First off, to everyone who made it to Drive, thanks for coming.  We thoroughly enjoy the chance to visit with and learn from you.

Sometimes in these visits, we’ll get asked a question along the lines of “How did you make that?”  Since it’s difficult to answer that question succinctly, I’ll often respond with something useless like “Magic!”, which I imagine is really irritating.  Sorry about that.

But that’s one of the reasons we have this blog– to continue these conversations throughout the year and get into those details.

I had the privilege of working on the center screen content for the opener to this year’s Drive.  It was easily the most gargantuan project I’ve worked on in my time at North Point, and it couldn’t have been pulled off with out a ton of help from Andy Wadell, Matt Gibson, and Brad Bretz, who were a huge help in pre-production and the execution of the side-screen content.  I may ask them to post something about the green screen shoot, since that’s not my area of expertise.  Anyways, here’s a small peek at what it took to execute the orchestral section of the opener.

(Note: For the time being we cannot post video of the actual performance, since we don’t yet have internet distribution rights on the music.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully that will be resolved.)

Obviously, before any footage was shot, composited, or animated, we planned extensively.  We made storyboards, test sequences, and sometimes just doodled:

While Andy and Matt were shooting our instrumentalists, I started work on creating the stage, which took form as something like a bandstand, since the orchestra needed to fit into a three-level-tall grid.  It was modeled in Cinema4D and exported as a single still image.

The stage was brought into After Effects, and it was time to begin compositing.  Now, I’m not sure how obvious this was live, but the eventual 49-piece orchestra was actually only made up of 7 unique individuals.  Andy and Matt shot them from different angles, wearing different clothes, with hair up and down, etc.  Even so, making sure our orchestra didn’t look like some sort of clone army was a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, we were going for a mostly silhouetted look (with highlights being the primary details), so the identical faces weren’t a huge problem.  I should also note that the string and percussion players were legitimately playing the music you heard.  That’s not something you can fake and get away with.

Easily the most tedious part of the whole process–in fact, the entire opener– was getting all of the instrumentalists timed to the final music track exactly.  I’m not sure how many of you have ever worked with audio in After Effects, but let me assure you, it’s not the place for precision audio editing.  Fortunately, Andy worked up a sync system later on in the process that really helped streamline the rest of our work.

To create the illusion of depth, each successive row was increased in brightness and blur, as though they were disappearing in a haze of bright light.  Each player’s color correction had to be animated individually as the center lights expanded and intensified.

The lights themselves were a product of Video Copilot’s Optical Flares plugin (link).  If you’re not familiar with Optical Flares or Video Copilot, I encourage you to check it out.  They make some of our favorite plug-ins and scripts, ranging from free to not-that-expensive.  My Optical Flares layers were controlled by regular-old After Effects light layers, which allowed me to easily animate the intensity of each individual light.

On top of it all, I used a plug-in called Magic Bullet Looks to adjust the overall color and give it that bronze “epic” feel.  The most important addition was a diffusion layer, which gave all of the brightest points a realistic glow.

For the climax, it was as simple as cranking up the lights even further and animating a curves adjustment layer (the red and green channels specifically) to transition the bronze into a bright gold.  Because we all know that gold beats bronze.

When it was all said and done, this section of the opener (roughly 1 minute and 45 seconds) took 22 hours to render.  When you have 49 keyed 1080p video files playing simultaneously (not to mention layers and layers of color correction and plug-ins), it’s going to take some time to digest.  So make sure you anticipate your render times when working on large projects.

Check back in soon and we’ll walk through Part 2…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s our latest update.  Bridge Timelapse.
We had an interesting dilemma getting power to a camera where there is no power and let it run for 48 hours without dying.
Our Solution:
1)Outdoor Marine/RV battery
2)Power Inverter that connected to battery
3)SLR camera/tripod with remote switch to take pics every 30 secs.

Special Thanks to Matt Clark for helping make this happen.

Click here to view the embedded video.
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ORIGINAL CLIP (purchased from iStockVideo)
 
FINAL PRODUCT
 
Different Levels of Animation
 
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AfterFX SCREENS

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CREATING LANDSCAPE 
Original image felt very flat to me.  So i wanted to add some depth/scenery.  Remember your Old Artbeats Nature footage- it’s still useful for compositing & makes things better.

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COLOR TREATMENT
CREATING A QUICK SUNSET.  Place this Color Solid above ALL layers and blend it down.  I chose “Color Burn”, but whatever works best in your situation.


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ADJUSTMENT LAYER - Add Contrast
Place Adjustment Layer above ALL layers, Add LEVELS to it.  Jack the contrast and you’ll be amazing at what was once flat quickly becomes DYNAMIC!
   
Before & After LEVELS
 
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LIGHTING
Add a Light to your 3D Camera.  Helps create a Vignette Effect, and can really do some cool things as foreground objects fly by.
Make sure your layers have 3D turned on, or the light will not show up.
 
Before & After Lighting (Subtle but Nicer)
 
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FOREGROUND OBJECTS
Adding Foreground layers really makes your 3D camera move become dynamic because of the different speed it moves as compared with background.  Also has a nice effect when you have your camera DOF turn on.
 
Use Blending Modes as Needed

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ADDING MORE LAYERS (Realism)
I purchased pre-made birds in iStockVideo.  You can also create your own birds.  Sometimes it’s just worth the $25 to save you the time.
CreativeCow Bird Tutorial

Multiply Layer or key out white. I multiplied layer and slowed down footage for effect.

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LENS FLARE
Creating a realistic sun.  AfterFX Lens Flare can suffice, but I really wanted the sun to feel as realistic as possible.  We purchased an amazing plug-in from Video Copilot called OPTICAL FLARES.  This plug is incredible!  So many options and Flare FX.  This won’t be last time we use this.  You know all those Star Trek lens flares… this can create those as well.

 
I masked out tree trunk and put it above FLARE layer as to not completely blow out tree.

Before & After
   
Keyframe your Brightness to create your sunrise.
 
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WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE TECHNIQUES IN AFTERFX or FCP?