Doubles of one person in the same frame?

omar wrote on 11/9/2005, 6:50 PM
guys, I want to show 2 isntances of the same actor in the frame. can anyone walk me through the steps.

I tried mixing two shots together of the same actor but it doesn'tm work. when you lay them on top of each other, vegas ust forces a dissolve between forcing one isntance of the actor to fade away and then the other to enter the frame.

I want both of them in the same frame....is this possible in Vegas

omar

Comments

Bob Greaves wrote on 11/9/2005, 7:13 PM
It is possible but you will have to use layers. It is easest if you have used a green screen for at least one of the clips.

There are several different ways that accomplish this result. Perhaps you could locate a book that would take you through it step by step. I have never done it. But if I were to try I would want to have a still or a motion tracked example of the space being used without either actor. A frame that the talent is not in at all might be useable.

If the actors never ocupy the same space and do not cross over each other's line of sight to the camera and the camera is being held in a tripod very still, you could simply split the screen area somewhere between the two instances of the actor with a moving mask.

Good luck. I am sure it can be done.
dhill wrote on 11/10/2005, 2:09 AM
Omar, Bob is right. The best way to do this is in a green screen room. I recently did a scene in a film where I was sitting beside myself having a conversation, playing two different people. Any way, we were very careful with positioning so that I would never overlap with the other shot. After a wee bit of compositing, I was sitting at a campfire, well, talking to myself. haha

Any way, if you are not interested in the compositing/green screen room approach, you can always duplicate the layer (as you've done)and play around with the pan/crop and get the split screen effect down the middle of the frame.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/10/2005, 2:26 AM
Actually, a green screen is not necessarily a requirement. Here's a link to a demo, using Vegas, of how the same cat was filmed, at two different times, jumping around the same couch. The result looked like two cats. The two instances of the same cat even crossed in front of the other. Very nice. Here's the link:

Cat Demo

You need to keep the lighting very constant, and the camera has to be locked down tight.

dhill wrote on 11/10/2005, 12:06 PM
Hey John! I forgot about that damn cat demo! When you're right you're right! I have a feeling Omar is asking how to do this with the footage he's already shot, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't think this would work if both of his shots were not on a tripod in exactly the same position would it? DH

PS new computer comes tomorrow and VV 6.0 arrived yesterday. Get ready everyone for lots of dhill posts with "help!" in the subject line.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/11/2005, 9:00 AM
I don't think this would work if both of his shots were not on a tripod in exactly the same position would it? DH

You are correct. The whole "trick" is to subtract the static image (the scene with no one in it) from the dynamic image, thus leaving only the object that entered the scene since the static image was taken.

PS new computer comes tomorrow and VV 6.0 arrived yesterday. Get ready everyone for lots of dhill posts with "help!" in the subject line.

I am typing this on a Dell laptop I just purchased. I finally had the first computer I couldn't repair (a Compaq Presario laptop), so I had to buy new. I love the hardware, but my golly did they load this thing down with a lot of useless software. It took me eight hours to hack through the thing and get the boot time down from a minute to twenty seconds. I am still tempted to just re-install Windows and start from scratch, but Dell doesn't provide a Windows disk or even a re-install disk -- just a hidden backup partition that takes up 4 GB on the main drive. Hopefully you won't have to deal with all this. For desktop computers, I always purchase from vendors that just provide the box and plain vanilla Windows install, with the MS Windows install disks, not "restore" disks. Boy does that save a lot of headaches, and the computer is SO much faster without all the stuff running in the background.
dhill wrote on 11/11/2005, 1:10 PM
HA! I recently got my Compaq Presario X1000 1.7 Centrino back from Compaq after repairs. I've been pretty happy with it though. I did a lot of my last VV project on it when I was traveling. It worked well and fortunately I finished my work before it "died."

No, I got a Falcon NW Talon, so, I don't think they will stick all of that crap on there since they want their PC's to perform well with games, etc. We'll see soon. That's part of why I went there and paid more obviously plus I can speak to a person in the US for tech support! That's worth hundreds to me right there.

So, OMAR, where'd you go...since you were the one we were trying to help? I'm thinking you might not be able to do exactly what you want to with your existing footage. I did the pan/crop split screen thing on my first project I ever did with VV 2.0 I think. I thought it was cool at the time. I don't think that so much now looking back. That's how we learn though. There was someone I had to remove from the footage 'cause he's was giving us "problems" and I didn't know how to blur someone/something out back then, so, I split the screen and cropped him out. DH