Lessons
Class Introduction
04:00 2Your Mind is the Camera
08:02 3Set the Scene
06:59 4Get Smart with Your Gear
03:20 5Posing Tips and Challenges
04:51 6Shoot Considerations
04:09 7Shoot Setup
13:02 8Shoot: Working With Animals
09:55Shoot: Creating the Look of Motion
08:54 10Shoot: Levitating Objects
11:04 11Starting the Composite: Organizing Your Images
12:37 12Working With Your Sketch to Assemble the Scene
11:23 13Selections and Masking
30:01 14Selections and Masking Continued: Painting Techniques
08:56 15Shadow Overlays
18:35Lesson Info
Get Smart with Your Gear
get smart with your gear. Eso again? I talked about Interval ometer, right? That's that time trigger. Really helpful. Special if you're doing something solo that way you know, for that previous shot for that one, I think I had it take a picture every two seconds. This was with my canon 70 when I was shooting on that on I just said Okay, every two seconds take a frame. It was all locked down And then I go up and then play with some things that was like, What is that? Oh, didgeridoos on the poor cat lifted up right and trying to stay out of the frame. Eso interferometer. Really great. Now they have a lot of built in features with timers. Time lapse. Those are all tools that you can use for the same purpose. You say. Begin shooting now and it will shoot whatever exposure settings you have. Hopefully you have it under manual control on and at whatever interval you want. So used the gear as as much as possible to help make it easier, right? It's It's a nightmare when things don't match on m...
aking sure you have lots of shots over shooting is really helpful. So even though you think I don't need a time lapse, it's way too many shots. No. If you have specially animals or little people, you never have enough, right? Yeah. You never might not have the shot that's needed in general, just like with a tripod where it's just sort of locked down. Same with your manual controls. As you might know, you want to make sure that you're on all manual control. You've already pre set your, uh uh, You're focused if you can, and you've set your exposures. So that way you know exactly what the shutter speed is. Everything is gonna have the same look and feel, right. No auto white balance is something changes. You don't want it toe constantly change with that. So lock everything down. Uh, let's see. But yeah, really need advances in gear again. I mentioned the phone, right. If you can have it, throw your phone, take a look at your cameras manual and see if you can have it. Send that image live to your phone where you can control it, because then you can actually go to that person. Say, see, look, we need to line up right here on it will line up to that spot. So that's that's always great to use your gear. So here we go. All right, so that's our typical shoot, which is him and I. So it's also really important about We'll go for it having fun, right? So it's not just enough to have your really concept if you're not having fun with it. And especially your if you're shooting someone smaller animal. If they're not having fun with it, it will show I've had those were like, No, we're gonna do this And it shows might sound like on, you know, my wife's not have, you know, so you to make sure that it's at the right time for everything needs to work with everybody involved. You work with adults, they just have to get over and fake it, right? But if you're working with people that they can't control their motions, yeah, make sure that it's always fun. I did a shoot with craftsy last year. I'm playing with you know, the model and imagining things right. It makes it so much more. If they could be in your sort of mind, space and vision, it just it makes it right, cause he's seen enough levitation. He knew exactly. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna be up here and you're gonna take you out like, yeah, um, so the idea can be fun, so make it engaging on it shows.
Class Materials
Free Bonus Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Molly B
I agree a bit with Eric Burke's review (which was a thumbs down), however, I feel like this is neither a thumbs up or thumbs down recommendation, more like a 3 to 3.5 star rating. :) That said, I agree that there was so much talking and not doing in the initial portion of the class sections. I feel like when there is a class offered for Compositing, much of the science people want to know is in the editing tips and tricks AND some of the shooting tips and tricks. Photography of the subjects is important to understand, but examples of live shooting should be kept fairly minimal. Aaron Nace still nails the science behind planning and shooting for composites and also rocks in the editing (in my opinion). Brooke Shaden is also a good example on the editing details. I feel like Bret had something different to bring to the table from the class preview with puppet warp and some of the cutting / masking tips... I agree that all the editing portions of this were super rushed and just touched on a lot of last comments of "oh isn't this neat" and no in-depth instruction on how that feature is used. I just felt like he really ran out of time. At the end he talked about re-shooting the dog, perhaps he could have gone in to puppet warp to change the lower legs and tail a bit as an effort to make it look more like his sketch? Bret seems likable, but does continuously talk about side stories and extra noise that seems could be more focused on the topic at hand. :) I still picked up some tips, but this would be more ideal bought on a sale rather than full price. :) I have a lot of photoshop knowledge and own some other composite classes on CL, so I don't feel too lacking, but this would not be for a very beginner of compositing. I wouldn't mind seeing Bret back with a more refined class structure focusing on the magic of puppet warp and other tricks to get the most out of compositing.
s
Had a good time with this course! Bret is a great instructor, you can really tell he enjoys his work and has a lot of fun engaging the audience. I've done some compositing in the past but with a much older version of PS. This course really helped me take advantage of the new features in PS CC and also helped streamline my workflow. It's a course that both experienced and beginner compositors alike can learn from. A big thanks to Bret Malley and CreativeLive for making this course!
Student Work
Related Classes
Adobe Photoshop