Building Better Backgrounds

8/8/2019 Building Better Backgrounds

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Building Better BackgroundsUs ng w at we earne creat ng t e Nature an L qu A stracts co ect ons to en ance

background clips in your own projects.

by Chris & Trish Meyer

We are ong-time users – an occasiona y, critics– o stoc ootage, gravitating to ac groun an

nature clips. When you’re on a budget or a dead-ine, t ere s not ing i e ig -qua ity, pre- ui tfootage to be able to insert into your job, andortunate y t ere are many exce ent co ections

to choose from. However, the euphoria of findinga coo c ip can occasiona y give way to rustrationwhen you discover it clashes with or otherwiseistracts rom your oregroun e ements. A ter

a , your c ient is paying you to pus t ose ore-groun e ements; in many cases, everyt ing e seis suppose to e t e supporting cast.

T ere ore, it was ot empowering an en ig t-ening to design our own nature-based back-groun i raries or Art eats: Nature A stractsand Liquid Abstracts. We want to share with yousome tric s we earne a ong t e way, an t edesign criteria we followed to improve the usabil-ity o our c ips. Hope u y t is wi give you somei eas o ow to etter emp oy w atever c ipsyou’ve chosen for your own job.

The design progression of a clip from Nature Ab-stracts: The original footage (a) is shot out of fo-cus; the shape of the camera’s iris causes the bright highlights to form hexagonal patterns. The shot isreframed and warped so that the fence frames theaction safe area, and provides subtle bar for a lower third (b). The colors are then enhanced to provide arich duotone (c). Finally, the center is darkened to add contrast where the title would normally appear (d).

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Figure 2a

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W ere s t e Focus?

One of our primary concerns is that the back-groun oes not istract rom t e text or imageswe’re going to place on top of them. For example,it is usua y esira e t at t e ac groun e notas sharp as the foreground, to help the viewerquic y i enti y w ic are t e e ements t eyshould pay the most attention to. Therefore, wepersona y ean towar s so ter ac groun s, oradd a touch of blur to make the background “sitac an not raw as muc attention to itse .

Although the sharp wind chime shot on the top isinitially more visually interesting, it makes the text harder to read than the defocused background on thebottom. Clip on bottom is from Artbeats Nature Ab-stracts.

When we shot our own footage for Nature and

Liqui A stracts (wit some e p rom Jim Tier-ney o Digita Anarc y), we put t e camera out oocus to ta e a vantage o t e arti acts o natura

camera ur, suc as geometric s apes arounbright objects based on the shape of its iris. Thisis w at ma es camera ur oo i erent t anthe standard Gaussian or Box blurs offered bymost p ug-ins. Di erent cameras sometimes avedifferent iris shapes; the way the iris shape mani-ests itse can a so c ange at i erent s utter

speeds. We exploited these variations.

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ifferent cameras may exhibit different artifacts whushed to extremes, such as diamond (a) or clippedircular shapes (b). Clips from Artbeats Liquid Ab-

stracts.

If you need to add just a touch of blur to anexisting c ip, or i it s pretty at contrast-wisewithout tight specular highlights, a normal bluro ten su ces. But i you want somet ing speciaseek out special “camera blur” plug-ins, suchas t e won er u new Lens B ur e ect t at aseen added to Adobe After Effects 7.0. It allow

you to pic ow many a es t e iris as, an tot erwise customize its s ape an appearance

inc u ing pumping up t e specu ar ig ig ts.In a ition to eing rea istic, you can use e ecti e t is creative y, suc as setting t e Iris S apto Square ( our a es) an optiona y e iting tIris Angle to create diamond-shaped highlights



Figure 4

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Qu et Areas

In addition to defocusing the entire clip, anotherconcern is creating a quiet area w ere youintend to place text or images. It’s okay to haveexciting imagery spinning aroun t e e ges orperhaps acting as an underscore, but you don’trea y want too muc activity going on rig t e-hind text you’re trying to read.

When working on our own clips, we made ane ort to rame t e s ots so t at a ar or ig tarea wit out too muc activity occurre in t emi e or ot erwise w ere we t oug t text mig tgo. It was a onus i we cou create a nice un-derscore about where a lower third would be, orin t e ower rig t corner to e p rame a ug(station ID-style logo).

An example from Liquid Abstracts where we created contrasting stripes around where “lower third” text would normally sit.

It s possi e to treat existing c ips to e p createthese quiet areas. To darken the center of a clipto create more contrast or a tit e, create a so iof a contrasting color (such as black behind white

text), an mas out t e area w ere t e tit e wigo. It doesn’t have to be a solid bar; you can in-crease t e eat er amount or t e mas s ape togive t is area a so ter e ge, an re uce its opac-ity so t at it provi es just a su t e ar ening. Wea so occasiona y emp oy en ing mo es insteaof normal opacity to create subtle interactionswit t e ac groun c ip. You wou norma y useMultiply on a dark solid to darken an area andScreen or A on a rig t c ip to create a ig terarea; for more intense color interactions, experi-

ent wit ot er mo es suc as C assic Co orurn an Do ge.

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not as we wit s ots t at ave s arp e ges.T ese e ges can appear as g osts or ec oes inthe crossfaded frames. In this case, you maynee to use a time warping p ug-in t at createsnew pixels for the inbetween frames by calculat-ing w ere eac pixe may ave move to romone frame to the next. We’ve tried a few; weseem to get t e est resu ts t e quic est witRE:Vision Effects’ Twixtor (www.revisionfx.com/rstwixtor. tm).

HSL: Hue, Saturat on, an L g tness

Now t at you ve ca me own your ac grounc ips to proper y u t eir ac groun ro , it stime to get their colors to match your client’s, orto ot erwise wor wit t e t eme you ve create .In December 2005 we wrote an Artbeats Tip NTric name A Gent e Intro uction to CreativeColorization; we used all of those tricks in our

own A stracts co ections. In genera , once yougo beyond two or so colors in a background, youmay start to ave trou e matc ing it wit ore-groun images or a c ient s co or sc eme. T at swhy we often colorized our Abstracts clips withge p ug-ins suc as t e Rosco co ection in Digi-

tal Film Tools’ 55mm set (www.digitalfilmtools.com).

A ter co or or ue comes t e saturation o a c ip.Raw 3D renders or video captures can occasion-a y appear a it at an i e ess. A quic way toadd punch to it is good ol’ “instant sex” trick:Dup icate a ayer, set t e top copy to a en ingmo e suc as Over ay, So t Lig t, or Har Lig t,an en opacity to taste. For more contro ,up icate it again to create a t ir copy, an use

a brightening mode such as Screen or Add, againen ing to taste. To a pu y ig ig ts t at

many romantically associate with film, add someur to one or ot mo e copies. W en we s ot

the Abstracts clips, we found the extreme focusan s utter setting we were using o ten resu te

in washed-out images; judicious use of InstantSex roug t t e co or intensity rig t ac .

T e ast component in HSL is ig tness, an t isis w ere we ave a ot o un. We ove c ips t atprovide animated washes of color, such as theArt eats So t E ges, Digita Moo s, an Dream-light collections. We layer these clips on top of ot er ootage using en ing mo es suc asOverlay, Soft Light, and Hard Light to make it ap-pear as i t e un er ying s ot was it in an inter-

esting, animate way. Many o t e A stracts c iare inten e to e use in t is as ion as we .

ven when the original shot is colorful (a), it oftenenefits from the “instant sex” technique plus addi-

tional color correction. Animated lighting and shadoan be added using the After Effects Fractal Noiselug-in (b). Clip from Artbeats Nature Abstracts.

A t oug we ma e an e ort to s oot ootage

t at a interesting movement an s a owp aysometimes t e sun or win i not cooperate. Wen ance some c ips y a ing animate ig tinsing t e A ter E ects Fracta Noise p ug-in p ulending modes. In Fractal Noise, increase the

Sca e, an ecrease t e Comp exity to create aroad, soft patterns. We then animate the Evol

tion parameter to ma e t ese patterns move. Take this pattern loop seamlessly, twirl open thvo ution Options section, ena e Cyc e Evo utio

an matc t e Cyc e parameter to ow muc y

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