I have some blue-screen footage of a toddler walking across screen from left to right. My problem is I need the baby to walk much further than the dimensions of the blue screen allowed.
At the moment I have tried to find a moment in time which closely resembles an earlier one, duplicated the footage and repositioned as appropriate. However, there is a noticeable jump in the result.
Are there any better techniques I could use? I have frame blending on but this doesn't seem to do anything. I also thought perhaps if I reversed the footage at its end and somehow made that footage move forward instead of backwards - then there would be a smoother transition.
Re: baby walk cycle by Dave LaRonde on Oct 6, 2008 at 9:44:20 pm
What cinematographer said, "Never work with children and animals"? Maybe it was W.C. Fields instead.
You can pretty much count on an adult to do a consistent walk cycle, but I don't know about a toddler. If this has to look GOOD, I'd say a re-shoot is in order, using your hard-won lessons from the last shoot.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
This is a tricky one. I agree with Dave that a reshoot would be best, preferably with the kid on a treadmill (if you can do that without endangering the kid, of course). That would allow you shoot as much walking as you need within a limited space, then you could animate the kid's position to make it look like he isn't walking in place.
If you are stuck with what you've shot, then one common trick is to put a foreground element in the scene so that you can repeat the footage as the baby passes behind it, hiding the jump cut. This can be tricky to line up such that the baby doesn't appear too thin, too wide, or like his body is doing two different things at once.
