In the accompanying clip (╥Suicide by SFX╙) I sit beside myself on the couch, zap myself until I dissolve in an agonized blur, then brush my remains off the couch.
I was trying to find out how hard it would be to achieve two special effects (SFX): working with the same object simultaneously (in this case, me) and causing an object to appear to disintegrate. The effects turned out to be extremely easy to do.
Equipment used:
Camcorder
Mac IIci with 400MB hard drive and 20MB RAM running System 7.0.1
VideoSpigot
MacRecorder
Premiere 2.0
SoundEdit Pro 1.0
Photoshop LE 1.1
Kai╒s Power Tools
1. I set up my camcorder on a stable surface and adjusted the zoom so that it framed the area I wanted (in this case the couch). The spot I picked to shoot was wide enough that I could sit next to myself without running the risk of overlap. If I was going to do this again, I would pick an area to sit on that does look different depending on whether I╒m sitting down ╤ if you look at the clip, you can pick the frame where I cut myself out of the left side because the cushion on the couch springs up. I should also have picked a spot that had better front lighting, but hey! Like I say in the clip, this was only a test.
2. I rehearsed the dialog a couple times to get the timing down, then shot the scene with me on the left, then the right. With the camcorder I used I could activate the camera remotely ╤ it is very important that the camera move not at all between shots. (The little dingus you can almost see when I zap myself is actually the camcorder remote.)
3. I digitized both clips onto the Mac using VideoSpigot and MacRecorder. I then lined up the two clips against each other in Premiere (got it right on the first take ╤ beginner╒s luck). The Wipe transition, starting and stopping with the separation in the center of the frame, split the screen and showed half of each clip simultaneously. When I played the results back, I had me talking to myself, then going ╥OOOOOOHHH╙ on the right while I assumed a grimace on the left. The left clip ended, and the right one brushed off the couch. Due to the auto-exposure of the camcorder, the left clip was slightly lighter than the right; I applied a brightness filter to match the results.
4. I exported the last frame of the left clip to PICT, then pulled it into Photoshop. I masked out everything in the frame that was not me and deleted it. I played with several effects, but the only one I really liked was Inverse, which turned me into a negative.
5. I imported the PICT of me (inverted), me (no background), and me (with background ╤ no changes from the last frame of the left clip) back into Premiere. The last frame I extended in duration for several seconds, effectively freezing the clip on the last frame. I then superimposed the PICT of me inverted, matting the image with itself and reverse keying the matte so that only me would show. By fading the inverted image in and out, I made the left clip invert and return to normal.
6. The PICT of me (no background) I filtered with Pixelstorm from Kai╒s Power Tools (many of which work fine with Premiere). By applying the filter in Premiere, rather than Photoshop, I got a ╥sparkly╙ effect as the filter applied slightly random effects from one frame to another. The result was superimposed on the left clip. I did a very fast fade-in of the superimposed PICT, stopped the last frame PICT (you can see the couch cushion move), then faded out the superimposition so that I dissolved into thin air.
7. I recorded my anguished death cry using MacRecorder, applied an echo effect in SoundEdit Pro, and overlaid three tracks starting at one second intervals, with everything fading out. I saved the results as AIFF and imported it into Premiere. The resulting cry was about a second too short. Being lazy, I brought the sound back into SoundEdit and stretched the tempo (using Premiere to lengthen the sound would have dropped the pitch ╤ Premiere is not very good at sound effects).
8. Total about three man-hours to do all this, including time I spent fiddling with the different filters in Photoshop. Saving the results as a movie using Compact Video took at least as long (I didn╒t measure ╤ I just started the save and left to do something else). Not hard at all!
If you have any questions, drop me a note via e-mail to CompuServe 72157,404 (or 72157.404@compuserve.com via Internet). I travel quite a bit, so don╒t expect a quick reply.
