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Replacing a background in video

S

steFANedit

I'm doing a fanedit for Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween II and the idea behind the edit are two.


one: to combine both movies into but to keep the length of one i.e.2hours, which means that the night HE came home has to be Halloween II.
two: what would Rob Zombies take on Halloween have been like if Rob hadn't ripped off classic scenes from John Carpenter's 1978 version in the second hour of his remake. And instead gone his own way like he did in Halloween II.

Now when we have gotten the basics out of the way, let’s get down to the problem I'm having here.

In Halloween II (Rob Zombie’s Halloween II) Dr. Samuel Loomis has a press conference and that scene start off like this: [please look only at PART1]

and then the video freeze frames and we have like a photo of young Michael in the background throughout the rest of the scene. [please look at PART 2-9]

Now, in this fanedit when both movies are being put together into one movie, I can't have both the actor of young Michael from the remake of Halloween [Daeg Farch] and Chase Wright Vanek who played young Michael in Halloween II. That wouldn't make any sense. So for logic reasons Chase Wright Vanek has to go.

I have removed Chase Wright Vanek throughout Halloween II except in one scene. (you know the scene you keep telling yourself "yeah yeah that problem is far down the road, I deal with that later....")
yeah....THAT SCENE!!!/THIS SCENE!!! :oops:

So I got thinking; what if the short video from Michael's escape in the remake where the video playing in the background which later freeze framed on the last frame and kept that frame as background throughout the rest of the scene.
Please look at the part titled michael on securitycam to see what I mean.
[again; this video will play as background and ones at the last frame it will freeze on that frame. Just as with the young Michael background seen in PART1-9]

As every single shot is locked (i.e. the camera isn't moving) I guess this won’t be to hard to pull off…right?
The “only” problem is how...HOW DO I DO THIS?
I guess the work is done in After Effects (which I have access to)
two things has to be done.
One: Background replaced
Two: Paint out background so microphone booth and Loomis can be seen standing in front of it.

Also if you look at the part called: look at background you'll see that some scenes don’t have to be replaced at all. This is sort of why I decided to go with the "michael on securitycam" as background.

I have scanned around the world-wide-web in hope of finding the answer to this problem. But I'm not able to find it. So I thought that I post here and maybe someone would help me out. Seeing that everyone being hard-core-editing-geeks and all :D

no just kidding about the last part there ;-)
all response are welcomed! it would really mean a lot to me if this issue got solved.
 
I'm at work and having trouble playing the YouTube clips at the moment, but there's one question that may influence how easy/hard it is to do this: which version of AE do you have access to? CS5 has some tools that could make the job easier than it would be in earlier versions. It should be possible a number of different ways even in earlier versions, I think, but knowing which version would help us to point you towards the easiest way.
 
Adobe After Effects CS4 is the version that I will be working with.
 
OK, well, that rules out the roto brush (CS5 only). Hmmm. This is going to take a fair bit of work, since although the shots are static, there are several different ones. For each shot with Malcolm McDowell, my first thought would be to try creating a super tight junk matte.

Here's Aharon Rabinowitz's original tutorial about how to do this:

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/junk_mattes/video-tutorial

And here's a version 2 created by Topher Welsh:


Once you've got those mattes, you'll essentially have isolated McDowell from the background. Then it should be a simple matter of slipping a new background shot in behind him...in theory, anyway.

Good luck!
 
thanks you hebrides!
I will look into it and see if that might work.
With just watching the video it don't look that difficult at all, but what does ;-)
 
please note: this post is a cry for help...

I'm really stupid and incompetent when it comes to programs like After Effects and the person that let me borrow it doesn't know much more than I do.

I don't know anybody that could help me out with this problem so I thought that I might ask someone online that does work for people in AE. I googled around and ended up with a few sites but then I thought that asking someone for help isn't that great of an idea. "hey, will you help me alter this copyrighted material for some cash? ...or will you call the cops on me right away? .......okay, well I guess I'll be on my way then..."

so I turn to you guys as a last resort[cut my life into pieces]. I know this is a no profit site so I can't pay you anything, its against the rules. what I can do though is put you in the credits as the one that brought this fanedit home.
Everything is done except this scene and I just can't cut it out. The press conference with Loomis, now recut, really works as a bridge between the H1 material and H2. Loomis explains things about Michael that are really crucial to the whole thing.

I feel bad for coming begging on my knees like this and I wouldn't do it if it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle myself
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope.
 
hebrides said:
OK, well, that rules out the roto brush (CS5 only). Hmmm. This is going to take a fair bit of work, since although the shots are static, there are several different ones. For each shot with Malcolm McDowell, my first thought would be to try creating a super tight junk matte.
Click to expand...

Hi there. When you say "for each shot", do you mean for each "frame", or will the software know that you want to apply the junk matt to the entire shot? Sorry if that's a dumb question, but I'm a total noob.
 
Hi. It's not a dumb question at all. In theory, the software should be able to apply the junk matte to the shot as a whole.

What I was referring to was the fact that there are several different shots of McDowell from multiple angles and focal lengths (distances from the camera). It's possible that you might be able to apply a single matte to the shots that share the same angle and distance, but you'd need at least three mattes for the whole sequence:

1. For the mid-shots of McDowell

2. For the wider shots

3. For the 3/4 view of him

You'd also need a fourth for just the podium (Part 1), or at least a matte of some kind so that you could superimpose/replace the video behind it.

It's possible that three/four could get you all the way through, or you might have to create a new matte for each of the Parts. But frames? Yeah, AE should be able to handle frames, as long as the shot itself doesn't move.
 
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