Real Workflows: Mouse Failure (Pt 2)

Editing the electrocution scene in Mouse Failure.

Continuing the Real Workflows series, this week we pick up where we left off in Real Workflows: Mouse Failure (Pt 1). All of the original camera source clips have been laid out in an Adobe Premiere Pro timeline, edits have been retimed based on music cues and based on the feel of the action.

The original cut of Mouse Failure had all of the best takes selected. The restoration gave me the opportunity to adjust the timing of some of the edits to make it flow better. All of the new edits were made before any of the clips were sent to Adobe After Effects.

After the timing of the cuts was complete, each clip in the sequence was converted  to an Adobe After Effects Composition. I find that converting each cut to an After Effects comp makes it easier to adjust the clip. All clips are deinterlaced and resized a bit to get rid of the video blanking around the edges.

The skeleton effect in After Effects.

Adobe After Effects also came in very handy for some of the visual effects sections. One section happens when the hapless editor in the video touches some bare electrical wire. The result is an electrocution scene that required Time-Remapping, smoke generation and some X-ray type effects. The smoke was created by following a great online tutorial - Creating and Tracking Smoke in Adobe After Effects CS6, and the skeleton was created using Shape Layers and the Puppet Tool.

Adobe Photoshop was also used extensively in the restoration of Mouse Failure. A lot of the error screens you seen in the video had to be rebuilt and they were rebuilt using Photoshop. For the scene where the slow-motion spinning pencil drops in front of the editor's face, we had originally shot the pencil spinning against blue screen, but I wasn't happy with the key I was getting. Instead, I found the cleanest frame of the pencil, brought it into Photoshop and masked out the background. The lighting on the pencil might not be perfect, but it looks a lot better than what could have been achieved with the source video.

Next week in Real Workflows: Mouse Failure (Pt 3), we'll look at how the sound for the piece was built.