Homework over break (and today's class)

Hi everyone - very sorry I'm missing class today, I had some logistical things blow up in my face. But! Before you run off for break, I want you to read this, and take care of three things (that include the homework over the break).

1. There is a visiting artist talk today during our class period – starting at 1:30 in the main open space of the second floor of the art building. I was going to take the class to attend - they usually last between 1 hour to an hour an a half. Please attend, and take some notes – after break, I want to hear what you thought of the talk.

2. Because of the artist's talk, you won't have a full class period to work on finishing your "face warp" videos. So I will give you one extra class period, on the Tuesday when we return, to finish those up. You should at least finish your actual "face warp" shot today in class, so that in Tuesday's class, you just have to worry about editing the rest of the footage together.

3. For homework over the break, I want you to watch the below tutorial, which shows how to make someone fly (or leap, of get kicked out of frame, etc). This should give you an idea of the parameters of how the shot should be set up in order for the effect to work easily. The main thing is to design the shot so that it's a static, tripod-supported shot. As with the "face warp" project, I want you to write a short script (with dialogue written out), and a storyboard (which can be stick figures), to create a short story around the effect. Why would someone fly? Do they have friends or enemies that would be surprised by the event? What causes the action of the story, and what's the reaction to that action. Again, these should be very simple and short scripts - with a maximum of maybe a dozen shots. Come to the Tuesday class after break with the script typed and printed, and the storyboard drawn out. Thanks, haver a great break, and sorry again for missing class today.

"Stunt work" – making someone fly:

Face Warp "Cheat Sheet"

The most confusing part of this tutorial is the section on "reverse stabilization" in the first part. Here's a cheat sheet to help out with that and other details:

MORE DETAILS FROM THE TUTORIALS

When filming, make sure the actor's face stays square in frame (this will make the tracking easier).

When tracking the footage, in the Tracker window, click "stabilize motion" in Tracker window. Make sure your track type is selected as: stabilize (this is a different setting than from the previous tracking exercise – that track type was set to "transform"). Select both Position and Rotation.

The corners of the eyes are usually good tracking points. Under "analyze," click the "play" button to analyze forward. If the track isn't doing a great job, you can go to middle of footage, reset track points, then analyze forward and analyze backward. Also, you can manually adjust points frame-by-frame (click on the frame and re-position the big square targets). Hit "Apply," then you will get your footage floating with black corners (as the edges of the tracked footage rotate through space).

To fix the black edges, you'll pre-compose the footage. To keep track of which is which, use this naming convention – call your first comp "Original Footage," and the new comp "Pre-Comp Footage."

Layer > Pre-compose > Move all attributes into new composition. This is the one you'll call "Pre-Comp Footage." A "pre-comp" is essentially a nested layer of series of layers in another composition.

This is where it starts to get confusing in the tutorial. But here's a summary.

View both comps ( "Original Footage," and "Pre-Comp Footage") stacked instead of tabbed (pull one of the tabs down until they both pop out).

Increase size of "Pre-Comp Footage" (in Composition > Composition Settings).

In your  "Original Footage,"  comp, make anchor point, position and rotation visible.

Alt-click on the stopwatch for each of those layers to see the expressions. 

Pick-whip FROM "Original Footage," TO "Pre-Comp Footage." Link the following properties.

FROM Position TO anchor point.

FROM Anchor point TO position.

Rotation goes to rotation, and AFTER you do that, add the "*-1" to the expression on "Original Footage." 

Once you've done this, you should have your footage reverse stabilized. Your subsequent adjustments for the demon face (or sunglasses, or what have you) should be don on the "Original Footage" comp. In the "Original Footage" comp, for example, you can bring in sunglasses on a new layer, and parent that layer to the "Pre-Comp Footage" layer. It will then inherit the motion values from the "Pre-Comp Footage" layer.

THE LIQUIFY FILTER

Effect > Distort > Liquify

You can keyframe the distortion percentage overall.

CHANGING COLORS 

You can do this via an adjustment layer, which has a mask attached to constrain the effect to a specific part of the footage.

Layer > New > Adjustment Layer

You can apply a number of effects to the masked area – glow, color correction, etc.

Bonus link: Transformation scene playlist