PREDATOR can kiss my ass

[sn-films]

So we did it! We figured out how to mimic the Predator-style effect using basic digital editing precepts. My director doesn't want me to put any clips up until the film has been completed, but we have we've done it and it looks awesome! Here's how you do it.

Go out and film the scenes with the actors in the actual environment where the 'Predator' (something I've been referring to the 'ripple ghost') will be seen. Next, you hit the blue screen set. In our case, it was an actor dressed in black in front of a white wall.

From here, there are two passes through the footage to achieve the effect. On the first pass, use the live actor shot as the background and apply a ripple/water type effect to that clip. Then, overlay the blue screen clip and make the actor transparent. NOT THE BLUE SCREEN!!! The rendered result will be the background from the blue screen clip with a rippling shape of the live action background moving across it.

On the sencond pass, take the clip you just made and overlay that on the original live action shot. Make the blue screen wall transparent. That's it. Its just that easy! Render the clip and impress all your friends.

Variations on that can involve filming the blue screen clip with the actor close wall blue screen. Based on the tolerances set up on your overlay, you can actually get a nice outline around the ripple ghost.


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[marti-c]

mmmmmmm Had to think of this for a while to visualise what you meant.I love blue screen stuff and figuring out how they done it. Anybody take a look at the Atomic Kitten video "Whole again" and noticing where they switch the layers so the background layer girl pushes forward and becomes the foreground layer in front of the other girls? Have a look and see how clever it is!

To summarise your blue screen example above though, what your doing is taking 2 shots but using the blue screen shot twice thus creating 3 layers. The white bit is being replaced by the location shot and the black actor bit is being replaced by the rippled black actor bit. I take it the only function of the front layer is to get a steady outline of the "predator".

Good subject though......anybody else have experiences or ideas regarding blue screen?

marti

[eddie]

Ive turned a glorious sunny day with blue sky into night time with stars by bluescreening the sky and subtely zooming in and out of the starry background to make the stars twinkle and moving the background to match the camera movement. The final result was black and white, so I sort of got away with it.