Live Action Fog

[shannon-23]

So, here's the deal.
I'm doing the compositing on a shot in my class's group demo reel. And my shot is essentially, the Hero, coming out from behind a corner, and around it off screen. A few seconds pass and the villain comes out from behind the corner, pauses, and walks around it, the camera pans with him and then dollys with him as the villain walks down the street following the hero. It's about 500 frames long.

The way its going to look is dark, desaturated, high contrast. A cross between Sweeney Todd and Sherlock Holmes. So there's fog.

We shot live action fog on set on both a blue and a black screen. I've luma and chroma keyed a few really good samples of it, but I can't quite figure out how to get the fog to turn with the camera. I'd like to steer away from 3d fog if possible.

In terms of the software package I'm using, it's Shake 4.1 (linux) (and maybe a bit of Nuke/After Effects on the side, since there are some things I can and can't do in all 3)

Any help would be GREAT!
Please and Thanks.

Shannon

[Matt P]

Your best bet is to MatchMove the scene, and then place the smoke footage on Cards placed in the matchmoved scene. You can often get away with doing this, though be wary of things looking a bit flat.

-Matt

[theta]

Yeah, I would try what Matt suggested. Just use a ton of cards with different frame sequences on each card.