How to create a 2d silhoutte effect?

Hi there,

Greetings from Southeast Asia!

How do I create a 2d silhoutte effect such as black and white 2d moving images of a person running ---using a sony digital 8 camcorder a green colored paper background and ulead mediastudio pro 6.0 video edition overlay effect?

Thanks,
Ellis

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello Ellis,
I don't know, not being a user of either your camera or your editor. But here is the general direction I would head.

If you're using the green paper background as a chroma-key device you might not really need it, since you may not need to composite the image, only modify it. I would try to evenly back-light the runner against a white background, eliminating the frontal lighting entirely. Then, after capturing the footage, I would use my editor to desaturate the color from the clip and adjust brightness and contrast to get as close to a silhouette as possible. If the runner's features are still too distinct I'd have to move to something like AfterEffects to further adjust coloration.

Hey Ken,

Thanks for your reply.

I'll try applying your techniques on ulead mediastudio pro.
Yes you are right about mediastudio pro's limitation. However, this is a useful software for low budget video production.

What fx software should I have if I have a $500 dollar budget? An all in one software which can add and create lightrays and particle fx for broadcast on tv. And can also assist on compositing and color correction.

Ellis

[Rik Sanchez]

ellis,
I did an effect sort of like that, I was using FCP but any editor will work, I'm not familiar with the one you are using.

what I did was make a copy of the original footage that is on V1 and I copied it on top of first footage on the second layer of video, V2.

I desaturated the video on V2 and lowered the opacity to 50%, and to make it a shadow like effect I placed the footage on V2 several frames behind V1, so there was a slight delay in the shadow, sort of a ghosting effect.

I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for, and After Effects sounds like the compositing, color correction software you are looking for. I've used it for simple stuff, still learning how to use AE.

good luck, let us know how your effects turn out.