SOT: Silhouette - Help Please

Maverick wrote on 11/29/2012, 6:05 PM

I would like to be able to film a silhouette of someone dancing. It's just a personal project at the moment...

On a budget - i.e. very, very little money to spend.

I'm using a Sony HDR PJ260EV camera and have Vegas 12 Pro.

So far I have tried using 500Watt lamp to light the subject from behind in room with no other lights but I can still see a lot of detail.

Reading this thread: [LINK=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=467220 it seems I could film the background without the subject then film with the subject and use the Difference key (haven't fully understood exactly how yet) to achieve the effect. The problem with this is that the camera would have to be mounted on a tripod and I was hoping for a little camera movement to be allowed.

That thread is 6 years old so wondered if anyone has any other ideas that may help me achieve my goal.

Cheers.

Comments

Former user wrote on 11/29/2012, 6:19 PM

If your background is a solid color, you could probably increase the contrast to the point that you lose the detail of the person.

The other idea is to backlight the background (like through a sheet or curtain) and have absolutely no lights on the foreground.

also, make sure your camera is not in an auto exposure mode.

Dave T2

Maverick wrote on 11/29/2012, 6:32 PM

Thanks Dave

Background isn't a solid colour, sadly.

Through the sheet would, surely, just give something like a shadow silhouette rather than a 3D type silhouette. Have I explained what I mean - not sure of the technical way of putting my wishes down.

Non auto-Exposure sounds good. Will try that out tomorrow.

larry-peter wrote on 11/30/2012, 6:11 PM

I'm not certain what you're calling a "3d type silhouette," but if you're wanting the dancing subject to become black in order to use over another background (or perhaps even over your existing background), the cheap/dirty way is to turn off auto exposure, light the real-life background (wall, whatever) and put no lights at all on the dancer - no backlight, no frontlight. Try for no spill at all.

Set your exposure so the wall is brighter than you would normally shoot a background, but not overexposed (it would eat into the sharp edges of your subject). Then in Vegas, if you want to end up with a white background/black subject, remove the color saturation and use the Levels plug-in in combination with Color Curves to refine the effect. Unless the background has areas on it that, even when lit, are darker than the dancer, you should be able to fine tune it to remove any texture or detail.

If you want to keep the existing background with a pure silhouette of the dancer you could probably just use the Color Curves to reduce the background brightness back to a normal exposure and pull the blacks down to get rid of any spill on the dancer. Keeping maximum distance between dancer and background is going to be important no matter what you're trying to achieve. Good luck.

Baron Oz wrote on 11/30/2012, 6:56 PM

Why not shoot them against a green screen, then composite in the background and black out the mask of the dancer? You'd have to use matchmove software if the camera shifts, which means you're talking about a whole new level of difficulty.