I am not a one trick pony.
You think I'm gonna keep showing up,
And explaining the same three cheap After Effects tricks for the rest of my life?
No, sir.
It's time to dive deeper:
Discuss advanced visual effects work flows,
technical papers,
and the dire state of the visual effects industry.
Did you know that one in five green-screen suit performers is at risk of being stabbed
by the compositor forced to manually rotoscope their wrinkly silhouettes out of shots?
This senseless violence can be easily avoided by simply learning proper green-screen suit dressing techniques.
First, apply plenty of baby oil and start at the bottom.
Pull the suit tightly over your body as it forming a vacuum seal.
Make sure to get it as flush as possible against your skin to minimize folds that might make it hard to...
Chroma Key out.
Like this!
*grunts*
[Mark Rober] *clears throat*
[Captain] -Nice and tight
(mmmmm)
[slaps]
-Captain!
-Oh hi Mark!
Mark Rober?!
You weren't supposed to call yet!
[Mark] -It's 2 o'clock,
I'm actually even 5 minutes late.
-Really?
Well then...
How can I help you?
-Did you not even watch the video I sent?
-Ah, yes, of course the mobile drone video.
I've analyzed it thoroughly Mark,
And my conclusion is:
It's totally real.
-Seriously?
-Yes!
Everything except for the mobile drone part, that's fake.
If you look very closely, you might just be able to make out the *HUGE shattering mask*
on the side of the phone, visible in every shot of it flying.
The creator must've been in a real hurry because it's so messy.
Here, it cuts off the edge of the phone;
here, the tip of his finger;
and here, it reveals the thing it's supposed to be hiding:
a rod.
It's narrow, and light-colored,
and probably attached with the same mounting tape he used to tack on all the other gadgets.
That's why he's able to grab and adjust the phone in this shot.
By the river, the mask hides not just the stick,
but the whole person holding it.
Look closer.
On this side, the real-time water,
And on this side, a still frame from an empty version of the shot.
And if track the phone's position and rotation,
We can easily reverse-engineer *exactly* how the stick puppeteered it,
rotating mostly from the point where it was held.
[Mark] -Wow.
That was very impressive Captain D,
Thank you for taking the time--
-My favorite part of this whole thing is the audio.
The tiny propellers must have made so little noise at a distance,
it didn't give a proper drone vibe,
so the hoaxers recorded the sound of the motors up close,
and reused the same clip in every scene
complete with their muttering voices in the background.
[Drone Sounds]
-Awesome.
Well thanks, again for--
-But even more impressive,
is the number of posts, messages, and tweets,
presumably from people with functioning eyeballs,
asking me if this painfully obvious edit is real!
Over and over!
-Okay, Captain.
Well take care. I've got to go back to my--
-Even you, Mark!
How could you do this to me?
A NASA engineer, asking the world's greatest visual effects expert
about some silly sub-par hoax--
He's gone...
*clears throat*
Between you and me,
I've got nothing against this video.
It's just a creative YouTuber in India using limited resources to experiment with some gadgets and effects.
I think he knew his illusion wouldn't stand up to scrutiny and was just having fun.
And probably didn't expect his video to go viral.
Some of the other builds on his channel are real, and have a cute theme.
But if you want to see a more detailed, physics-based explanation,
for why that DIY drone design wouldn't work,
and what it would *actually* take to make a cellphone hover,
check out the other side of our conversation on Mark Rober's much more successful channel.
Otherwise, let's get back to our advanced topics!
3D Asset Management in a virtual studio environment.
The key strategy in designing an effective production pipeline is--
[Music] Oh no
How can I be out of time already?
Damn this format!