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Spot produced by Bertz Rosa Creative and shot by Blare Media. I edited, replaced sky’s and spiced it up with some VFX. Music was composed by Plaid Jacket.

A 15 second television commercial I shot and did the VFX for Education Employees Credit Union. Audio was mixed by Plaid Jacket and 3D text tracking was done by Bob Dyce. I roto scoped the talent out and some composting tricks.

I’ve done rotoscoping for projects before and I know how time consuming it can be. I’d heard a lot about After Effects new rotoscopting brush but I hadn’t had  a chance to try it until I was provided a set of boards that featured talent on location walking in front of 3D text. Sounds simple enough just labor intensive. It was easy enough to cut out the talent from the background. The new tool set worked wonders and saved me a lot of frustration although it increases render times dramatically. I did run in to an issue where I couldn’t get the fine details of the talent’s hands to come across. I wasn’t really down for animating each finger separately but then I have a stroke of genius. Since the digits were over a dark background I used the simple luma key tool to clean up the edge and voila here is the finished spot. You can see the before and after here.

I used an adjustment layer to house the luma key so I didn’t have to fight breaking the comp up in to a dozen pieces

With NAB being over I though I’d mention some new products that were released or announced.

First off what surprised me and came out of the blue was this Blackmagic Cinema Camera. With an internal battery and a plastic body I’m going to hold off any judgment till I have had a chance to hold the unit. That being said the price point is amazing, $2,995, but the I/O options are crazy as well. BNC HD-SDI out as well as XLR and HDMI options. This thing is a budget filmmakers dream and opens the door for great projects. It also means companies like Red Rock are going to sell more matte boxes and accessories as people purchase these cameras and realize that it takes more for them to become shootable. Photo swiped from Jesse Rosten.