How to achieve this effect?

I watched this video from Speycast media, and really like the 3D-effect in this clip:



Is it all done by still images with several layers? My guess is that they have animated two or more layers, but I wanted to know more if any have some good ideas for how to get this result.

this effect, a parallax effect, gets more and more popular; I like to call it '3D-Ken Burns' - allthough it hasn't to do anything with KB (nor has Mr.Burns invented the rostrum-effect ...)

I once made a very quick'n dirty demo for a German Mac board, someone posted a video with that scene, and asked how it's done:



.. and overexaggerated the effect to show how its done:

You need the still in at last two plates; easiest would be to have the background as a clean-plate, in my example I used a single photo and the 'heal' tool in Pixelmator to make the soldier & the boy vanish from the bg. Save it in Photoshop-format, to keep all layers together.

........ In my example, I created a 3rd plate, some foreground too.

In Motion this is a no-brainer:
import the layers; create 3D camera; arrange all in z; add camera behaviour or set keyframes manually. When you play with the z-axis settings (and the virtual cams focus length), it is very easy to create 'depth' - where there isn't any :blink:

The most time you spend to stitch-out the foreground elements.... but again, nowadays picture-processors (as Pixelmator, or allmighty Photoshop) offer for example 'intelligent lassos' ...


... I sound like a Pixelmator salesman! :lol:

30$ Pixelmator, 40$ Motion = done

Thanks, Karsten! I will try the technique you describe

filipblaauw wrote: Thanks, Karsten! I will try the technique you describe

keep in mind:
there's no need to fill the whole hole, you're creating when seperating the subject from its background (I've done it in the demo - but no need)

Due to perspective/parallax shift, the subject is a bit 'bigger' - therefor covers the 'hole'; depending on how much movement is involved - and your fishermens demo shows it - tiny pans need just tiny corrections to the bg-plate.

In another project, I can not publish here, I used a video-recording to create animated stills (hmm, weird??) :
frame#1 was the scene with subject, frame#2 was some seconds later without subject.
=> which allowed me to have a 'clean bg plate' of the scenery!

So, I punched out the subject and used my clean-plate of the scenery; same perspective, same light = fits perfect!