Video Montage

March 23, 2007 10:03 AM

Help me with my "photo montage" video! I'm putting together a treatment for a documentary film using Final Cut Pro, and want to jazz up a sequence wherein the main character runs a bar in the early '60s. As you can see from the rough draft I've done so far: (http://www.wavejumper.org/DirtyBird.mov) - besides being roughly and amateurishly executed, my 3D effect is pretty lame.

What I'd like to put together is something dynamic using old photos, maybe something like the title sequence for the TV show "How I Met Your Mother" for instance. Or any other ideas? And methods for how to do a really cool, 3Dish, moving photo montage?
My budget is low!
http://www.wavejumper.com/Dirtybird.mov
Any suggestions appreciated, thanks!

posted by wavejumper to media & arts (4 comments total)

Sorry, the correct link is:
http://www.wavejumper.org/DirtyBird.mov
posted by wavejumper at 10:04 AM on March 23, 2007

After Effects is the answer to your problem - setup a comp in 3D space, and use a camera to fly through the montage. Lighting, shadows and depth are all easily doable with any of the last few versions of that software.
posted by dbiedny at 10:33 AM on March 23, 2007

If you were going to attempt to do it in Final Cut, the trick is to create some interpolated blurring and density effects to increase the notion of depth. As layers come forward from the background, start them with some blurring and darker overall density, and as they move forward, decrease the blur and increase the brightness so that they appear normal when they're in the main view, then perhaps start blurring them a but as they move closer to the camera, and animate their opacity to gradually fade them out.
posted by dbiedny at 10:46 AM on March 23, 2007

If you want to get that cool (albeit cliched at this point) "Kid Stays in the Picture" effect with your stills, I would 2nd dbledny's adice to use After Effects. FCP is REALLY awful at animating layers, let alone doing anything resembling 3d.

There's an article on the DV magazine website that talks about the process used to create the awesome still animation the The Kid Stays in the Picture. There used to be a full color PDF of the article on the site with diagrams and whatnot, but for the life of me, I can't find it...so this HTML version will give you a good idea of what to do.
posted by melorama at 12:08 PM on March 23, 2007 [1 favorite]