Our starter, as always, began the lesson with a fun challenge. This time, we did a quiz on spotting the edited aspects of an image, more specifically the Photoshop imports. It was a slight give-away as to what we were going to be learning about but most of us were too focused on spotting and discerning what was real and fake to consider the link.
I suppose the quiz was chosen to show us the power of Photoshop, which ties into our subject, which was shot clean-up. Based on this title, I understood that we would be learning how to clean up and refine a piece of footage, most likely by getting rid of unwanted things within the frame. First, though, we went over key definitions and the purpose of this job role in the industry.
Shot Clean-up: the process of hiding or removing unwanted elements from an image or a piece of footage in order to ‘clean’ it up. It is used widely in the film industry, where there are often parts included in a scene that are necessary to achieve a certain effect but need to be removed for the final result. Whilst we focused on Photoshop and how it could also link to After Effects, there is a much greater range of software choices and approaches to how shot clean-up can be done.
Clean Plate: this is a technique used commonly alongside shot-clean up. It involves creating a single/still frame from the footage, with none of the undesired people or objects (hence why it’s called a clean plate) and using it to replace parts of the video. Depending on the scene, it can save a lot of time and works well with the technique of editing images in Photoshop but it has to be done precisely. The composition, lighting, and movement all have to be the exact same as the scene so that it can act as a background.
With these two definitions, two workflows are created. The first is cleaning up the footage directly in Photoshop and the second is creating a clean plate in Photoshop, which is then imported into After Effects. I liked the fact that there was more than one method because if I didn’t work well with a specific one, I could try another method. Unlike roto work, I was quite excited to do shot clean-up since the results look very satisfying, and it’s a very useful skill to have because of the many reasons why it’s done in the industry.
- Makes the footage more refined
- Keeps it industry standard
- Removes unwanted elements which would mess up the story/reveal the set in some way
- Makes it more believable
- Feels more complete
- More immersive/higher quality film
- Better world-building
We technically did the first method, although we had the option to create a clean plate if we wished. The footage we were given had elements to remove, but not too many and nothing too complex in order to make it as easy as possible to grasp the process. We were also given choices as to what and how much to remove from the scene:
😎 Remove the text in the red label and the red spotlight on the helmet​
😅 Remove the tracking markers and light stand from the green screen​
😱 Remove the actor completely from the scene
I chose to remove the text of the label, the red light on the helmet, the tracking markers and the light screen. The last option meant that I couldn’t focus on some of the smaller details, which I didn’t want for my first attempt at cleaning up a shot. Before the task, we were given a quick overview of which tools we would be using as well as a demo on the main one.
Spot Healing – For removing dust, thin wires, creases. ​
Healing Brush – Like the Spot Healing but requires an image to copy.​
Patch Tool – For replacing large sections and nice quick blending.​
Content-Aware Move – For covering elements but blending is quick and harsh.​
Red Eye – Gets rid of red-eye from old photos!
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The toolbox above can be opened with ‘J’ and this is what I used for most of the work. The spot healing and paintbrush were my most used tools, but the patch tool also proved very handy. After I imported the video, I enabled the timeline shortcut keys so that I could flick between frames faster and easier, and got to work! It’s a very simple process – the spot healing brush is what I used for the markers on the green screen and the red light on the helmet. I simply painted over them and they disappeared! The text on the label and light stand was a bit harder, however. I couldn’t use spot healing on the label because it turned it black, and I wanted to remove the text, not smudge the label. So, using the eyedropper, I picked up the red from the label and painted over the areas with the black text. Simple! As for the stand on the right, I tried spot healing, but I didn’t like the fact that it smudged the green screen so much and if that were to be done on multiple frames, it would look bizarre when played back as if the air was warping. I discovered that the patch tool was best for this. I drew around the stand, moved it to the left and like magic, it was hidden from view and the area was filled with the same space as the cut out was moved behind. I was so impressed when I did this for the first frame and knew that I didn’t need to do spot healing on top either since it was so smooth.
I had to repeat these steps for every single frame, hence why it was much easier to hit the right arrow key to move on to the next, rather than have to scrub through carefully every single time. It hit me that this process is quite similar to rotoscoping. Both require a lot of time, patience and an eye for detail and can be quite tedious because of it. However, unlike roto work, this was so therapeutic and relaxing for me. I really enjoyed seeing the parts that we didn’t want on the scene disappear and bit by bit, cleaning up the entire scene was so satisfying. It does take a lot of time however; I only got through 30 frames for our lesson work time, which I was pleased with since I had cleaned up an entire second.
Because I had several different aspects to alter/remove, I created an ideal workflow for myself that kept things interesting. I would complete five frames for example, where I would only focus on the helmet. Then, after finishing the clean-up with that specific section, I would go back to the frame where I started and do the same five frames but cleaning up the stand, for example. In this way, by alternating between different aspects, not only did it stop me from getting bored, but I also didn’t have to keep zooming in and out and changing tools a hundred times. I was having fun and I can see this as an ideal side-job for me. If I ever get too tired or frustrated with animating something, in particular, I could take a break and do some freelance clean-up with a film or show in the background. The work can be mind-numbing since it doesn’t require a lot of thought and is repetitive, but sometimes, that’s exactly what we need to rest.
I rendered out the part that I managed to clean up, with some extra at the end where I didn’t, so you can compare what I managed to remove. You’ll notice that there is some movement where the stand was, and that’s because the bottom of the green screen isn’t perfectly straight, and wherever I put the stand, I couldn’t get the bottom to perfectly align. Other than that though, I think that I did a pretty convincing job, which I talked about with the class as we compared our experiences. We were all doing the same work, but in a company, it would be distributed and shared amongst a team so that results could be achieved faster. I think that I honestly wouldn’t mind doing this from time to time and in a team, it could also be enjoyable. I don’t think I would like to have it as my only and main source of income however since I might grow to hate the monotony and repetition. Your work is also designed to be invisible, which can be hard to grapple with.