Reference: HD Pro Guide Magazine, 2015. Vol. 3. No. 1. Removing Unwanted People in Your Scene with HitFilm 3 Pro Now You See Him, Now You Don’t By Al Caudullo. Pages 24.
“Don’t worry, we can fix it in post!” Those are terrifying words to any editor because in most cases “the fix” isn’t as easy as you think. But nevertheless, there you are on location, limited time, limited resources, and limited patience.
Independent filmmaker shooting guerrilla-style is often what I do. That means fly under the radar, get in, get the shot, and keep moving. So, in this case, I have no one to blame but myself.
On location in Angkor, Cambodia, and what I thought would be an easy, but crucial shot, lay before me. A simple slider shot using an Edelkrone Slider Pro and my Panasonic GH4. But as I set up, this one tourist just doesn’t want to move out of shot. I can’t stand there too long; I have too many other shots ahead of me. Finally, he moves, and I manage to get a dolly right and a dolly left before he reappears. I finally give up and do my truck in towards the subject shot with him in it, convincing myself that he will just add, “local flavor” to the shot. As I sat there in the edit suite weeks later, I silently made a mental note to kick myself the next time I was in that situation. He is a virtual albatross flapping his huge white wings all over my beautiful tracking shot. Normally, the go-to software solution would be Mocha 4.0 and After Effects. A time intensive, laborious task for a 3-second shot. But, not this time. I decided to venture into new territory, HitFilm 3 Pro. It also features Mocha support and I have found that it is much easier to navigate.
The principal is the same. First, find a clean frame with the man in it. Then, import the image into HitFilm 3 Pro and use a mask to isolate the specific area needed. In this case, I needed to cover the area where the man walked and finally left the scene. One slight complication was that I was also trucking forward towards the subject. The still frame that I used was just that, a still frame. Using HitFilm’s point tracker, I performed a two point track on the area where the man walked through. I then was able to track and scale the position and apply the tracking info to a point. Next, I trimmed the image duration so that it was available only for when I needed it not for the entire track. The final step was to adjust the scale in position to line up with the background footage. Finally, I parented it to the tracking point. Bingo!
Axel Wilkinson from HitFilm has done some fantastic tutorials on working with the program. And he was a great help to me as I was doing this for the first time. Honestly, the procedure in HitFilm 3 Pro seemed much easier and more clear cut than doing it in any other program.
HitFilm 3 Pro has created an amazing reputation with the Fan Film sector and this newest incarnation has really blossomed into a full Pro Suite to do everything from editing to compositing to VFX.
