How is this done?

Alex Wuijts · January 9, 2007

There was a fake video released of an accident involving a famous dutch weatherman, and i was wondering how they made it. I suppose there is some kind of cgi involved here, but i'm wondering what kind and how the process and shooting for this stuff works. And don't worry, it really is fake :)

http://dump.geenstijl.nl/mediabase/8580/e0ff355b/index.html

Thank you.

Edited January 9, 2007 by Alex Wuijts

Francesco Bonomo · January 9, 2007

there are many ways to achieve the effect, but you can do it without using cgi. You shoot the guy first, then you replace him with a dummy and you shoot the crash. If it's shot and edited well, you can't tell the difference and it's absolutely realistic. to add to the effect, it's always better for the actor to move out of frame when he's supposed to be hit, so the blending between him and the dummy looks more realistic.

Or, if you have lots of money, you can have a digital stuntman, but it'd be too expensive for something like this.

Alex Wuijts · January 9, 2007

great, thank you.

Bob Hayes · January 9, 2007

There is a similar hit in the movie ?Snatch?. Because it is on DVD and there are multiple angles it is easier to step frame through the gag. It usually involves switching to a dummy. I am usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out but I am at a loss here. Poor resolution an the inability to step frame makes it tough to solve.

Bob Hayes · January 9, 2007

There is a drop of water that crosses in front of the reporter so I doubt if he was green screened. The frame right before the contact shows the car, the reporter, and the crossing guard all in the frame together. The crossing guard and the background don't jumo until the hit. It is very well done.

David Cox · January 9, 2007

As Francesco mentioned, shoot the guy then shoot the car crashing into a dummy. Most of the effect is a cut because the dummy will have moved so far out of position on the first frame after the car strike, that a slight mismatch between the actor and the dummy is irrelevant. However, to avoid a jump in the background action and to allow the car to "make contact" with the actor, a few frames of the car would be rotoscoped over the actors pass.

Because this has a locked off camera and the car covers the moving parts of the background action, this is relatively straight forward, although takes good planning to be aware of those issues.

We do quite a few "invisible joins" for various projects. Sometimes to get from stuntman to actor, sometimes to get from cat to puppet-cat-about-to-be-decapitated, of an infamous ford viral!

Here's a link to a set of slim jim commercials we made last year. They each feature a real life amateur clip over which we had no control. We then took new, especially shot material and stitched it onto the original, to make a new longer shot. In the "Mud King" and "Rail Slide" we also added a CG crash helmet to the original footage.

www.baraka.co.uk/projects/slimjim

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · January 9, 2007

Those commercials are awesome!

Bob Hayes · January 10, 2007

I agree with David. The camera is locked off with the reporter. As soon as the kids leave the shot the crossing guard freezes. Then the reporter leaves and the dummy is placed in his place. The camera is unlocked but held steady the car comes into frame and hits the dummy. The trick is that the car is rotoscoped into the shot until it hits the dummy. Then the dummy shot takes over completely. The switch is hidden by slight camera shake on the hit. The crossing guard is hidden behind the car so we don?t see any change there.

Bob Hayes · January 10, 2007

If you look at the crossing guard?s feet you will see that although she is stationary with feet planted she has moved one line away from us. There are two different takes here. Also, it looks to me like the body may have been positioned in the road before the car comes through and the car just missed the propositioned body. The odd thing is the cut to the second frame is as the car has almost exited. You can see the moment of the cut if you look at the ?target? held by the crossing guard. It jumps to the left. But much later then I would have thought it would have happened. The reporter being hit, which is only three frames, may in fact be a frame grab of the original reporter blurred and bent.

Alex Wuijts · January 10, 2007

I saw the crossing guard jump a bit too, that's what gave it away as fake to me the first couple times i saw it. Amazing how much work there goes into something like this. Does the format they shot this on (digibeta?) make this kind of effects work harder to do?

Apparently it's a commercial for winter tyres. Here's the full version, but i seriously doubt this will ever be aired here.

http://www.kwik-fit.nl/content/downloads/K...ietPaulusma.wmv

thanks again everybody!

Will Earl · January 10, 2007

Does the format they shot this on (digibeta?) make this kind of effects work harder to do?

Not really. In some cases the format helps sell the effect as being a real recorded event not a filmed visual effect.

You could probably make this shot more complicated by shooting handheld and using a digital double to pull off the stunt, the handover between the actor and the digidouble would be happen during the same spot as this, but you could have the presenter be knocked up into the air and land on the same spot he was hit from.

The main problem you get with shots like this (exteriors and wet ground) is the changing llght conditions. I've actually done a few shots similar to this for a sequence - although it was compositing a bunch of cars racing out of a carpark building (with maybe a metre or so gap between each car) and the biggest problem was correcting all the selects to match.