the overview
Here is a screen shot of everything within the after effects that made the vfx, Ill go In detail of every layer at work and its purpose later on but first let me explain the shot, in this shot 'mindy' is using her mind to pick up the book and a glowing effect happens when she does so, her temples eyes glow as well as the book.
so to make these effects work and look good we had get rid of the pole that was lifting the book up, we did this by creating a still image underneath the same footage that didn't have the pole and put it above the pole making it hidden beneath.
we also have glowing effects on the book, eyes and temples I will describe them in the appropriate areas below.
The Layers
Book glow
here are all the layers within the window that made the vfx, the book was the glow on the books effects within that I had a solid block of purple that I feathered down and lowered the opacity also the intensity and radius was upped to give of a glowing effect on the book, also on this layer I had a mask that was the glow it's self so I had to change the path of the mask by every frame to make the glow stay with the book and lastly on this layer I had to key frame areas where I wanted the glow to die down then glow brighter again so in areas I key framed in the sequence where I wanted the intensity to be lower and the opacity to be lower then bringing it back up again when it was glowing more. that is all on that layer.
Lights
the two layers called 'adjust layer 1 and adjust layer 3' were the lights coming off the temples on that layer not much was needed to be changed because the temples were not moving so no movement of the lights was required really only the colour of the lights changed (purple) and how intense I wanted the lights to be (Radius, intensity etc.)
Nulls
The next layers are the Nulls which are called null 1 and null 2 on the image above, the nulls were made so I could add motion tracking for the eyes' glowing effect however I needed nulls to have the motion tracking applied to them, I firstly tracked the eyes then set the target as the null objects so the effects are applied without them being seen also the nulls were added so they were a layer I cloud pickwick with the glow(ill discuss later) the point of the nulls is so that other layers can have the same tracking as them without haven't to apply it to every effect and layer every time.
Eye glow
the two layers named purple solid and black solid (meant to be purple solid 2) are the layers for the glow on the eyes, here I did the same as the book I made a layer of complete purple the made a mask that was appropriate to the eye size then fiddled with the intensity, radius, feathering etc.
after I acquired the look I wanted from the layers, I used the pickwick tool to apply the nulls properties to make the glow track the eyes, and also like before I added the glow to die down and brighten up every other second to make sure it seemed like her mind and the book were connected
Original footage
the layer named 'clean plate 'the original clip were the book was lifted so there much to say about this layer expect its the most important because it is the clip its self.
Pole mask
Lastly we have the layer that masked the pole from side, layer 'MVI_2308.MOV' is the layer that had a mask around a still image of the same shot but without the pole in it, so we made a mask to cover the pole and I went frame by frame changing the mask path to follow the pole's path (which took a long time) then I finished by feathering the mask so the to layers mixed and looked seamless.
the composition footage
here you can see where the mask was applying the new layer to hide the pole and also it just shows the glow in effect, the eyes clearly glowing with the lights of the temples above, the book's glow below.
The glow on eyes
This just shows how much movement the layers for the eye glow had to move to follow the eyes, with the applied nulls to the layers you can see that every frame with slight adjustments by me in places.
The Nulls
These are just simply the nulls tracking in detail where they moved every frame to track the eyes, then I applied both nulls to both left and right eyes' glowing effects.
the glow on the book, movement and glow
Here is the movement of the book, here we couldn't use a motion track because the mask had to change shape as well as move so instead we decided moved everything manually frame by frame which again took along time however it did the job in the end and im pleased with results.
The lights on fingers/temples
lastly this is a detailed look on the lights at work so again ive said more then enough about the lights but here we have the radius and warp softness being changed to fit the look it wanted.
