From the course: Compositing a Cell Phone in After Effects

Film the phone - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: Compositing a Cell Phone in After Effects

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Film the phone

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- [Voiceover] The master shot in our sequence is the one of the phone. This is where we'll composite the animated app into the live action plate. So to film this, we have to consider a few things, such as, how will the screen be tracked? And do we need to add any markers? Let's take a look at the shot, and I'll talk you through my thought processes. I knew the action in the shot was going to be very straightforward. We'd be keeping the phone pretty still on purpose and wouldn't be rotating it. So essentially, in terms of tracking, it will be a flat plane. I chose not to add tracking markers, because I didn't want to paint them out. And I felt it unnecessary in this instance, as we'll be using my go to app for screen replacements, which is the Academy Award winning planar tracker, mocha by Imagineer Systems. More on mocha later. The next question was: do we need to add anything on the screen to make our lives easier when we come to separate the swiping and tapping actions? Will we simply key out the screen, or do we have to rotoscope? With the background being predominantly green to match the grassy environment of our stock footage, we chose to have a blue screen displayed on the phone with the intention of being able to simply key out the screen later when we're compositing. During filming, we used the animated app as a guide, and this allowed us to get the rough timing down. And we knew where to tap and swipe on the phone. I knew the timing wouldn't be perfect, but by having the animation as a guide on set, we could be sure of getting pretty close. It's important to note that not every situation will be like this. But because we had complete control of the shot, we were able to take the time to think about how we wanted the final shot to work in the compositing stage, which will save us a lot of painful roto of fingers or painting out of tracking markers

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