May I ask, when ships are filmed in front of blue/green-screen, isn't motion blur making the compositing work much more difficult? I always thought that works only when the edge between model and greenscreen is sharp...
From what I saw, the sequences for ROTJ which were done with "go motion" were all shot in front of the right background (AT-ST in a forest miniature etc.), to avoid this problem.
But I'm not an expert, and would appreciate if someone can tell how it works with motion blur. Would like to do a similar project, too, it was very inspiring!
Cheers,
Thorsten
I'm glad you were also inspired to try this, as some others were! It is a LOT of fun.
It is also a hard program to learn. It can be very intimidating at first, but, like all things, if you keep at it and get to know all the tools, you won't believe what you can accomplish.
The motion blur against green screen is not that big a problem. It's a process called 'keying'. In After Effects there are so many adjustments that can be made to eliminate the green that you can't go wrong no matter what your shots look like. I didn't know many of these adjustments in my earliest shots in this project, and I did run into some trouble, but the last shot I did was a breeze. For example:
The X-wing coming at you down the trench was an early shot. I didn't know about all the adjustments in keying yet. As a result, there is some 'shimmying' on the edge of the upper port side engine. However, I kept the shot as is, even though I learned later how to do it better. Why, because if you look carefully at the raw green screen shot in the behind–the–scenes footage, you will see that the model sits on a plexiglass stand. Parts of that stand are actually in front of the model's lower engines. Before I learned all the ins and outs of keying, I learned how to eliminate the stand from the model in the composite shot. I also added small parts of the model that are missing in real life, Much work went into that, so much that it wasn't worth starting over.
The last shot I did was my favorite; the shot of the Falcon... side view flying just above the trench. Whereas I used to spend hours trying to get the keying right in early shots, this one was quick and easy. It freed me up to concentrate more on smooth motions between Faclon and Death Star. This is also a prime example of what Jedi Dade was saying about adding more motion blur, in fact, it is a great example because when I shot the falcon model it was stationary and the camera was locked down on the tripod. All I did was slowly turn the model on its stand to match the motion of the Death Star POV. The 'extra' motions of the Falcon zooming away from the camera were done in After Effects. Because the model was not actually zooming away when I shot it, I should have given it some blurring.
I should add here that neither the Falcon nor X-wing models have lights in the engines. The engine glow had to be added in 'post production'. I was so excited when I learned how to do that. My favorite shot was the closeup of the Falcon. When I did this I realized I could use this same technique if I ever shoot something that involves lightsabers.
I know this was a long explanation, but I hope this helps! I have only been learning After Effects since March. I made this 'homemade' Star Wars in 3 weeks, after 2 weeks of learning. I've learned SO MUCH more since this piece, but doing it actually accelerated my learning because it forced me to discover the various issues that can come up, and solve them quicker.