HP Commercial Effect

March 16, 2005 6:13 PM

Deconstruct-the-magic-filter: In the latest series of HP commercials, there is this really neat effect where people wave photographs around and they meld seamlessly with the footage, and vice versa. How do they accomplish this? I'm not easily stumped by this kind of thing, but I really have no idea.
posted by phrontist to media & arts (11 comments total)

i love those. it's simple matting i think. they shoot the people holding the frames and moving around and then paste in the shots.
posted by amberglow at 6:15 PM on March 16, 2005

If this is the one with the empty picture frames that gain or lose their photograph while being waved about by people, it's simple (which is not to say it isn't clever :-) Film your people playing with picture-frames, pick a moment, use the interior of the picture-frame from that video-frame as a texture map for a rectangle that you rotoscope to the following (or preceeding) motions of the picture frame, and render it onto the video, creating a picture in the frame.

It's been over 10 years since I did CG work for advertisements, and even with the crude low budget stuff I was using back then, this would have been quite possible, but we wouldn't have thought of doing it. Kudos to the people who came up with the ad.

If I'm thinking of a different HP ad to the one you're talking about, then oops, sorry, I haven't seen that one :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 6:35 PM on March 16, 2005

Clarification - I'm using an overly broad sense of the word "rotoscope" to include matching the motion, perspective, and lighting in 3d software, not simply cutting out a mask in 2D.
Ie. 3D software is involved.

You could do it without 3d software provided you instructed the people to ensure their picture-frame waving always had the pictures facing square-on to the camera, but it would likely look obviously faked without rendering the lighting, so it's easier and looks better to do it in 3d software.
posted by -harlequin- at 6:42 PM on March 16, 2005

ahh.
posted by amberglow at 6:46 PM on March 16, 2005

That is a most amazing ad.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:05 PM on March 16, 2005

The effects in HP's "PictureBook" TV ad were all done by shooting picture frames on 35 mm film with tracking markers on the corners. These images were then fed into a computer and the tracking, lighting and movement were all done initially in a program called Adobe After Effects. After the initial editing and tracking were done in After Effects, the information was then duplicated in a higher speed processing effects machine from Silicon Graphics running Discreet Flame visual effects software.

All of the final lighting, tracking and subtle movements were finessed in Flame for completion. The photos that did not have white borders were sometimes shot with green screen cards and images were placed onto them.

That said, the beauty of this commercial comes from the director (François Vogel) and his ability to finesse the tools in After Effects unlike no one else we have seen. He also writes proprietary code and software patches to accomplish some of his visual trickery.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:07 PM on March 16, 2005

Here's a pdf of the motion tracker effect used in After Effects if you're interested in the details.
posted by jeremias at 7:29 PM on March 16, 2005

Oops, let me try again.
posted by jeremias at 7:33 PM on March 16, 2005

As an aside, I have a faint suspicion that the "bullet time" camera rig in The Matrix may have had something to do with inspiring the designer who came up with this idea. (Not in a major way, more like being one of the hundreds of little things that came together allowing the person to come up with it). Or it might be entirely unrelated, but if you watch The Matrix "the making of" section where the guy who developed the bullet time rig is enthusiastically gushing about what it can do, he mentions a few things it can do that you don't see in the Matrix, such as going forward and backwards in time in the same shot without interrupting the trucking/panning motion. Once I wrapped my head around how the cameras in the rig would have to be operated in order to produce each of the effects he lists, it opened a bunch of mental doors to simple yet counter-intuitive tricks like the ones in the HP ads.
posted by -harlequin- at 7:37 PM on March 16, 2005

It is a truly spellbinding ad. And I love the music too.

However, unfortunately it doesn't actually make me want to buy the product - doh!
posted by forallmankind at 8:43 PM on March 16, 2005

I was asked to do this for a client after seeing the HP video.

Just empty frames that get tracked (a four point track of the four marks.).

Then all that has to happen is figure out the "moment" that it's going to hold and track that frame into the moving picture frame.
posted by filmgeek at 10:09 PM on March 16, 2005