Colour Synching

scott pilgrim logo before effect was added

duplication of layers which had to be tinted different colours.

What I thought was going to be a very straightforward process turned out to be relatively complicated. The synching of colour within a layer basically meant that I had to duplicate said layer twice (which drains CPU) and tint them red and blue. Then I had to drag them slightly to the side and turn the opacity down considerably, adding a motion blur also.

Slight color around the edges of the lightening bolts signifies a
color synch. The effect was originally a mistake and was called 'bad TV'
in an old version of Final Cut Pro

When a musical beat is heard in the clip, the colour synch effect is intensified, corresponding with the swell in sound. A more random, sporadic colour synch effect had to be applied to the Scott Pilgrim logo and the camera tracked text, in accordance with the original footage. The entire effect gives off a playful, light hearted vibe in accordance with the film's themes.

colour synch was also applied to the surrounding footage

scott pilgrim logo after colour synch effect was added

Final Animations

Experimenting with animatics before was successful, so now I had the task of creating the actual animations which are going to be incorperated into the final video. The three animations I had to consider were the first 'lightening bolt' animation within the video, the second one, which is more pronounced in its visuals and is in time with the music, and then the Scott Pilgrim logo itself, which moves in a very particular way:

lightening bolts in original video

scott pilgrim logo, which has edges which move along the text itself

Cutting out the shapes in Photoshop and creating individual frames, I inserted these frames into Premiere and made them each 1/24th of a second long. Next I exported the files and added them into adobe after effects. The original footage contains animations with a 'color synch' effect (not too dissimilar to the visual style of an old 3D film when you remove the cardboard glasses); I have no idea how I am going to achieve this effect at this point as after effects does not contain a 'color synch' preset. The animations however are now in place and keyframed, which was a long and arduous task, not to mention the masking that had to be done in order to give the animatics a sense of depth, successfully integrating them into the 3D space of the video.

masking the animatics

Set Extension

After viewing the rushes, it became apparent that the footage we had shot did not contain a significant enough camera move to replicate the original shot. Furthermore, the set that we used was drastically different to the one that was originally featured. To combat this problem, I came up with the idea of integrating a set extension to the footage, enabling me to create a more faithful virtual set, and also letting me track back further than we did originally with the application of key frames to the footage that we shot.

In order to create this set extension I screenshotted a frame from the footage we had shot, and preceded to 'clone stamp' around the edges, making the image appear wider than it was originally.

application of the clone stamp tool to the walls and the floor (below)

The side walls in the original footage are a lot narrower, so I decided to integrate artificial walls into the set extension also. The walls were created from a free texture I obtained online, which were then skewed and the colour changed in photoshop.

application of the floor extension in photoshop

Next I imported the final image into after effects and preceded to key frame the original footage in an artificial track back, matching up the curtains in shot to ensure that they blended well and did not falter away from each other, something which happens a lot when key frames are applied to images.

animating and matching up both elements

after some blur was added, it appeared as if the footage was part of the extension

Although far from finished, for now it is adequately blended and will require some additional masking and feathering around the edges to blend completely.