OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE FX – HELP

[kaylee]

alright, i really need to reach out to you geniuses for this one, heres the effect i want to do

theres this concept of an out of body experience, astral projection, whatever you want to call it, maybe thats the best thing to call what i want to do, but its a specific sequence that ill describe.

i want to create an effect where: youre looking straight down at someone body lying in bed. then, a translucent version of the body rises, at the same rate as the camera, as the camera moves UP, through the roof, out to SPACE. (yes, space)

i figure that between a camera in a bedroom with a cut "through the roof", a drone that then takes off from the roof, google earth footage (??), and some space/earth stock footage, i could make this work somehow

it doesnt need to appear completely continuous at all, its all in the feel of it. so like if the drone part was shot on a cloudy day, the clouds could be a place to cut or something. idk

how would you guys go about doing this? ALSO: if youve seen something practically just like this before, PLEASE let me know and if possible link me up. im not tryin to go to all this effort if someones already done a better job lol

[Don Kotlos]

I don't have any experience with outer bodies.. but here is how I would go about it:

Green screen + opacity blend for the translucent body moving around. 

Another long blend between the ceiling and a starry sky + the previous layer of the translucent body. 

If you don't have the budget for hanging the actor then he/she can lye down on the floor mimicking the upwards motion. 

Does that make any sense? 

I can recall several translucent bodies moving around but none up in space. 

[kaylee]

yeah, thanks @Don Kotlos, that totally makes sense!

anybody else have any thoughts?

[Cinegain]

for some reason that reminded me of Ghost Dad. 

Anyways, I would pull a reversed green screen skydiver effect (should be plenty of tuts and examples), where the talent isn't lying down on a green block (if you can't have them dangling down) on their belly, but rather with their back (unless of course they're sleeping on their belly). It just has more flair to it with the arms dangeling backwards and downwards... (at least for the leaving the body sequence, you can make it more superman-flying-around-like thereafter... or even like the 'shooting stars meme' xD) more or less like that typical illusion where the magician makes his assistance 'float'. Then composite that footage into your scene.

[Axel]

On 7.11.2017 at 2:55 AM, kaylee said:

i want to create an effect where: youre looking straight down at someone body lying in bed. then, a translucent version of the body rises, at the same rate as the camera, as the camera moves UP, through the roof, out to SPACE. (yes, space)

An "impossible" shot. Often meant to impress the audience. There is a danger in that, insofar as you (as one of my film school teachers eloquently put it) feel the presence of the author. That's inavoidable, it can be a bad thing, but not always. 

If you want the audience to experience the experience of an OOBE, your modus operandi needs to be established first. If you wanted to just make them understand, oh, this is meant to be an OOBE, a sequence of crude tricks will do (showing the person flying to the sky could be seen as crude, no matter how realistic, surrealistic or hyperrealistic it's done. Unless it's a dream). But for immersion? In 2017? 

Did you see Enter The Void? The hero smokes DMT and has visions. Everything is his POV. Then he is shot dead. He sees his dead body, and from then on the camera can (and does) move freely. The film isn't easy to watch for many, but for those who can, it's very immersive. 

On 7.11.2017 at 2:55 AM, kaylee said:

i figure that between a camera in a bedroom with a cut "through the roof", a drone that then takes off from the roof, google earth footage (??), and some space/earth stock footage, i could make this work somehow

Sounds reasonable. The cut through the roof is difficult/dangerous. 

On 7.11.2017 at 2:55 AM, kaylee said:

it doesnt need to appear completely continuous at all, its all in the feel of it.

For something to feel continous, it often needs to be interrupted. You didn't say what kind of OOBE you want to show. People who were once clinically dead report strict POV. They can see themselves lying on the hospital bed, they see mundane details of the room, a pretty sober affair, even though they float in mid-air, which obviously is being spontaneously accepted (or imagined?) as the normal way a disembodied mind/soul behaves. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has interviewed hundreds of them. They came back, so of course they were not really dead.

Then there is the whole complex of OOBE through drugs, meditation, lucid dreams asf. Carlos Castanedas The Teachings Of Don Juan also implies POV.

Everybody occasionally dreams that he/she can fly. Does this count as OOBE? I don't know. What I do know though is that these dreams are never strictly POV, no dream is. My own experience is that you think, this must be a dream, I can't fly! As if to prove you wrong, the dream shows you above he fields and houses. You don't want the dream to stop, because it's such a good feeling (you can imagine what Freud said about hose dreams). The immersion then would be triggered by empathy more than by FX. How the actor radiates ecstasy or so.

[mercer]

About 7 or 8 years ago my friend directed a short film about astral projection that had an out of body experience shot. The shot was a much smaller scaled shot than you’re proposing but he filmed The Nightwalker with an HV20 using practical effects and simple superimpose effects from FCP7. I actually played the silent lead in the film.

 

Actually, I think he made it 12+ years ago on a Sony miniDV camera, which means he probably edited it on iMovie.

[Nikkor]

I would rather make a compensated zoom into the eyes and fade to space, pretty standard but won't look crappy.

[kaylee]

these are good points guys

17 hours ago, Axel said:

The cut through the roof is difficult/dangerous. 

indeed. however i want this effect to be FAST– the sleeping person, who seems to wake, is then PULLED up into space very quickly – like within 2 seconds he goes from sleeping peacefully to floating in space, so the few frames of the "ceiling" (fake) shouldnt be too big of a deal?

after watching some various clips like this, impossible zooms into space, im finding the upper layers of our atmosphere completely unnecessary, as no one knows wtf that looks like anyway, and due to the sense of ACCELERATION i want to create, it follows to basically skip all that

therefore, i dont need to mess with google earth (too phony anyway) or look up that kind of stock footage, itll just be:

-indoor camera looking down at bed, moves backwards, up to the ceiling

-drone takes off from roof

- a dozen frames of horseshit "atmosphere"

- then ::poof:: space

but idk its still forming in my mind...