How might I achieve this SFX?

[Roster]

I am working on a short black and white film.

I am using Super 8 Tri-X.

The script calls for a quick fixed cutaway shot of a tabletop. On the tabletop sits a shotgun shell sitting upright.

The casing of this shell needs to show as a sort of ghostly glowing shade of blue, maybe even a pulsing blue. This is the only color seen throughout the film.

How might I achieve this?

Can these frames be captured in Photoshop where the shotgun shell can isolated and colored?

Or maybe this one shot could be captured on color film and then de-saturate everything but the selected object (but then there would be a mismatch between the film stocks).

Maybe After Effects?

I don't know. My knowledge of post production other than basic editing is limited.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[john59]

Well i am no expert on anything sfx. so take my input as maybe stupid. would it not be possible to colour the said cartridge by hand.....................................its what they did in the early days...........sorry if this sounds daft.

[Jean Poirier]

If it is a close up of the table you could try shooting in color and using a blue filter and white background. The glowing effect could be simulated with fluorescent paint. Jean

[S8 Booster]

Once upon the time in the west there was a Adobe Premiere/Photoshop LE bundle for the MACs which had a beautiful option of exporting QT filmstrips in between the two. Modification within each film frame could be done frame by frame, also automated once the parameters was set.

Do not know which software is available for this now but i am pretty sure QT files and possibly more can be opened in Graphic Converter and altered frame by frame ala Photoshop. GC is sort of Freeware and enormously flexible.

Shoot......

[carllooper]

Try doing the effect in front of the camera rather than in post. This often gives the effect some difference from those that would otherwise be done in post.

Here's one idea off the top of my head.

1. Paint the shell in some sort of translucent material.
2. In addition to the other light sources in the scene, back light the shell with a spotlight but where only the shell picks up that spotlight.
3. Vary the brightness of the spotlight during photography.

The idea being that the spotlight will cause the edges of the shell to glow.

Carl

[Blue Audio Visual]

If you're PC based (or have access to a PC for at least the import/export stages) you can do it with Virtualdub as long as you can turn it into a file type that it will recognise.

Once you've loaded it into Virtualdub you can export it as a .jpg sequence, go into Photoshop/Gimp/Paint.net etc. and do the frame by frame edits, then reload it into Virtualdub and export it back again as an .avi file.

http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34

[Roster]

Carl and Bart, thank you for your ideas / feedback. I like them both and I could certainly attempt a combination of the two.

[wado1942]

In Sony Vegas, you can just duplicate the video track, cut out a mask and colorize the top layer. Practical methods are better IMO, like hand coloring or using optical/lighting tricks.