Newbie question regarding reflections
 

Hi all,

Newbie question here. We're doing our first video and had a limited time to shoot in an office. We had a picture hanging on a wall with a very reflective glass on it. Unfortunately, regardless of how careful we thought we were, every single time that picture was in frame, the reflection of a crew member, or part of the boom pole, would be reflected in the glass. We've dubbed it "The Accursed Picture" because, well, it seemed bent on wrecking every single take in which it appeared.

Reshooting is not an option, since we cannot get the same space again, and reshooting the entire two days' worth of footage in a similar location is far beyond the production budget in both terms of time and money. The scenes cannot be cut entirely, because they contain critical information to the story.

So I basically have two options available: show the scenes with the reflections, which would make for an awful show. Or, try and somehow blur the reflections in editing. Is this even possible in Vegas? Or do I resign myself to showcasing something horribly amateurish?

Thanks,

Gregory Mate

If there isn't too much movement in the shot perhaps you could use a bit of blur in a mask to knock the reflection down to a point that it's livable. Yes it will take a bit of time and patience but it can be done.

As Don mentions, movement is the important thing here. If the camera is static and no-one walks in front of the picture, then some blur or even a replacemement picture-in-picture would work (i.e. place a new image on a higher track with a frame cropped and angled to match the original picture).

If the camera is moving or objects/people pass in front of the offending picture then you're probably into masking and keyframing on a duplicate track placed above the original.

On the other hand, if the majority of the offending footage does NOT have people moving in front of the picture, then you could potentially cut to something else during just the crossover moments.

Difficult to advise with any authority without seeing the footage. Can you post some frame grabs?

Depending on where it is in the frame, maybe a little zoom, pan, and crop?