Sky Captain of Tomorrow and Vegas 5 Chroma Key (bluescreen) Experiment:

[Yi Fong Yu]

http://mysite.verizon.net/fongutd/sky/
^if you goto the above link it'll show you everything.

So my question now is how can I get it closer to the #4 final image of Sky Captain? Here are the more specific questions:

1. How do you apply ONE filter across multiple clips? If I was in Photoshop I could merge image or flatten image and apply one filter to the final output. How do I achieve a similiar effect in Vegas?

2. With the black and white filter applied, how do I bring out color from no color? Whenever I apply color correction with the black and white filter at the same time I always get a cheap "silent film" colorization look, which is not what I want. Do you think the guys behind Sky Captain really made everything black and white and colorized it? Or did they desaturate?

3. How do you make Gwen's face "glow" like that? I already used the glow filter... but no matter how I adjusted it... it still doesn't look like picture #4, is this really the fine line difference between "prosumer" tools such as Vegas and Pro tools that the makers of a major feature uses?

[Robert Crawford]

I'm pretty sure they didn't make it B&W then colorize it. Looks to me like it was a "bleach bypass" style effect, maybe with some glow or a slight blur.

[Don Bloom]

You can do many of the things you want to do in multiple ways.
I'll name off the easiest way I know for the effects.

1) One filter across multiple clips. ---- Put the clips on a seperate track-put the effect you want at TRACK LEVEL and that should take care of it.

2) B/W to COLOR--- Can you say KEYFRAMES!?!?! Keyframe the effect where you want it to go from B/W to color or color to B/W-very easy to do

3) You're looking for a particular effect that only the people that did it know EXACTLY how they did it but here is how I would do it-apply the LEVELS (under VIDEO FX tab) to the clip-you'll need to play with the levels to get it right but it can be done. OR goto
www.vasst.com and goto PLUGINS- scroll down the left side until you find one called AUTO LEVELS-download it (it's free and fast) play with it until you get the desired look.
Have fun,
Don B

BTW, if you find a post from Edward Troxel click on the link under his name and read the posts on his site. He is a total Vegas guru and has many many helpful hints there.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

http://www.vasst.com/Tempfolder/C-Cchromakey.png

See if that gets you closer
There are 2 glows. One applied to the overall combination of shots, one on the female only. Your stills on your webpage are of really low resolution, so I can't get it as smooth as your final shot.
However, Vegas can do this. There isn't a difference between Vegas and a "pro" tool for this, not for this sort of thing. 3D media can be shaded differently, and that's how the original SkyCaptain look is achieved. However, by starting with the Cold Ethel film look found in Ultimate S, and then adding glow from there, I was able to create some alternate shading.

You can separately control the color correction or other facets of just the female separate from the background at either the event or track level. Control the background separate from the foreground in the same way. Apply filters that see both frame components at the project level.
HTH

[Yi Fong Yu]

donbloom,
1. you've lost me. i used the bluescreen gwen that i modified (colorized the background to be really blue) as clip#1 and utilized picture #2 as clip#2. i select sony's chroma keyer filter from clip#1 and voila i get my final output without any color correction.

i do not understand what "track level" is. can you tell me via step by step?

2. i can't see how keyframes can help me colorize b&w. i don't care about the timing of it but i need control of the color.

3. tried autolevels... but still not getting closer to #4.

Douglas Spotted Eagle,
how do i apply a filter to two clips at the same time without individually applying it?

pictures #1-4 are original resolution from a website i got it from somewhere. i think it was in sky captain's of tomorrow thread earlier. What's Cold Ethel/Ultimate S?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

First, Ultimate S is a scripting plugin from VASST that has a few film looks in it. http://www.vasst.com/ultimate.htm gets you there. FWIW, I'm the co-author of that plugin. It's got 52 tools on it, download a fully functioning 14 day trial for free.
Second, you can apply filters to multiple clips on the same track by putting the filter at the track level rather than the clip level. You can also apply multiple filters to each clip in the media pool, so if you need the same look on similar footage, this is a good way to do it.
Finally, you can apply filters at the master project level by dragging filters to the preview window and dropping them there, or clicking the FX button on the Preview window. This affects EVERYTHING from titles to widescreen masks.

[Yi Fong Yu]

oh i know what you mean by 'track level' now... i shee i shee. it's the fx button on the very very left of the screen. that'll apply to the whole level. well what if i wanna apply filters to track level#1 and track level#3 but not level#2? or how about #1,3 and at different time of the clips from both track levels? i know about the shift button to select those clips but i can't seem to apply filters to the exact ones i want.

re: the master one works though, thanks! =).

[Don Bloom]

Keyframes will allow you to set the effect, going from color to B/W or B/W to Color not just at a certain time but also how much of the effect when. In other words, say you have color footage and want it to slowly fade into B/W-set the B/W effect on the clip-set the B/W effect to ZERO at the 1st keyframe- set your cursor to the point you want the footage to turn B/W and insert a keyframe-adjust the amount of B/W you want at that point 10% 100% whatever-and thats the start. You can add more keyframes beyond that so the change is gradual-or none and the change is immediate- you need to play around withit to get the effect you want. Keyframing is a very powerful and helpful tool-I think you might want to take some time to learn about it. As for auto levels, I took a guess on it, to get the effect you want specifiically you might need to play around with a number of effects to get there.

As for working clips on the different track levels, you answered that yourself. For clips on track 1 apply the effect to track 1, clips on track 2 get different effects or none at all. You need to keep track of what clips are where and what effects they have applied. You could have as many tracks as you need to complete the project. Remember the effect only applies to the clips on that track regardless of where on that track the clip is.

Don B

[Yi Fong Yu]

Don B,

1. yesh i understand keyframes, i think i know them from when i was working with flash. it is to denote change by time. the problem is that's not what i was looking for. i want to bring color out of B&W regardless of time or rate of change. tis also the reason i took the 2D jpegs from another website to try and play around with vegas's tools. it's simply to see if i CAN do it or not.

2. yesh i understand what you mean now but track level.. i think i also understand that you can apply filters per keyframe or certain keyframes.

my original question was whether or not it was possible to apply ONE filter across TWO track levels at the same time. let's say i have clip#1 @track level#1 and clip#2 (a separate one) @ track level#2. i can't seem to apply ONE filter across 2 clips. in our particular example gwen in bluescreen is on track level#1 and robots are track level#2. if we want to apply ONE filter to both track levels... how do we do that?

3. i think the glow is still not satisfactory, i understand that we are working with a low-resolution but i just wanted to see if vegas is upto it. =). i would very much like to see someone replicate pic #4 from #1&2. i mean ed says it can be done... but i'm doubtful myself... that a tool under $1k can achieve professional looks.

[Glenn Chan]

You can save filter settings as a preset and then manually add a filter and change it to the right preset. That could put the same filter on two different things.

2- I think this is what they may have done:

Duplicated the footage onto itself.
Set the top layer to black and white. You can play with channel blend to distribute only R, G, or B. They give different black and white images.

The layer compositing mode above is set to 'multiply' or screen or overlay. I think it should be overlay.

Add a gaussian blur to the top layer.

I will get around and try this when I'm not busy.

3- In the film look fourm there's a thread on the Spy Captain look. I'll see if I can find it.

[Michael Bernstein]

On Sky Captain..., I believe that they actually recolored the B&W composited footage BY HAND for the final look.

Yikes!

But maybe I remember badly. After a bit of Googling, I found this article about how they made the film, which includes the section that says:

Therefore, to achieve the unusual period look for Sky Captain, the group set up a contrast and diffusion system whereby the color film ran through a filter that tinted the color images with black and white. The artists then composited the shots in black and white, focusing on composition, tone, and diffusion. After the shots were approved, the group reintroduced the color using the original colors from the film plate that were then washed over the entire black-and-white image.

Hmm...given that (1) this doesn't really mean anything specific to me and (2) the film was shot on HD, not film, so the phrase "film plate" is nonsensical...maybe it's not so helpful.

Check out this article in Conron's own words for more (vague) detail.

Michael

[Yi Fong Yu]

found it glen,
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=33669
^from the above i found this:
http://planet3media.com/tutorials/sc_tutorial.htm
very helpful. thx for the suggests, will try it when i get home.

thx for article michael.