JPF Home Page Forums Lyric and MP3 Feedback Music Video Feedback Forum The Making of 'John Lawrence Schick's Video'

Hi folks. I made a small 1 minute video for 'John Lawrence Schick' for his brother, and did this sort of explanation of how the video was built up, just in case others want to have a go themselves. I hope that its useful. Just a few pointers...

I used two programs. Photoshop 7 (yes I am still using an older version) and Sony Vegas for the video editing.



For those who are thinking of following my path, here is a short lowdown of the processes that I used.

It all started with a picture of the house that I found under a creative commons attribute.



Using photoshop, I straightened the image saved it onto a new layer (so that it was floating).
I then cut away the upper background, where the sky is and carefully cut around all of the cables and telegraph pole.
I also cropped the image to lose the right hand section as it was superfluous and cutting around bushes is never easy..lol



Then I found a 'full moon' image again creative commons and searched on youtube for 'moving clouds greenscreen creative commons' and found a 10 sec clip of exactly that. Free to use.

I created two layers under the house layer, and added the stationary moon onto one with the moving clouds between the moon and house layer.
After altering the speed and opacity of the clouds, I had the house with a full moon and the clouds moving in the background.



I then added 3 layers above the house layer for the attic lights on, the curtains on the attic windows and the ghost woman who appears at the window.

I made the curtain layer almost transparent, so that the lights layer would shine through them, and also allow the woman to appear behind the curtains.

In the image I have put a blue background to show the content of each layer.

By doing it on layers, it allowed me to switch layers off and on as the video ran. So lights on and off, and woman appearing and vanishing at will.



Because the original house image had the downstairs lights on, to achieve the same effects as I did with the attic windows, I made another 3 layers above the others.

But instead of having a layer to add light, I did 1 layer to cover the lights and two other layers for the downstairs ghosts who appear at different times.

No need for curtains as the original house image already had curtains, however to make the ghosts appear behind the glass and curtains I made a layer of the lights on to go in front of the ghosts, and by making that layer almost transparent, the ghosts seem to be behind the glass.



I then did the picket fence on another layer, the fence I created in Photoshop, using bits of old fences from creative commons images.

I also made the two signs in the same way by combining bits of old wood.

And so the final was finished and I then added the text that 'John' had sent to me.

I tried many types of text before settling on plain text so as not to distract from the background scene.

For the text on the two signs I found a great online site that lets you create the fancy text and make the background transparent. again FREE.

http://eu4.flamingtext.co.uk/

If the background of the text is made transparent, and saved as a png file, it really is useful. There is a limit on length, but it easy to join text images together in Photoshop.

I used it to make the text on the two signs and also the text on the youtube thumbnail image.



Finally I felt that the video needed a intro effect and end effect to liven it up a bit and add a bit of magic.

I searched on youtube for "video intro green-screen Sony Vegas creative commons" and came across a great guy who creates intros for Vegas and lets you download the files to adapt them in your own Vegas to suit your needs... free to use as well.

I removed some elements of it and thats what you see in the first few seconds of the video and near the end of the video.

Anyway this is a compressed version of the making of the video, whereas in reality, it was a lot more work to arrive there. At one stage I had 35 layers open, and ended up with 301 files. just under 4 GB of data.



I hope this explanation helps others wanting to do a bit of video work.

God Bless Roy and Helen

Wow! A lot of steps to the process Roy. I'm sure your thread will be most helpful for those wanting to make videos.One thing else... Roy likes to work from a music track. I told Roy, I understand, I like to compose music from a video or photo.

Best, John

Very nice, Roy. One question..... Is there a way to switch layers on and off in the video editing program or do you save the various versions in Photoshop as JPEGS and then place them in the video as needed to show the lights coming on, etc.?

Thanks

Some neat tips there Roy.

Vic

Thanks for having a look Colin and a good question.

The image below shows the start of the layers, and it's the same as music editing, each element has its own layer on the timeline, and can be cut along the timeline, allowing for each cut segment to have it's own effects, fade in/out etc. however if you mute the layer at the start, you lose the whole track on that layer.



In the example the lights on image is the norm, because that take up most of the timeline. Cut a piece out and the layer below, (which is a picture of the lights out) is shown, so the lights on can be made to flicker on/off. or fades could be added to any segment individually, so that the lights gently turn on or off.

Nearly all video editing programs work this way, just as most music editing software use the same rules.

By the way not jpegs but png files Colin, as these like a gif file have no background, so don't overlay any of the layer below, except the part that is intended to be overlayed.

I hope this explains it.

God Bless Roy and Helen

Thanks Vic for stopping by and having a look. I'm pleased it is useful

God Bless Roy and Helen

Another example Colin that more accurately shows how I did the layers for Johns video.



The top layer is always the one seen at the front of the video and each lower layer is futher back in the scene.

So we have the 'lights layer' in front of the main windows of the house attic, then in front of that we have the 'Ghost layer' at 75% opacity to allow the light to come through. Then we have the 'Curtains layer' at 25% opacity.

The opacity of each layer can be altered with the track handles lowered or lifted just like the volume on an audio track in a audio editing package.

So the ghost could be made to fade in or out at will.

The lights out layer is simply areas that masks out the windows with black panels.

In actual fact the lights layer, ghost layer and curtains layer don't need to be cut away to use the lights out layer, as the black panels would cover them anyway. It's just the way I do it.

The lights out segments could be wider than the bits below, allowing the start and ends to have a fade in or out, thus turning the lights on and off slowly.

I hope that this explains it a bit more for you Colin and also for others who may be interested.

God Bless Roy and Helen

Thanks Roy. I'll have to try my Adobe Premiere Elements and see if it does that.

Thanks.

Hi friends..

I just thought I would show this music video that I made many years ago, showing more in depth how I used layers to build up a scene. Maybe others will find the explanations useful.

The song is 'I Wanna Be the Woman' and the singer is our friend Mia.

The first 10 seconds and other places in the final video make use of this scene.



The furthest layer in the scene is the horse, which I filmed in a local field. Track 1.
Then track 2 above that in the timeline is the wooden railings.

I then put the photoshop png file of the back wall of the room on the next layer, after cutting the window space out.

The two side walls were then added separately from photoshop png files, each side on their own layer. I used the distort function on the image in photoshop to get the walls to open outwards at the front of the whole scene, thus giving a wide viewing angle.

This was followed by the layer with the floor, which I adapted in photoshop from a marble sheet. I also used the distort function in photoshop to shape the floor to touch each corner of the wall, and to follow the bottom edge of the side walls to the front.

The next layer was for the curtains. I got a picture of curtains against a white wall, from a curtain display in an internet shop
and cut them out. Then made them 30% transparent, so you could see the outside scene through them.

Next came the armchair and piano against the curtains at the back of the room and the furniture at each side of the room.

I also added a layer for the TV on the far wall but with a blank screen at that time.

I created a new layer above the TV layer which I left empty. This layer was for the final recording of the video to be added and resized to appear as if it was playing, on the TV.

I then did 2 video shoots of Mia, our friend who was the singer.

I filmed her dancing to the song against a green backdrop. This is known as greenscreen/bluescreen or chromakey filming. (making sure that she never had any green clothes on).

She actually danced in this footage for the whole length of the song, so that I could use this scene at varying places throughout.
I placed to video into a layer on the timeline, and used the chromakey function, to remove everything in the video that was green, thereby leaving just Mia dancing.

By re sizing and positioning the footage, I got it to appear that she was dancing on the floor in the room.

I then filmed her again in front of a greenscreen, sitting on a stool, and making out she was watching a TV in front on a wall.
I also had her passing hands through her hair etc.

This footage was placed on another layer above the first footage, and using the chromakey function, everything but her was removed.
Obviously, the stool that she was sitting on was not removed, because it wasn't green. However, I then added another layer above with the back curved chair on it. This hides the short stool and seems as if she is sitting in the tall chair.

On order to give a realistic feel I then added the front table and vase in front of the footage so that it seems as if mia is dancing behind the table. I did it so that her lower legs can be seen under the table as she dances.

That then was that scene for the video, apart from one final addin. This scene was used about 10 times throughout the video.

The final move was to render the whole video to make a new video with everything in it.

I then inserted that video into the empty layer that I had earlier created and resized it to fit into the TV screen on the wall.

Because I located that TV layer in front of Mia sitting, it seems that she is watching the TV of her own music video.

I know that some scenes in this video are not up to scratch, but it was back in 2008 and I was still learning lol.

I hope that the explanation is useful to others.

when you pause the video, a small popup appears..hit the cross to take it away.. This is youtube playing.

God Bless Roy and Helen