Dance.. Party... Friday.
As usual we have our Dance parties on air every Friday on FOX5.. this time around the selected song... What is Love by Haddaway, as made famous by Saturday Night Live's sketch about two brothers who spent a Night at the Roxbury.
Usually I make a Green Screen still of an open room or scene themed to the song, But this time I wanted to make things a bit more visually interesting, same result just giving it more life. So I threw my finished Photoshop file into AfterEffects and created some faux lights to simulate a dance club.
First the photoshop:
The background itself was of some night club (dont know where) I just colorized it and oversaturated the colors to give it some vibrance.
Just like my Weekend At Bernie's green screen, I added Will Farrell and Chris Katan's characters in.. those were the only full bodies i found online, decent enough to use, and they had their knees and below cut off, so i put them behind the pillars to hide them.. they were in the dark a bit so I created those light beams pointing at them, using a sampled purple from the scene and blended it via Color Dodge and adjusted opacity.
The "A Night at the Roxbury" sign in the middle is actually the logo itself i found online, I doubled up the layers (one on top of the other) on the top layer i added an inner glow sampled with the purple and blues in the scene,
the bottom i added a drop shadow to pull it out like its mounted on the back lighting behind it. Added some 105mm lens flares at different opacities and shapes for the "sparkle" and added a white light sweep through the middle and blended it.. (i think it was lighten)
The shadow below is very simple to do.. just apple-click or ALT-Click the logo thumbnail it'll select the outline of the logo, then fill it in black. Deselect, drop it down and use the perspective transform and lay it out on the floor. Add a gaussian blur, drop the opacity a little and bam, custom shadow. The floor actually wasn't lit so the shadow got lost in the darkness, so to bring it out i added, two more lights, sampled from the purple one that was already there.
Once the photoshop was done.. I brought it into AfterEffects and added some moving light beams tinted different colors as well as a few 105mm lens flares looping in and out pulsating opacities and added too area lights to flash the scene some pretty colors.
I admit the movement of the lights could have been a bit smoother, but when you have a show to do on top of work like this, I had to start the render soon, just so this can make it into the system. Plus Rendering at the same time as working in photoshop and other various programs open, does take a huge toll on the virtual memory.
Here is the final background video:
So now you know how its done.. Poof TV Magic. =)
