Tutorial: Making the Monsters

Here to all my indie-movie friends, an interesting technique worth noticing.

What might come handy on a shoe string budget production are a set of simple-to-achieve techniques which you can easily use to create a convincing shot. Take a look at the shot below. I will break it down for you in a few seconds.

Monsters-Test from Paper Bird on Vimeo.

Tips to keep in mind before the shoot:

1.Carry a tripod.
2.Shoot the background on a tripod and keep it shake free.
3.Shoot the same background handheld
4.Watch out for real monsters


Things needed at the post production table:

1. The tripod shot
2. The handheld shot
3. Any Compositing Software. Here I am using Adobe AE CS5
4. The Sign Board Image for Adding to the background


The Concept:

What we are gonna do is actually very simple to understand. We now have two videos. One with the shake and one without the shake.The ideal way is to motion track the handheld footage and apply the data to the Signboard image. BUT unless you do a very very detailed tracking, chances are high that your Signboard will just dance around. So here is a smart way out. Create a composition which is dimensionally lower than the actual footage.Import the Hand held footage. Motion track the footage and we take the motion tracker data and apply it to the steady footage and the signboard, SO THAT we will get a perfectly synced composite.

*You can also use an image instead of a video.

The Break down:

1 Import the footages and the signboard.
2.Motion track the video
3.Create a Null Object and apply the motion tracker data on to that.


4.Now drag the sign board and the steady cam footage to the composition
5.Link both to the Null object. Now the motion tracker data is applied to both those layers.


6. Thats it! A little color correction and your shot is good to go!