Mastering the Art of Teleportation

I decided to change my idea for the promo. Well that is somewhat misleading. I always had the idea of doing a promo based around the idea of teleportation and had the idea that I ended up creating in my head from a very early stage. I thought with the time constraint present I wouldn't have the time to create a successful teleportation effect. 

I had just finished the iPad visualisation in After Effects and was rendering it out when I glanced at the time. It was a lot earlier than I had anticipated. The sun was still out and it was near golden hour. (Golden hour is film lingo for the period of time before the sun sets. A golden hue is thrown over everything with elongated shadows. Everything looks cinematic and beautiful). I decided to bite the bullet and at least try to film it and see if I can quickly do something with it. It turned out very well as I figured out a method for a convincing teleportation effect. 

I basically just placed the camera on a tripod to eliminate movement entirely. I then sat in the scene and acted out the movements I wished to illustrate of me picking up the phone and opening the app:

I then acted as if I was being pulled inwards/backwards to give the teleportation itself some movement and life:

I then left the scene to have a blank slate to place behind myself when I masked myself out of the original shot:

I then thought that to add a bit more life and possibly humour to the shot I could have my earphones and iPhone drop down onto the sofa as if they were left behind. To do this I held them above where I was sitting and then dropped them to the sofa retracting my arms quickly so that I could mask myself out of the shot:

I could then use the shot of the iPhone falling from when the earphones settled as a blank slate behind and leave them on the sofa:

I achieve the teleportation effect by placing the shot of the empty sofa underneath the shot of me using the app and moving sitting on the sofa. I then rotoscoped myself out of the shot by using the pen tool to draw points around me to create a layer that was just me and not the sofa around me. I could also use the shot of the sofa and not have me in it and fade it out to 0% transparency over a period of time to make it look as though the sofa rises again naturally as my weight leaves it. I could then shrink the layer I rotoscoped of me moving and shrink it quickly with motion blur as if I disappeared into nothing. I then place the layer of me dropping the iPhone over the top and mask me out of it completely so that the iPhone falls in the foreground. It is really surprisingly effective and has quite a comic look to it. You can see the effect in the finished promo when I upload it to YouTube and evaluate it in a later post.