Tutorial: Creating A Clean Plate From A Hand Held Shot

[Ruan Lotter]

One of the most crucial skills when doing VFX is creating a good clean plate from your shot. This can be very tricky if you only have one hand held shot and you simply cannot recreate the exact camera movement without the actor(s).

This is how you do it!

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[Mei Lewis]

Interesting thanks. Can you give an example of whay that's necessary?

[Sean Cunningham]

Interesting thanks. Can you give an example of whay that's necessary?

 

At ~2:14 here you'll see a good example of where I've had to do it (as well as the head shots near the beginning):

 

 

...in the case with the axe, the special effects and make-up hired by production came up with a really lame axe-in-back prop that flopped around and looked like painted wood and tape, because that's what it was. They asked me to remove the offending prop, put a rigid axe in his back and enhance the wound because the practical effects team hadn't used enough blood (or hadn't been given proper direction).

 

He's right that it's often very critical to making some effects work. Sometimes object removal is the end goal but often it's just a layer that's integral to other effects working. Also consider situations like with ILM's performance driven I-MOCAP. Actors play out the scene and they must be removed, or parts of them not occluded by their eventual CGI avatars. Ideally getting some rolling footage without the actors or reference objects or a "mistake" would be ideal but you have to be prepared to work with just a single plate containing the object or person that needs removing.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Sean Cunningham