Today I finished two effects shots. The first was a hand removal. It's a shot where the voltometer needle looks like it's jumping. I achieved the effect by moving a powerful magnet behind the meter with my hand. Because I planned the shot, it was easy to mask out the hand since it was in the shadow.
The second shot was the sky replacement. In actuality, it was more of a sky add on. I just multiplied the sky right over the truck as it drives off into a blank gray sky. It was easy and looks fine. The clouds are from a photo taken over the Mediterranean found on morguefile.com.
The other stuff hasn't been quite so easy. Even putting a blurry circular mask on the microscope shot involved some thought. In the first version, the stars looked too big so I have to redo the shot. I also tried some of the more complex rotoscoping shots. Rotoscoping an interlaced frame is hard because you don't know where your edge is. I'm going to have to pull out my Scott Christiansen book and see what he recommends. There's also the judgement factor involved: how good is good enough? I have one version where the house removal looks fine if you don't know the effect is there. But if someone points it out, you can easily see the flickery edge at the horizon line. Is it worth getting rid of that? The more complex effects shots involve more judgement and interpretation. The simulated video should be fun. I'm going to try to use that flickery out-of-focus RGB gun approach. Convention dictates that you put in/emphasize horizontal scan lines. But for this kind of thing, I think it's important to rethink visual convention. When shooting the TV for the Bridge section shoot, I realized that I never got scan lines. I either got a moire pattern or a soft look when I went slightly out of focus.
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