sweet special effect

Jibberish · Post by **Jibberish** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 8:29 pm

does anyone here know how to do that effect where theres a scene, and all of it is black and white, except fo like one thing, like a shirt or something, thats coloured.

ive seen it in a couple music videos, thought it would be super sweet to do in a project with my friends and me.

peace

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 8:38 pm

You mean like the girl in the little red dress from Shindler's List. I would suspect that you could do it with Photoshop, or possably after effects, though I'm not sure how.

BrownCowStudios · Post by **BrownCowStudios** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 8:56 pm

Below is a link to a tutorial on how to do it in Premiere.

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutori ... orpass.htm

Hope this helps...

--EDIT--

By the way, this is a video tutorial in Window Media format. When you get to the page, look to the left, and you'll see "Demo" and "Tutorial". The demo shows the final result, and the tutorial shows you how to create the effect...

[Edited on 8-4 -0303 by BrownCowStudios]

hanasand · Post by **hanasand** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 8:57 pm

You could create an animated mask around the object you want to be coloured and then let the background layer be black & white. Another option is using Combustion which allows animated painting so you simply use the B/W paint effect and paint out the area which should not be coloured. If you do not have any of these programs then prepare yourself for much work in photoshop...

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:13 pm

If done right, that is such a powerful effect that it is worth it.

Jibberish · Post by **Jibberish** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 10:49 pm

very cool, i'll check out the tutorial. umm, i have premiere and after effects, but i have no idea how to use after effects. on the other hand, im quite proficient with premiere.

thanks for everything

peace

grison · Post by **grison** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 10:53 pm

The best example for this thingy is "Pleasantville".

They actually painted the grass black&white for a better effect

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 10:57 pm

Oh ya forgot about that a whole movie built on that effect. I still like the way Spellburg used it in Shndlers list. Almost made this Jaded, film goer cry.....almost.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 11:07 pm

That effect is awesome, I have noticed it has been used in many films and commercials.

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 11:39 pm

They always do cool stuff, have to sell their product.

Jibberish · Post by **Jibberish** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 11:51 pm

riddle me this, what the f*** is a matte?!?! i hear this so much in after effects and premiere, what is it?!

peace

Austin · Post by **Austin** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 12:03 am

A Matte, is a basic layer that you do many things with, ie black and white, colors, shapes...you can animate it to change to these different things too...does that help???
Also, i incurage you to use this effect responsibly, because I know a guy that used it throughout his whole short film and it didnt really help the story at all, in my opinion he did a lot of work for nothing...

Jibberish · Post by **Jibberish** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 1:44 am

that doesnt make any particular sense, are you saying a matte is kinda like a built in thing everytime you add another effect? can you like change where the matte focuses on.

how do you get it to move around with the object that is moving? keyframes? cuz that could take useless amounts of time

peace

TommyPollock · Post by **TommyPollock** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:36 am

Surely you could do it really easily. Film the background footage and foreground footage. Make foreground colour, background black and white, and use transparency to make the black and white show through.

HetH · Post by **HetH** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 1:25 pm

Actually that doesnÃ‚Â´t make any sense. Simply "blending" foreground and background by setting the transparency wouldnÃ‚Â´t serve the wanted effect at all. Of course the background would look somewhat desaturated but not b&w.

As was mentioned before, you either have to use animated masks to mask your subject to not be included in the black and white effect (or vice versa, depending on what effectr you want to achieve).

Also, how would you go about when it comes to camera movement? You never get the same camera movement twice. I assume you meant shooting it the bluescreening way, but thatÃ‚Â´s limiting you somewhat compared to the masking approach (although thatÃ‚Â´s a more work-intensive way of doing it).

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 4:09 pm

Ok now don't think im a genius for showing you this i stumbled upon the effect your talking about playing around in AE....

Take a look at this test movie of my friend in bright blue pajamas.

Pleasantville Effect

Now heres the thing... No mattes no rotoscoping not really planning ahead i just took this footage from a film im working on and whacked it into AE and it works perfectly! even the pattern on the pajamas are perfectly matted...

now you could always plan ahead and make your character wear an outrageous color that is guarenteed not to clash with other colors (if you notice the blue china plate beside him has some color in it too)
but that plate can be matted out with a lot less effort than matting the clothes instead.

So heres the trick in after effects there is a plugin called "Leave Color" It is in the stylise plugins. Set the amount to decolor to 100% to make only the color you choose stand out play around with the other settings... if your color stands out... the blue pajamas in this case against the brown wood and etc then you wont need much then once you have it looking good u can use other filters to apply effects to change the color or whatever...

Pleasantville Nuclear AHH

HetH · Post by **HetH** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 6:51 pm

Nice work there

I had this kind of technique in mind too, but only read about it once or twice so I wasnÃ‚Â´t sure to post this as a suggestion without having prove that it actually works.

Only thing which concerns me is that if you use this technique letÃ‚Â´s say outside there can all possible stuff be in the picture that has the same or a very close color to the one you try to seperate.

But basically a combination of this one and the common AE masking-around-the-clock should deliver quite nice results

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 7:28 pm

yeah what i suggested in my post is if your filming outside with so many colors wear something that wont clash with other colors even if it is fluro pink... but you wont see the shading on a color so vibrant its just an example however... just find a color cloth to wear that is really bright and unusual color because you can eliminate the color by hue

HetH · Post by **HetH** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:31 pm

Yupp that makes sense, as long as it is okay with the script and the rest of the movie it should work pretty well most of the time

IÃ‚Â´m curious when we will see the first videos pop up using your method!

bangoker · Post by **bangoker** » Wed Aug 06, 2003 4:43 pm

you can do that really really easy on Adobe Premier, but the thing to stand out should be the only thing of that color in the scene. (if it is a red dress, there should be no other red thing on scene)

on premier, go to th Video Effects and go to IMAGE CONTROL, there place the COLOR PASS efect in your clip, select the color you DONT want to go B&W and listo!

PD.- the object should be lighted the same through the whole scene.

insert_coin · Post by **insert_coin** » Thu Aug 07, 2003 10:45 pm

i dont like doing stuff like that in premiere... because sometimes theres masking involved and etc.

gundam007 · Post by **gundam007** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 5:43 am

The effect is powerful, but it shouldnt be overused or it loses its punch, with great power comes great responsibility:)

P.S. You could start out with a ridiculous color, but after doing the b&w for the rest use a color changer on the ridiculous color to a better one
[Edited on 8-11-2003 by gundam007]

[Edited on 8-11-2003 by gundam007]

MattHawkins Online - Film Making Forum

sweet special effect

sweet special effect

There all great ideas... but theres a better way.

the EASY way