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What are the editing techniques used in this nike video?

New Here ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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Hey all,

I want to research the editing techniques used in this video to teach myself but I don't know where to begin. Does anyone know if they used masks in after effects to combine the video footage, such as the stadium behind the street court? Looking for terms or techniques I can look up.

Video: Instagram

Thank you,

Wil

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

There's a lot of stuff going on in the first composite shot.  Not often easy to be certain, but here are some assumptions:

The entire spot uses frequent speed ramping of the video playback speed.  This adds energy and movement, allows time to be compressed so the action happens faster, and is also used to disguise transitions from one scene to the next.

Search terms:  Speed ramp, time ramp, time remapping

The first shot of the boy is shot with a real background at the start, but as the camera rotat

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Community Expert ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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Instagram sucks for video - cropped frame, and no controls.

Here's a Youtube link to the same video.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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There's a lot of stuff going on in the first composite shot.  Not often easy to be certain, but here are some assumptions:

The entire spot uses frequent speed ramping of the video playback speed.  This adds energy and movement, allows time to be compressed so the action happens faster, and is also used to disguise transitions from one scene to the next.

Search terms:  Speed ramp, time ramp, time remapping

The first shot of the boy is shot with a real background at the start, but as the camera rotates around him he probably had a green screen in front of him so the he could be keyed into the court/stadium environment.

Search terms:  Keying, Chromakey, Green Screen

The court and stadium composite look like they are real shots that have been mapped onto 3D surfaces to allow for virtual (post production) camera movement.  This is possible within After Effects, but I'm guessing in a project of this scale it was probably done in true 3D application.  There's some nice subtlety here in that there is parallax even within the stadium seating etc, meaning that this is a sophisticated 3D construction, not just a bunch of flat layers.

The court has been shot with a real camera - notice that once the players start to move, the stadium is gone and the camera movement becomes much more natural - because it is, it's real camera movement (probably Steadicam) for the rest of the shot.

Search terms:  3D projection, 3D compositing, After Effects 3D Camera

Really, the rest of the spot is constructed in similar ways.  Real Steadicam shots are speed ramped constantly, then virtual 3D sets and cameras move from one scene to another.  It's all very cleverly edited and composited to look fairly seamless.  It's a nice TV spot.

If you need more detail please advise.

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New Here ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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Thank you, Andrew!

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Community Expert ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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A video like that took weeks to plan and organize and a bunch of expensive equipment to shoot. The first shot of the kid that moves into the basketball game was probably at least 4 separate shots. I am sure that there was a lot of green screen and roto involved in making this shot. I would guess that there were dozens of folks on the crew and a couple of big equipment trucks as well as a dozen of support folks back at the office putting this together.

The way you start is to carefully storyboard the transition you want to make between two shots then carefully plan and execute the principal photography. If needed you put portable green screens behind your actors so it is easier to do background replacement.  It is critical to match camera position and angle to pull this stuff off. There's no real way you can recreate this video by haphazardly grabbing a couple of shots and hoping you can put them together.

If you want to do some of those seamless transitions, start simple. Put your camera about 6 feet away from your actor and have them walk around the corner while carefully noting the path the actor takes, the height and angle of the camera and the speed it takes to make the move. Put a portable greenscreen at the end of the shot so your actor passes in front of it as he moves around the corner.

Now go to another location and repeat the shot but this time you don't need the actor. Back in AE separate the actor from the background when he walks in front of the greenscreen so all you have is the actor coming toward the camera and then turning a corner but there is no background around the corner.

Now just line up the timing of the shots so when the camera follows the actor around the corner the background changes. If you are careful when you frame up your shots you'll find something that you can use to hide the transition like a light pole.

That's how you start. This kind of production is not easy and it requires some very carefully planned and executed camera work and an actor that can accurately hit their marks on every take.

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Advocate ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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Contrast that with a piece that ran in the NYT today about  abuses in Irish government/Catholic church facilities charged with caring for out of wedlock children.  In the written story they used a few of the hybrid video stills some people call cinemagraphs, where most of the shot is a still but some movement repeats endlessly.  It is a great example of simple techniques (it can be done almost entirely in PS) with a very powerful impact to the telling of the story.  It's the first time I've seen them used in serious journalism.

It probably cost the NYT a few hundred dollars to make those, with overhead.  I'm no expert but I suspect that basketball commercial cost six figures and then some.  I'm not sure what it was they were selling, but I don't think I was their target anyway.

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New Here ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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Thank you, Rick

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Advocate ,
Oct 28, 2017 Oct 28, 2017

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That wasn't done with pocket change, that's for sure.

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