Green Screen Tutorials

Here are some Tuts and references we'll be looking at:

Cheat Sheet for Blowing Things Up

BOMB TUTORIAL CHEAT SHEET

The things he used:

A side fireball

Flames

Debris

Dust wave

Smoke (turned black)

Dust fall (off the ledge)

A flash/glow

When there is a harsh edge to some of the elements, he created masks on the elements with a little bit of feathering.

1. Making a matte:

Layer > New Solid, call it matte

Use pen tool on the matte layer

Toggle switches to have access to the Track Matte, and on the layer you want the Matte to apply to, select "Alpha Inverted."

(And actually, I was right in class, one of the advantages of using a matte layer instead of a mask is that you can apply the matte to multiple layers – you just need to specify which matte layer you're using through the "Track Matte" option)

2. Time remapping (to adjust the timing of any of your fire/debris/smoke elements:

Right click on layer, go to Time > Enable time rmapping

Set keyframes on the layer, which you can move forward or backward on the timeline to speed up or slow down portions of the footage.

3. Color correction

He used Effect > Color Correction > Curves and

 Effect > Color Correction > Tint

You can also adjust the Alpha channel in curves.

4. The glow effect

He added a new adjustment layer, created an ellipsis to mask it (with feathering), then:

Effect > Stylize > Glow

In the "Glow" effect, under Glow Colors he picked "A&B Colors," which allowed him to set the colors.

He keyframed the opacity of the adjustment layer to "flash" it up.

5. Using the smoke effect - changing its color from white to black

Effect > Color Correction > Tint

In the tint window, he selected "map white to:" and chose black.

Effect > Color Correction > Curves

In the curves, he boosted the aipha channel so the smoke appeared thicker

6. The "reactive lighting" – reflections from the blast

He created a new orange solid, and used the pen tool to draw the underside of the ledges.

He changed the layer blending mode to "classic color dodge"

Then to make the light fall off from the source, he selected the layer, took the ellipse tool and drew out a circle with its center at the blast source, did a subtract and invert on the mask, then feathered the mask. Then he keyframed the opacity of that layer. Note: the last ellipse mask should be at the bottom of all your mask layers.

FLYING TUTORIAL CHEAT SHEET

Shooting tip: make sure you have plenty of footage (shot with a tripod) of your scene without any actors in it -- so you have an empty environment you can use to "fill in" the spot where your actor is, one s/he's supposed to have left the frame.

Marking a point in the timeline:

Pull marker icon from far right of timeline (just above the top layer), or move the playhead to where you want the marker and hit *. To edit the marker label, doubleclick the marker and a dialogue window will show up.

To duplicate your layer, select it and hit command-D.

To cut the footage in the layer, hit alt-]. (alt-[ will cut footage at the at the start of the playhead).

To freeze-frame your footage, right-click on the layer, and in the new menu go Time > Freeze Frame. (It's a little confusing in the tutorial, bur he's freezing the second layer from the top, and then cutting the topmost, unfrozen layer at the point where he want time to freeze on that second layer).

Mask out your actor on the frozen layer.

"Soloing" a layer - if you click the box below the circle (next to the microphone icon) on a layer, it will hide all non-solo layers.

To change the position of your masked actor - select your masked layer, and hit "P" to reveal the position values (rotation might be relevant too, if the actor is spinning as well).

The "hitch" on the jump initially in the tutorial is caused by the moving footage essentially repeating the frame that's frozen in the frozen layer - so he cuts the moving footage back by a frame.

For the blur effect, you can right-click on the layer (or alternately go to the "Effects" menu) and keyframe some blur options.

The video copilot action essentials toolkit is here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/products/action2/

For the rain effect – Layer > New Solid (or Command+Y).

On that layer, Simulation > CC Rain

To blend it with the other layer, he toggled switches/modes (there is a button below the layers that allows this - otherwise, hit F4). Then he chose "screen" as a blending mode.

Colorista, which he used for color correction:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-free/

How to do a camera shake:

Set two keyframes in the Position property of your footage layer, select them, go to:

Window: Wiggler

Adjust the paramters there, and apply.

Tutorial here:

Next assignment

"Stunt work" – making someone fly: