Automated camera shake?

[smithers]

Hey guys, love the show. I am an avid video editor and effects enthusiast, and your show is an inspiration.

I was wondering what you guys use to do the automated camera and background shake during the shots of Ryan in front of the green screen.

Obviously having the actor and background shake/move in sync makes an excellent effect of it being an actual set rather than a green screen, and it does look very realistic.

I was wondering if you could enlighten me on how it's done, and if it could be reproduced in Sony Vegas.

I have played around with After Effects on a friends computer before, and I found out there was a feature called "parenting" which would let you add a certain effect (in this case camera movement) to multiple clips equally.

Not sure if this is possible in Sony Vegas, but if it was it would be a simple process of shooting the footage, then keying out the background and replacing it with whatever background is desired. Then you would just parent the background and green screen footage and do a certain chain of camera movements.

As for the camera movement part, I have tried and failed, and failed again. It just doesn't look smooth enough to be realistic. How do I create that smooth and natural look? Do you guys have a template for camera movements (like at what intervals to move x,y) or instructions anywhere?

Anyways, the show is awesome, keep up the good work!

[timmy_allen]

Hey guys, love the show. I am an avid video editor and effects enthusiast, and your show is an inspiration.

I was wondering what you guys use to do the automated camera and background shake during the shots of Ryan in front of the green screen.

Obviously having the actor and background shake/move in sync makes an excellent effect of it being an actual set rather than a green screen, and it does look very realistic.

I was wondering if you could enlighten me on how it's done, and if it could be reproduced in Sony Vegas.

I have played around with After Effects on a friends computer before, and I found out there was a feature called "parenting" which would let you add a certain effect (in this case camera movement) to multiple clips equally.

Not sure if this is possible in Sony Vegas, but if it was it would be a simple process of shooting the footage, then keying out the background and replacing it with whatever background is desired. Then you would just parent the background and green screen footage and do a certain chain of camera movements.

As for the camera movement part, I have tried and failed, and failed again. It just doesn't look smooth enough to be realistic. How do I create that smooth and natural look? Do you guys have a template for camera movements (like at what intervals to move x,y) or instructions anywhere?

Anyways, the show is awesome, keep up the good work!


Hello Smithers. Thanks for the question. I'm not 100% sure how Ryan achieves this effect when he does it for the show, but I'm going to give my technique for achieving the artificial hand-held effect to footage that was shot on sticks.

First off, I'm an After Effects whore, so this little tutorial will be for After Effects. Also, because I believe that this might be the easiest way to do it. But thats my opinion of course. Simply take your footage into a new comp. Make sure 1 of 2 things are happening first off. Either the comp is smaller than the footage, OR the footage is scaled up bigger than the comp (if you dont mind the quality drop). Next, click on the layer in the timeline and press "P" to open the position property of that layer. Scrub the timeline to where you want the shake to start and press the stopwatch next to the work position to create a keyframe, then move to where you want the shake to end and press the keyframe button next to the stopwatch to create a new keyframe. Now go out to the timeline and select the 2 keyframes you just created. Make sure they're highlighted and go up to you menu and select Window < Wiggler. This should open a new tab somewhere in your workspace. With the 2 keyframes selected move to the wiggler's tab and set your frequency (how many moves per second) and your magnitude (how much will it move). Obviously the higher the number the more the shake. So mess with those values till you find a look that is closest to what you're looking for.

Thats it. I hope that help out, and I hope I explained it correctly. Hahaha. Not sure if this can be done in Vegas, but you did mention you messed w/ AE so I thought I'd go that route. Please let me know if you need a better explanation and I'll try again. Also, feel free to post your file here when you're done, I'd love to see you put the effect into action. Thanks again for the question! Good luck with your project.

Timmy Allen
http://twitter.com/timmy_allen

[smithers]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I figured it was a plugin, and it just had some settings to mess with that makes it look realistic/unique.

I don't have the resources (hehe) to get After Effects yet, so I will see if I can find a plugin similar to wiggler, or maybe a 3rd party app altogether.

I found out the key is smoothness, the movement can't be constant, and it has to come in and out smooth (move a lot, move a little, freeze, repeat).

It's quite hard to do from scratch (just using camera movement and key framing it), but if I get something respectable I will definitely share it.

'till then!

[timmy_allen]

Again, I'm not sure how Vegas works; but if there is a way to keyframe the position of your footage in your comp then just keyframe something like 5 pixels from the start position in any direction. I'd do it like 4 times a second, and the big key here is to make sure you Easy Ease the keyframe animations. I'm not sure if there is a way to right click the keyframe and select to ease the animation into and out of the keyframe position. That is essentially what Wiggler does. But it makes the keyframes in between the first and last automatically. Hope that helps.

The Wiggler isn't a plugin, it is built into After Effect. But I believe its only in After Effects Pro (or whatever their "Pro" version is called.) I'm actually not sure if they do the "Pro" thing anymore.... Anyway, Wiggler should be built in.

[smithers]

Alright, I am going to try to find an ease-in smoothing function in Vegas later today.

Will let ya' know if I get anywhere.

[pasquale]

The expression of wiggle can be applied to all attributes in AE, with the function wiggle()

The syntax is simply

wiggle(frequency per-second, amplitude in px)

So
wiggle(3,30)
would wiggle a value up to 30 pixels, 3 times per second.

This helps to nullify the need to use messy keyframes if they ever get annoying :)