Get that special effect

With some basic video compositing software you can make virtually anything happen, writes Saquib Moosa.

Ever wonder how the weatherman … well, stands in the air with his feet somehow firmly rooted to an invisible point as he goes on about the weather in the background? Visual effects, of course!

Broadly speaking, visual effects is a term given to the manipulation of frames in a video. Today's movies involve a great deal of integration of regular video footage with computer generated imagery.

Before the coming of computer-generated imagery, if you had to do a movie scene that came straight out of your imagination, you had to part with a good deal of money and time, creating elaborate sets and optical illusions, and getting it all to play together. Today's software gives you the potential to create virtually any result you want.

Video compositing

After a video has been filmed, it goes through various stages of editing. One stage is compositing, or laying videos and stills on multiple layers, for the creation of various visual effects.

In the case of the weatherman, he is filmed against a single colour background (usually a particular shade of blue or green) and then superimposed onto the weather video. Later, the weatherman's original background is deleted, or keyed out. This process is referred to as Blue screening.

Then there are masks that you can create around objects such as done to create television channel logos, especially ones with fancy graphics and spaces in between. You have the normal broadcast in the background onto which you lay the logo image or video. Then you mask or hide everything else around the logo image, to reveal the video playing on in the background.

Your turn

As a matter of fact you can do this too ... yes, the weather example may be a bit of a drag, but it is the simplest thing to do. If you have a digital camera, you can record yourself on a plain background, and transfer this onto a compositing software, mix and match and put yourself in other places, or other videos.

There are a lot of software options available. Some of the industry standard ones include Adobe After Effects, Apple Shake and Autodesk Combustion.

SOFTWARE PEEK
Adobe After-Effects

From the Adobe family comes this software which lets you do all this and more. A trial download is available from the Adobe website. Get lots of RAM for your machine, if you can.

A first look at the software is going to be a little intimidating. But if you've done a little video compilation with the software that comes with video cameras, it shouldn't take you long to figure things out.

You've basically got a time line on which you can lay your videos, images and audio files, in layers. And underneath each of them you have options to animate and add effects. A small player to view your playback, and editing windows fill up the remaining space on your screen.

Adobe After Effects is not only used for compositing, but to create a whole lot of other effects too. Such as creating transitions, titling or text animations to name a few. I've taken up compositing as an effect, because it is among one of the more primary ones.

- The writer is a twenty-something techno-nut.