jumps back onto a mat, and one of the biker speeding past the camera at the same distance he was standing.
The standing biker is initially split out of the shot and replaced with the biking clip. The timing is adjusted just right so that when the moving bike meets Indy's foot, it disappears and you see only the original take of the biker reacting to the kick.
(The lighter areas are split out to let the other clip show through.) [Insert "Kick" pic]
Just for a little extra effect, I also rolled the bike past the biker in the kicking take, so you see the bike continue on it's course sans rider. Yes, it took quite a few takes to get the timing down, but we were happy with the results!
The other effects in the film are all pretty standard and follow the same ideas outlined here. It's pretty amazing what you can do without any fancy software just by using a little creativity, careful planning and patient execution!
Get this week's special Deal on Camcorders, Cameras, Audio Gear and Other Electronics 
