Hi people…
So I’m working on a new VFX reel, and I was brainstorming ideas for cool impressive looking VFX shots.
I came up with a cool idea, mixing 3D Tracking and Video Co-Pilots Evolution…
The idea would be a short clip of a guy going into his room and going to sleep.
The room is dark and the camera is panning around the room. Then all of a sudden, Evolution Flourishes sprout out over the walls, the curtains, the television and envelope the room as if the flourishes are actually ON the real life objects.
The room would be dark, and the flourishes would be very bright and glowing.
So I captured the footage I wanted, and I got an accurate 3D Track too, allowing me to link up the Flourishes to appear as if they actually are happening on the video footage. This is where I have a problem…
Not a technical problem, but rather a creative issue… I just can’t think about the steps I should go through to REALLY sell the effect that these bright flourishes are actually happening as PART of the shot, instead of an obvious overlayed effect…
I’ve tried numerous different approaches, but the end result always looks obviously fake and composited…
Here’s a quick screenie of my latest attempt…
In this example I have taken the Flourish and applied ‘Fast Blur’ and ‘Curves Effect’, and the layer blending mode is set to ‘Add’. I have copied and pasted the Flourish layer (with the aforementioned settings) 3 times and altered the numerical values for the blur and curve effect on the different layers…
I should perhaps also note that the background ‘live action video’ layer was shot with all the curtains closed, but a soft box light illuminated the whole room. My plan was to follow a good ‘make light footage look like it’s dark’ tutorial and do the darkness is AE… However for now, I applied a simple Curves effect to darken the whole thing.
But I just CAN NOT get it to a point where I am truly pleased with the results… The whole thing just never looks convincing enough and I really am at somewhat of a loss… I can’t think of any linkable examples offhand right now, but MANY times I have seen composited highly bright / glowing elements added into video footage and it looks fantastic, like it’s really there. My efforts just look cheap and tacky 
Any advice on how to really get a convincing genuine ‘feel’ to this predicament would be GREATLY appreciated 