about this one you can find a lot of
cool trick shots like the one you just
saw all around YouTube now that one is
so ridiculously simple as to barely need
explanation I just throw the bottle up
and over the camera and then go like
this in one shot then I take and drop a
bottle in front of the camera until it
lands on its base then I go into After
Effects I split those two clips
I put the bottle landing where I want it
to fall in line with the other clip I
already did I wrote a scope to bottle so
that the outside frames are missing and
only the bottle is included then I lower
the opacity so you can see through the
bottle when I go like this it's really
just that simple but I want to show you
how you can do much more complicated
trick shots like this one it's been
sitting in my house forever it's just
time to put it all away so I'm gonna get
to it
you
you
you
no doubt I can't possibly be that good
but let me show you how I actually did
it now before I jump into After Effects
and show you how this is done I want to
talk a little bit about setting up your
shots especially for a trick shot the
more time you take to set up your trick
shots the easier it's going to be in
post it's actually the difference
between spending 40 hours working on one
single shot and having it look bad or
spending 40 hours on one single shot and
having it look good now I'm not exactly
known to be the best guy to plan things
out and what that means is I usually
spend a lot more time in post trying to
fix things that probably never should
have existed to begin with and this has
a lot to do with the fact that I haven't
done a lot of these shots when I was out
filming and I'm also relatively new to
cameras and lighting and all that sort
of stuff now three years may not seem
like it's new but there's just so much
to learn and the only way you get that
kind of experience and you know what you
can fix and what you can't fix is by
going out and doing things like this so
with that being said when you're setting
up your trick shots wherever you throw
the object that you're going to replace
with a 3d object you want to make sure
you throw it to a location that's hidden
from the camera so in my particular case
what I should have done is set up some
sort of barrier behind me where when I
threw the objects up it would fall
behind that barrier and I wouldn't have
to do so much masking now because I
didn't set up the shot and I didn't
really use lighting that was optimal for
the type of shot I was trying to get I
ended up having all kinds of problems
but what I'm gonna do is show you the
most common and easy way to do this sort
of shot if you set up your shots
properly so without any further ado
let's go ahead and jump into the process
step one is to film yourself throwing
the objects towards the direction that
you want them to land you can see my
first mistake was not putting some
barrier behind me that I could throw the
objects behind so all of the objects
fall to the floor and are clearly
visible and those are going to have to
be masked out in the final shot secondly
I cleaned up all the objects off the
floor and threw them individually up
into the location that I wanted them to
land one by one
this is a trial and error process you
just have to keep throwing them until
they land exactly where you want them
and then move on to the next object most
people who do trick shots will probably
only ever do one object and that makes
it a heck of a lot easier in this case I
really wanted to make the objects look
like they stacked up neatly so it took a
little more effort the next thing we
want to do is take square on shots of
our object that we're tossing now for
this you want to keep in mind that
square objects work really well as 3d
objects in After Effects but if you have
a rounded object it's probably not going
to work and that just has everything to
do with the way that you do 3d in After
Effects if you wanted to have a round
object imported into After Effects
you're not going to be able to use this
method you would have to probably watch
some tutorials on how to create those
objects in blender it's not impossible
but it's much more difficult and we're
not going to cover that process here we
used boxes because they are easy so you
use your camera and you take a shot of
every side of the box and you want to
make sure that these are good pictures
as flat as you can possibly make them
next we're gonna import those shots into
Photoshop and we're gonna cut out each
side of the box and this is a pretty
simple procedure you just square up your
box on the screen we use the little
square outline tool will outline the
side of the box
then we'll go up to edit and copy you go
file and new and you'll see that there's
a size that's directly related to the
object in the clipboard go ahead and
select that and then edit and paste this
will paste that stuff from the clipboard
and then just go to file and export and
save this as a PNG you want to do this
for every side of your box this doesn't
have to be completely exact but you want
everything to be square and about the
same size these are going to be each
side of the 3d box you're going to build
in after-effects the next thing we do is
we hop into After Effects you want to
create a new composition with the two
clips you created one you tossing the
object and the second the object landing
and that way the composition is set up
to the right size and also the right
frames per second then we're going to
drag in the saw
of our box here I make the other shots
invisible so we're just dealing with the
box I go into the view section and I
select four views this gives me top and
side views you can see they all look the
same right now so what we want to do is
select all the layers and make sure that
they are 3d layers now you can see it
looks a little bit different and here
comes the fun part
we're gonna rotate and move these layers
into the shape of a box so using the
different views you can see the edges of
each layer you want to rotate your sides
90 degrees and move them to each side
rotate the tops to the top and push them
to where they're supposed to be the
front and back of your box as well and
move it to the correct location and
believe me when I tell you this process
can be extremely aggravating and
challenging you just have to kind of
take your time line all the sides up as
best you can once you do that you're
always going to find that something is
backwards or whatever and you can just
rotate it on whichever access is
necessary to turn it around once you
have all your sides generally located
where they're supposed to be go ahead
and select the entire box right click it
and precompose it and you want to make
sure that you have move all attributes
into the new composition selected name
your composition whatever your object
name is and click OK now you can go back
into your original composition go up to
the menu bar and click the rotate button
and you can mouse over your object and
rotate it around in any way you see fit
now you can see where your box may not
be aligned up properly where a side
might be reversed or not readable and
you can go back into that composition
and just adjust those layers according
to what you see in the final this takes
a lot of effort time and patience to set
this up but the more you do this the
easier it gets if you're not familiar
with working with 3d objects I'm telling
you right now that this could be a
little bit of a chance
but as you can see once the object is
created and done it looks pretty much
just like the box that we have in our
hands and that's kind of what we're
going for next we're going to make our
boxes fly so we want to line up our
throwing clip with the landing clip in a
way that makes sense on the time line
then I'm going to move my 3d box up
above the two clips so that it's visible
then I want to open this transform and I
want to scale it down try to make it
look exactly like the Box on the screen
size-wise
and while we're at it we're gonna move
and rotate the box to put it in the
exact same position as the one on the
screen and you can see I stopped the
clip right where the box leaves my hand
so it's not connected to me it's
floating in the air and this is going to
be the point where we mask out the real
box and we put our fake box in in its
place now like anything else using 3d
this takes a little bit of time and
effort to figure out how to rotate the
Box properly and scale it and you just
want to kind of cover up the other box
and once you have the box placed exactly
where you want to take a moment and
fine-tune the actual location that you
want the real box to reappear as it
lands we want to make sure that you
click all the stop watches for position
scale rotation Y rotation X rotation so
that any movements that you make when
you're creating your arc are going to be
recorded as keyframes next you want to
move your fake box over and do the same
thing place it exactly over the real box
and you can in this process twist and
rotate it because that's how it's going
to fly through the air once you line up
the boxes from both clips from beginning
to end basically you are just creating a
phony box that's going to fly through
the air you can use this arc tool to
expand or create an arc so you can put
just about any sort of movement that you
want on here you adjust your keyframes
so that they flow smoothly and the Box
doesn't appear to stop on
anywhere along the path and what you're
going to do is you're going to adjust
the opacity of the box so that it
appears when you want it to appear and
disappears when you don't it's going to
appear to replace that box in the
beginning frame so one frame before that
you want the opacity to be zero and the
next frame you want it to be a hundred
and then you want it to be 100 at the
end of its arc when it's going to
disappear on the next frame as the real
box takes its place you also want to
take a moment to add a little bit of
extra realism here I'm going to go into
my box composition and make sure that
motion blur is checked on each of these
objects then I'm going to make sure that
that that motion blur is checked right
up here and then also I'm going to go
into the main composition and make sure
that motion blur is turned on you can
play around with the motion blur
settings depending upon the look that
you're going for now we get to the final
step of the process and this is the part
where you mask out the box that's
falling behind you you want to go ahead
and go to the frame where you hit 100%
with your fake box so your fake box is
100% visible here you want to use that
empty still image and use the mask tool
to create a mask around that box then
you want to make sure that you have
clicked the little stopwatch next to
mask path so that your mask can follow
along with the box as it goes through
each frame now you want to frame forward
for each frame and move the box so it
covers up the original box
now in my case I use a much bigger mask
that covers a lot of frames and this is
because I had some problems with shadows
and things like that that I was also
trying to cover up so you want to make
sure if you're using a backdrop like
mine and you want it to look as
realistic as possible that the falling
box shadow is also masked out here's a
clip of the final result admittedly it's
not perfect it could be a lot more
perfect with better planning and of
course much more time spent in post but
for this tutorial it serves the purpose
of helping you to understand how you can
easily pull off these trick shots if you
want to learn a cool trick about how to
change colors in Premiere Pro check this
video out right here or if you just want
to see a video YouTube recommends you
can check this one out right here
this channel is all about helping you
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so if you like that sort of content
subscribe to the channel thanks for
watching have a great day and I'll see
you in the next one
