How to create realistic stunt effects

Hello everyone, and welcome to HitFilm Express 2017. I’m Axel from HitFilm, and in this
video we are going to look at creating a realistic fall stunt, from the short film Westworld
to Yuma, that we produced together with Film Riot.
Here is the shot we will be creating. It seems fairly straightforward, right? Previously,
the character has died and fallen off a roof, as happens, and here the gun lands in focus,
then he lands behind it. But how do you film that without injuring your stunt man, and
ensure that the gun lands in focus? Well, here’s how!
This is the original footage for that shot. It is framed pretty close to the ground, so
the gun can be dropped a short distance, and its easy to control exactly where it lands.
By separating the two landings, the gun and the person, and filming them as separate elements,
its easier to have full control over each one. So the gun lands, then our actor walks
in, and again, because the shot is framed low to the ground, he can jump up out of the
frame and fall in from a very short distance, so he doesn’t get damaged in the body. But,
part of the reason he doesn’t get hurt is because as he lands, right here, he is catching
himself a bit, with his hands. That is not really accurate behavior for a dead person,
that seems more like something a person who is alive would do, so we want to try and remove
that bit, so he hits harder. There is your mission, should you choose to accept it, so
let’s get started. Let’s launch HitFilm, and create a new project.
The Home screen that appears when you launch HitFilm Express 2017 gives you direct access
to your recent projects, and immediate access to create a new project. It also links you
to the User Guide, and a variety of useful learning resources for the software. Click
the New button to create a new project, and the project screen opens. This lets you set
up your project exactly the way you want. The footage that accompanies this tutorial
uses a resolution of 1920 x 720, and it has a frame rate of 24. Its worth getting familiar
with your camera and what resolution and frame rate it uses, so you can choose the right
project settings right at the start of each project.
If you aren’t sure what settings to use, though, its still ok, we can just leave the
default settings and sort that out later. Click the Start Editing button to create a
new project, and we move to the Edit screen. Here we have the main HitFilm interface. The
Media panel is where all the video and images we import will be listed. The Editor timeline
is where we can sequence those video clips to build our project. The Trimmer shows the
clip we are currently editing, and the Viewer shows the current frame on the timeline. So,
we need to import some video. Click the Import button in the Media panel,
and navigate to the Baddie Lands.mp4 video file. The link is just below, if you haven’t
downloaded it yet. Once it is imported, we can get to work on it. Right-click the video
clip and select Make Composite Shot. This will create a new timeline containing our
video. You can learn more about composite shot timelines in our Westworld Sky Replacement
tutorial, but all of our work on this scene will be done in a composite shot.
The first thing that happens in this shot is the gun landing, so play the timeline until
the gun lands. We want to cut the video shortly after the gun lands, so we can remove the
middle section where the actor walks in. So, drag the playhead until you find the exact
frame where the gun first contacts the ground. The timecode should be 3:22. Now, drag the
playhead forward 8 frames, to 4:06, and select the Slice tool. Cut the clip at the playhead,
and it will be split into two layers. Now we need to play forward to the frame where
the actor has jumped up in the air, and just starts falling into frame. This will be around
21:17. Once the playhead is there, click the selection tool, then drag the starting edge
of the second clip over to the playhead. Then, drag the entire clip back until it meets the
end of the first clip. Now, if we play through that, it already works ok, just like that.
But, as we mentioned before, we don’t want this dead guy breaking his fall with his hand,
so let’s use another trick to make this even better. What we will do is find the frame
where our character fully contacts the ground, then cut him out of that frame, and replace
the frames where he catches himself with animation of that cutout falling. If that sounds difficult,
don’t worry, its not. And I’m here to walk you through every step of the process.
Find this frame, at 4:15, where the guy’s arm is not supporting him any more. You can
use the period and comma keys to move the playhead one frame at a time in either direction.
Once we have the correct frame, we will use a freehand mask to cut the character out.
Our tutorial on Sky Replacement explains masks in more detail, if you want to learn more.
But for now, select the Freehand Mask tool, select our second clip on the timeline, and
then click around the edge of the character to cut him out. This doesn’t need to be
super accurate, because we will be adding lots of blur to it, but come on, what’s
the matter with doing it right? Where the edges are already blurred, place the controls
points in the center of the blur. Work your way completely around the dude, until we finish
by clicking again on our first point to close the mask.
Select the Controls panel by clicking its tab, and open the Mask controls. Under Shape,
find the Feather Strength property, and increase it to 20. This softens the edges of the mask
so we don’t have a hard line. And that’s the shape we will animate. But since he is
only in this position for one frame of the video, we need a way to stretch this out over
several frames to animate the fall. So here is what we will do: we will create a still
image of this frame, that we can animate. In the Viewer, open the Options menu and select
Export Frame. Let’s call it Falling Baddie Masked, choose a location for it, and save.
Once it is exported, disable the mask by clicking its checkbox. Any effect or mask in HitFilm
can be enabled and disabled using its checkbox. Now we will fine-tune our edit to remove the
actor catching himself. Advance one frame, then trim the second clip to start on that
frame. That removes the frame that is contained in our cutout from the timeline. Then, extend
the end of the first clip to that same frame. Now we have these empty frames where we can
add the actor back in using the image we just exported. Let's zoom in a bit on our timeline,
using the zoom slider right here, then reposition the playhead to 4:11, which is where we want
our animation of the dude falling to start. In the media panel, Import that image into
your project, and drag it onto the timeline. When you drag a layer onto the timecode area
of the timeline, you will get blue crosshairs indicating where it will be placed. This makes
it easy to add a clip starting at a certain timecode, or at a certain level within the
layer stack. Add our image starting at 4:11, at the top of the layer stack. We only need
this to last a few frames, so you can cut it where the second clip starts, using the
Slice tool, and then select and delete the second half, with the Selection tool.
Next we need to animate the position of this image, so he is falling into the frame. To
do this, we will use keyframes. Keyframes allow you to save different values for a property
at specific points in time, so you can control how different values change. In this case,
we want to change the values of the position property, so this cutout image is in a different
location on each frame. So, on the timeline, open the Transform controls for this layer,
and find the Position property. Just to the left of the name, there is a little circle.
You will notice that most properties have this. This is the keyframe toggle and if we
click it, it activates keyframing, and creates a keyframe at the current timecode, containing
the current value. So, make sure your playhead is at 4:15, the last frame where the image
is visible, and Enable keyframing. This little diamond on the timeline is the keyframe, and
we can see that its value is 0, 0, and it is saved at 4:15. Enable keyframing for the
Rotation property as well. Now, move the playhead to the first frame of this layer, at 4:11,
and we will move the layer to create a good new keyframe.
On the Viewer, switch back from our mask tool to the Selection tool, and the positioning
widget will appear. These arrows can be used to move the layer is specific directions.
We want this guy to fall straight down, so we can drag this arrow straight up until he
is out of frame, and the Position Y value is about 400. The two position values here
are X first, which is left to right, and Y second, which is top to bottom. As soon as
we have moved the layer, a new keyframe is automatically created, saving our new position
value at the current timecode. And the layer will automatically move from one position
to the other in the frames in between. So we don’t need to change the position on
every frame, we can just create these two key frames, at the key positions of the movement,
and Hitfilm will work out where the layer should be on all the other frames. Let’s
add a Rotation keyframe at 4:11 as well, just to keep a bit more motion in this still image
as he falls. If we rotate that about 16 degrees, that should do, and another keyframe is automatically
created. Now we can play the timeline back, and see what our fall is looking like. Not
bad, eh? But there is another thing we want to add,
and that is some motion blur. As the actor is moving in the actual footage, it creates
blur in the direction he is moving, so we want to get the same effect on our still image.
In HitFilm, this is as simple as one click. Just to the right of the layer name, there
is a Motion Blur toggle, if we click that, then motion blur is enabled, and HitFilm automatically
calculates the direction and the amount of blur that should be present, based on how
fast the layer is moving, and the direction it is moving in. And that finishes off the
animation. Now you can use these same masking and keyframing
techniques we just learned to create a shadow beneath this guy as he falls. But first, we
need something to create it out of. So we will create a new Plane layer. Here on the
timeline, we have a menu where you can create a variety of types of new layers, so open
that menu and select Plane. A plane is just a rectangle filled with a solid color, though
you can add other things to it using effects. The Window that pops up lets us set the Plane
Properties. Name this plane Shadow, leave the resolution as it is, and make sure the
color is set to black, and click OK. By default this plane is added to the top of our timeline,
so we can’t see anything else. Open its Transform controls, either on the timeline
or in the control panel, and set the Opacity to 50%, so we can see through it. Trim this
layer to its the same length as our masked image. Now we will use a Freehand Mask, select
our plane, and draw a long thin shape for the shadow. If we find the frame where he
lands, at 4:15, we can draw it right over the top of him to ensure it is properly positioned
on the ground. Try to keep the shape a bit random, which helps it look less artificial.
Now as this guy gets closer to the ground, his shadow should become darker and more defined,
so we want to add some animation to control the changes in those values.
Set the opacity of the layer back to 100%, then at 4:15, open the mask controls and set
the Feather Strength to 45 and enable keyframing for it, then set Opacity to 30% and enable
Draw keyframing for it. The shadow should be underneath our guy, so drag the Shadow
layer down below the Falling Baddie image. Now step back to the first frame of the layer,
and set Opacity to 12 and Feather Strength to 80 or 90. And let’s play through this.
Incidentally, if your computer can’t play the timeline in real-time, and its lagging
or stuttering a bit, then you can use the RAM Preview, which is this button over here,
to pre-render the scene for viewing. Just move the playhead to the start of the section
you want to render, and then click the button. This blue bar indicates the area that is rendered,
so let it render through the section you want to preview, then move the playhead back to
the start and click the Play button to see how it looks. Pretty convincing, right?
This timeline is still the length of our original clip, which is way longer than we need it
to be now, so let’s trim that down. Click this cog at the bottom left of the timeline
to open its Properties, and change the duration to 9:00, which is plenty for what we need,
then click OK. And now, let’s export the scene. Just above
the Properties button are two Export buttons. The bottom one lets you export a predefined
portion of your timeline, and the top one exports the entire contents of the timeline,
which is what we want. So click the top button, and then a dialog appears telling us the timeline
was added to the Export queue. If you want, you can Continue Compositing and add more
timelines to the queue and render them all at once, or, click the Go To Export button
to complete the export. This takes us to the Export screen, where our timeline is already
listed in the Export queue. You can click the Output to set where the file will be saved,
and what name it will use. And you can select the preset that will be used to encode the
file as well. There are lots of presets over on the right, and you can create your own
if you wish. The default preset will be different depending if you are using Windows or a Mac,
but let’s leave it at whatever default you have, and click Start Exporting, here at the
bottom. And we are done! Let it do its thing, it will notify you when the export is completed,
and then you can watch the video file. Thanks very much for watching this tutorial,
and I hope you learned something. Do check out our other Westworld to Yuma tutorials
as well, to learn even more about Hitfilm Express 2017.

How to create realistic stunt effects | HitFilm Express

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