A Scanner Darkley Effect

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A Scanner Darkley Effect

I kind of have a loaded set of questions here to have the outcome look like the movie A Scanner Darkly. First of all this is my first time on this forum so if that has been discussed then I am sorry, I looked around and really couldn’t find anything. I am a student and for my final project in my animation class we are allowed to use a variety of techniques. The one that I want to use is an effect called rotoscoping, which is what the movie A Scanner Darkly used in case you didn’t already know. We have to do a 15 second psa. So 15 second times 30 fps is going to end up with over 3,000 frames to export and then edit in illustrator with the live trace effect. Does anyone know

a) How to export every frame as an image
b) To add a live trace effect to a full set of images (possibly in bridge)
c) To re import the frames so they are at 1/30 of a sec instead of the 10 seconds that FCP defaults image duration.

Basically I am trying to find a few shortcuts because filming, editing, exporting the frames, editing them then reimporting over 3,000 frames is going to take forever.

Thanks any help is appreciated.

Mac Book Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Nov 20, 2007 6:06 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 20, 2007 6:45 AM in response to maxwelljrj

Export an image sequence. The latest versions of photoshop apparently will let you import a quicktime file.
use a program like studio artist to do the rotoscoping, or adding the effects. This question is probably better asked in a more appropriate forum.
If you save back to an image sequence, you can import an image sequence (the best way to do this is to use quicktime pro) or you can adjust your still/freeze duration in the editing tab of user preferences.

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Answer 2

Nov 20, 2007 9:14 AM in response to maxwelljrj

First of all, check your math. At 30fps, a 15 sec PSA will be 450 frames. Not as bad as you thought.

Second, you can easily set the default length of still images in FCP. Go to User Preferences, and then the Editing tab. You can choose a duration for Still/Freeze. Just remember, it only applies to new images you've pulled into the Browser (not ones that are in there already).

Third, remember that the real Scanner Darkly film used highly specialized software to create its effect. Start at page 22 of this magazine to get the skinny:
http://www.videography.com/pdf/0706_videography.pdf

That being said, there are shortcuts you can do within FCP/Motion (the Video/Find Edges filter comes to mind), but it's never going to look exactly like the movie unless you invest super amounts of time. The balance/compromise is up to you.

Good luck!

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Answer 3

Nov 20, 2007 9:17 PM in response to maxwelljrj

You might check out this discussion:

http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=1795686&messageID=3969287

or for more:

http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?q=cel+shading&objID=f656&dateRange=all& numResults=30

Patrick

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Answer 4

Nov 20, 2007 10:25 PM in response to maxwelljrj

maybe -

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=967123&tstart=135

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