This Effect Is Bananas: Learn How to 'Copy and Paste' Any Object in Your Scene
Turn a single car into a fleet, a single soldier into an army, or a single banana into a bunch with this sweet effect.
If duplicating objects in real life were as easy as it is in post-production, we'd all have a 100 chairs like Jacqueline White. But even if centuplicating our single-seat furniture will never be achieved in our narrow human reality, it can be in our films if you know how to do a little masking and rotoscoping. In this tutorial, the team over at Film Riot walks you through the steps of "copying and pasting" an object (any object) that appears in your scene and making it look realistic, natural, and friggin' amazing. Check it out below:
The entire process is too lengthy and intricate for me to summarize here in words, but if you take the time to set yourself up in After Effects and follow along with the tutorial, you shouldn't have much trouble, especially if you know your way around masking and rotoscoping.
One thing that is worth stressing, though, is the importance of getting a clean plate of the scene you want to work with. Lock your camera down so you keep the lighting, movement, and overall composition the same throughout the length of your shot, otherwise you'll have a lot of additional work to do later on, like masking out and adjusting shadows and other elements that change. This doesn't mean you have to lock your camera down; plenty of filmmakers add camera movement to make their shot more interesting, but just know that there will be some additional steps you'll have to take to take. Also, make sure to grab at least 15 seconds of footage for your clean plate.
If you haven't already subscribed to Film Riot, do that immediately so you know when they come out with another awesome video that hopefully also features plenty of bananas.
Source: Film Riot
