‘Junk’ Post Production

4 May 2005

Washing Video

While recording ‘Junk’, we had a little broadcast monitor that we used to check our shots. This was really convenient since the computer monitor was anything but calibrated. On the TV, our shots looked awesome and we were really excited. Were. As it turns out, somewhere between the broadcast monitor, the capture card, and our hard drive something terrible happened. For some bizarre reason, our blacks and whites turned to bleak shades of grey, colors became desaturated and an awful blur ruined the images completely.

Shake to the rescue

I had already planned some roto work (removing hands, metal wires and the like), but it seemed this project would require some serious color correction too. My weapon of choice for these kinds of things is Apple Shake. The following clip shows the process of correcting a shot. First, the metal wire holding the thrown bowl is removed and the blacks and whites expanded. Then the color is corrected. In the final composite (not shown here) I also sharpened the image a little and added some grain.

Our project also called for some more complex composites. One shot involved a camera move shot against a bluescreen. The motion of the camera had to be matched to the motion of several image planes that would make up the background of the scene. This tracking was done using Maya Live. The background plates were rendered as separate layers and composited behind the video in Shake.

The following clip shows the process. First the bluescreened video, and with the key pulled. Then with the background elements in place. Following that is color correction, and finally adding the foreground elements.

As you can imagine, this composite was quite complex and involved many separate plates. The image at the top of this post shows the shake script for this particular shot. It starts with all the input sequences at the top. Downwards the images are manipulated, and finally they converge into the final composite.