today we're getting into the halloween spirit by showing you how to become a ghost this tutorial
was requested by you guys so if there is something that you want to see let us know
in the comment section down below and like this video while you're at it it really helps out the
channel this tutorial can be completely followed in hitfilm express but there is an optional detail
of using the atomic particle which is included in the motion audio visual pack but for demo purposes
you can still use it in this tutorial ready we're of course filming this all on a green
screen so we can eliminate the background make our ghost transparent and slot them
into our clean plate we shot our actress sarah on a green screen and then had her act out the motion
of floating by transferring her weight from one leg to the other this was because we had limited
space on our green screen but wanted to show some form of movement simple but effective the costume
is very important as well as setting the ghost in a particular era we needed to keep the texture and
highlights to maintain some form of the figure once we applied our effects you may also notice
that we're going with an under lighting this also gives us a unworldly evil demonic vibe that
is so traditional in horror the only additional thing you'll need is a clean plate of your scene
for an additional touch throw in a light of the same color as your ghost into the area they'll
be standing in this will act as a reference and aid your composite once you've got your footage
over in hitfilm start off with your footage in a composite shot and begin by keying the green
or blue using either the chroma key or coloured difference key masking out only the area you want
to keep by using the masking tools we're going to start off by adding some detail by applying
a brightness and contrast to make a strong divide between our highlight and shadows
to create an undead vibe for your actor apply a color temperature or hue saturation and lightness
to produce a colder image with variety looking a little dead now let's work on getting them ghostly
from the matte enhancement folder of the keying tools find and apply
matte cleaner with an increase in the smooth and feather sliders softening any strong harsh edges
if like us you're a big fan of ghostbusters apply a tint to your ghost going with a green or blue
tone really works well but be sure to work with the light reference you decided to go for on set
enhance the details of your ghost by bringing in an unsharpen effect from the sharpened drop down
going with either a portrait or boost contrast preset depending on the size of your shot angle
with our subjects set let's start turning them ghostly with a glow this is going to vary
depending on what you've captured so fiddle with the settings till we get something appropriate you
can even double them up alright in preparation for the other layers we're going to bring the opacity
down to 33 percent to bring up the details of our ghost we're going to apply an edge glow
duplicate your footage layer this time renaming it edge glow if you go into the stylize effects apply
find edges to this layer under the key effect you may need to alter the glow settings once again to
get something a bit more suitable but once happy apply a diffuse or blur to this layer to extend
the glow's radius finishing off by setting the blend mode to add for those ghostly wisps and
overlay textures we're going to generate a new plane layer and apply fractal noise activate
the pen tool and mask around your actor and be sure to alter the feather to a high value
i'll keep the fractal noise in its default but for more detail i'm going to go into the transform
settings and decrease the scale now to simulate motion we'll enter the position settings set a
keyframe at the beginning of our sequence head on over to the end and raise the value on only
the y-axis this will give the impression that the smoke is rising it won't be heat without some
distortion so apply heat distortion underneath the fractal and dial up the scale to the maximum value
and the distortion to negative 50. if you find this is looking a little too fast in your render
head on down to the animation settings and lower the wind and noise values
now much like our other layers apply a tint to match our ghost's color along with a glow effect
then over in the blend mode set this to screen for even more texture you can duplicate this
layer and alter the settings for different noise and animations for example with our
ghost i halted the second fractal to a wisp type and added a diffuse to soften it over our subject
this ghost was influenced by the one scene in ghostbusters and a little of the spirit effect
from the netflix show lock and key these little edge particles were a nice detail and something
that we could do with the atomic particle start off by duplicating your footage layer and removing
all effects but the key we're going to need its luma mode if you're using color difference key
you'll need to select view matte or if you're in chroma key you'll need to switch the view mode to
matte make this layer its own composite shot and jump in as we're wanting the particles to feature
around the edges we're going to do something a little different and duplicate this clip once more
and on the top layer switch off the matte view to reveal our key once again find a matte cleaner and
increase the choke and feather to really soften the edges now from the gradient and fill effects
apply a fill and change the color to black now we can jump back into our main composite shot and to
remove everything but the edges we want apply demult you should now have everything but the
white areas we can now apply our atomic particles from the particles and simulation effects
if you've never used the atomic particle effect before i highly recommend you checking out one of
our other tutorials as for now i'll just be going over the settings we'll be needing first up i'll
open the particle placement and alter the number of particles you can add as many as you need but
as i'd like this to be quite subtle i'm going for around 200 on the x and y in the particle
appearance settings i'll resize to something that works with a size randomness to one along with an
increase in the disperse amount to make this feel less uniform then altering the fractal settings
to add a soft drifting animation i found that lowering the wavelength especially helped this
much like the other layers we'll then apply a glow and either a diffuse or blur to soften the edges
and set the blend mode to add last little thing is to create more contrast by generating a grade
layer applying curves and just crushing the shadows and bringing up the highlights
now all we need to do is bring our ghost into a clean plate create a new composite shot with our
clean plate image or footage and also drag in your ghost composite shot now this is the easy part
lower the opacity to around 50 duplicate it and set the blend mode to add or screen to
bring out the highlights if you want to add more unnatural effects to your ghost
play around with the speed effect to really make the motion feel like it's drifting through the air
thank you for watching this tutorial we really do hope that you've enjoyed it don't
forget to like and subscribe because we have a bunch of fun effects coming very very soon
you're not going to want to miss them i'll see you next time