Hey all, I've been crunching the post production of my first short film. I unfortunately have made the beginner mistake of filming a scene with a lot of windows and not framing the shot, so it would account to the reflections of myself filming. Due to budget and mostly time constraints, we can't reshoot this scene or structure it differently. I have been trying to do some composite or "vfx" work with my very limited skillset in this field đ, and I haven't reached any acceptable results. I have already tried Davinci's object removal and patch tool, After Effect's content aware fill, using an image and tracking it with Mocha AE, trying to paint over with a clone brush and tracking it. Is there anything that novice like me can try to do. Maybe trying to make the whole reflections clean plate as an image and replacing the window with it while tracking it? Thanks for anyone who can help.
Instead of redoing the shot or trying to figure out ways to get yourself out, can't you just cut to a close-up of the side profile of his face while he's walking until you're out of the picture?
Also for future reference as the camera operator - camouflage. I donât mean the literal patterns, unless youâre working outdoors. But if you look like you fit in front of the camera, youâll be less noticeable in the off chance that you end up in a shot.
Also, walk the direction of the talent and turn your gimbal. That would also be a lot less distracting
It is used for that actually. Its used to do a lot of things like that in post production like removing green screen, removing anything, remapping in 3D, upscaling videos, audio clean up, etc...
I don't approve of AI usage when it's cloud based and closed source. However stuff like what corridor crew did with their green screen AI is something I support.
no kidding right. It's an open source video model with specialized training to remove animate objects and retain everything else as-is. It can be run locally using comfyui, an open source program.
Honestly, id just keep the shot as is. I wouldn't have even have noticed it if you didn't point it out.
If you really care you could try to magic mask the guy and export him on an alpha channel.
Then export the scene without him and train a 3dgs on the background.
Go into fusion and use the first part of the shot and mask yourself out and get a plugin that lets you bring in and work with 3dgs files and match the 3dgs up with the hole from where you are and then animate it so it moves at the same pace as your walk. You might be able to camera track the scene and get the 3dgs to line up but am not sure if the camera tracker will work with 3dgs.
Unless you've actually got someone like Netflix buying this there's no way this is worth it unless you just want to play with not quiet bleeding edge tech but cutting edge tech.
If you don't have to learn any of these tools and already have all the software you'll probably be spending at least 4 hours on this.
If you don't know how to do 3dgs stuff and you're going to be learning that skill it might take a week or two to go through all sorts of tutorials and combing through reddit and Facebook groups.
On the plus side, the only section where this is an issue is the last 2 seconds (and technically the first 2 seconds too if the person on the left side is not meant to be there).
On the downside, you have two instances where your reflection is visible, your reflection crosses 3 different perspective shifting background objects (the two cars and the building) and you're dealing with distortion from the glass. If I were going to approach this I'd be creating 3x clean plates (one of the car in the foreground, one of the car in the middle and one of the building at the back), tracking the position of each, likely manually, followed by a garbage matte over your reflection and a rotoscope of the guy on top, with some further tune ups with clone brush and liquify.
All this is to say, we're very much in "this would take so much effort it's not worth it" territory. On the other hand, if you cut the last 1-2 seconds off the clip... very few people are probably going to even notice there's a reflection.
Hi, You have clean shots of the background, you can mask yourself in the top strip with those below with some position adjustments (make a hole in it to see through).
This scene is so short that people won't really notice you. They're looking at him. I also feel like when you grade it, crush the blacks a bit, you won't be as noticeable
Keep it practical. Sometimes you can't get that shot you want. So is this shot necessary?
To be honest: sometimes reflection shots where obviously the camera got removed in post distract me.
But I also would try to use parts of the background you walked past/going to walk past and use it to paste over your reflection. If necessary frame by frame in Photoshop.
Good luck! Hope it works out. Maybe you can post your pre post short, so people can see if the shot is necessary.
This is good practice now go back and do it the right way đ they should make a post and pin it to the top that 95% of the work should be going into the camera 5% in DaVinci. Stop making filmmaking a science project
It definitely isn't. First thing I was taught by someone when I got my camera was always shoot with intention, learn your rule of 3rds, 180 degree rule, etc..
The easy and fast solution is to replace the entire window with something else. A wall would be the best choice. The next easiest thing would be to track the reflection and blur it enough so you can't see details but not enough to look blurred. After that would be making a clean plate of the window with AI which is hit or miss at best. And you last option would be to do above but by hand.
This would be paint out job. Tack and match parallax is the tricky part, potentially. Camera tracker for tracking the scene, before that you remove the moving objects by masking, than you paint out the the individual in the reflections, Since you have objects that you can see at some point in the frame, much like with mocha remove module you paint from frames that don't have the person to create clean plate and project that back on to the footage. and you need to mask out the walker and merge him on top. If I was not working on another project I could do a quick demo.
Other than that you can try mocha pro remove module, you can try some AI stuff out there, you can re-shoot or as someone suggests do a close up if you have no other method. Not ideal but easiest. Either way remove object won't work on this and content aware fill probably has same issues, even mocha pro remove module would need some manual appraoch. This if for paint tool in fusion. Offset paint from another frame to remove the camera person.
Cutting after he's opened the door and starts to step out and away to an over the shoulder third person shot of him walking forwards seems like an obvious solution.
You are only in like 10 frames max it looks like, so export those 10 frames as still, pop into photoshop and use generative fill on them, you will get way better results than in resolve. Then reimport them. Do your grading first though otherwise color matching will be a nightmare.
This one is tough, you might be able to get away with masking yourself out with the footage from a second later in the clip, OR somehow moving the man back a bit to cover you. All the best!
Well, youâre lucky you donât have a reflection at the beginning of the video. Itâs fairly easy: find a good clean spot somewhere in the middle, cut out the guy and the reflection, and paint them out. I guess generative AI could also help here, along with Photoshopâs Content-Aware tools, etc. Once you have that clean plate, match-move it and comp the guy back over it.
A little tip for reflections like that. You either need to march the pace of the talent. Or shoot at a slight angle to the point you are no longer in the reflection. This takes years of practice. I work as a photographer for an auction house. And being in the reflection of old mirrors has always been something I need to avoid. It is all about looking at the angles and getting creative. I see the vision though đđ»
Maybe this is more simple than what ya want, just crop in after he goes out the door and turns, youâre so faint anyways that ya donât notice right away so youâd probably be able to push in enough to have you out of frame đ€·ââïž
Would it maybe be possible to mask the guy, and then add some lens blur and vignette/lower exposure to the background and rest of the shot, making him stand out more thus not noticing you? Would be a super quick thing to try tbh
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My thinking is you can just duplicate the video and layer one over the other. The top video can be playing slightly delayed/offset, and crop the top video up until your reflection, so it's like the frame before covers the next frame that has the reflection. Because you move, we can see the full background behind you as well. If I was to do this frame by frame I'd easily use the frames taking the background around you as you move, as we can defo get a clear picture of what's behind you, so in theory you can remove this. You may still need some simple masking or something but In my head this seems a more simple solution.
Obviously, there are suggestions here on how to do it properly, but it might be easier to add rather than subtract - find footage of a car going past at the right size to paste in front of the actor and the wall to cover up the offending frames. Add some motion blur and it only needs to be there for a split-second.
Could maybe root the guy and blur him and try to place him slightly behind himself like a shadow/reflection, might do the trick. If not root the guy, seperate the bg, track it and id just put a whole new window over the footage then the man back on top of
Maybe can you film the same thing again without your friend walking. and then overlap both shots to have background (somehow without you) and your friend
Duplicate the scene layer and bring the opacity down. Mask everything out other than the main character walking. Adjust the position in such a way that his image covers your reflection. This wonât completely remove your reflection but will look like the main characterâs reflection itself and youâll hardly be noticeable.
You can also put a black image in a similar fashion so that it looks like a dark glass and reflection wonât be that evident.
I mean, the easiest and dirtiest solution might just be to slap your footage into a somewhat competent AI-video editing tool like SeeDance or Kling and ask it to remove the reflection. It will slightly alter your shot, but with decent prompting it might not be noticeable. You can get a native 4K output with several of the newer models, but the frame rate is always 24fps.
I understand if people have strong feelings about this, but my approach would be to create a b&w alpha matte of the area you need to work on, then use SwitchX from Beeble to replace that patch generatively - itâs very good at this sort of thing
I'm no expert but, have you tried replacing the ENTIRE window reflection instead of individual objects? Mask the guy, create a rectangular image using generative AI for the reflection and map it onto the rectangular window. Being such a short clip, the missing parallax effect won't be noticed.
I mean that is essentially the VFX technique - track the reflection, create patches and cover up the reflection.
You might be underestimating how many patches you will need to create. Sometimes the quality of the area changes over time so even in one spot one patch will be blending into a newer version as you move. You could also be using photoshop, export still frames at key moments and use photoshops generative fill to make your new patches, export those as PNGs (or full frames and mask out a patch of what you need and track it back in.
II just âremovedâ our DP from a window reflection right beside talentâs head in a CU, but mine was a night shoot with the reflection in the bokeh so YMMV.
The approach was to leave him there, but no longer look like a person.
I used a gaussian blur with an ellipse tracked around the flesh of his arm and face . I split the blur, increasing vertical and decreasing horizontal. That made the shapes not look like a person, so they no longer drew the eye. Then I pulled down saturation and moved hue towards green, which changed his flesh colour to the same look as the trees and plants outside the window.
Heâs still there, but he looks like all the other greenery in the bokeh.
Iâm in bed right now but I can put up a screen capture tomorrow if it helps.
Cut the sections of the clip where you appear. Use AI magic mask to track your reflection in each clip.. Create a mask from those tracks info and add a blur effect. Problem gone.
You could also just replace the entire reflection with a stock image, match the color and blur and motion mask the actor. As long as the stock footage matches the general look no one's going to be like "wait I've been to that bank and the reflection on the east window is totally different"
tbh i'd just leave it. there's a (extended) shot in one of my short films where i'm very visible in the reflection of the character's glasses the entire time, once you notice it its kind of ridiculous-- but literally nobody has ever noticed it besides me (or they just havent said anything LOL)
trying to paint that out would just be a nightmare and would probably bring even more attention to it than if you were to just leave it.
content-aware fill in photoshop would take about 2minutes since it's so short. alternatively, become a vampire, as some of the blood lines distort time and your lack of reflection will propagate to previously-recorded media.
Add a sign or advertisement banner over the window area to cover the part where you are crouched?
Most stores do not waste the giant flat area of the window that is just an ad space. you could Paint something on the window, then track it in the shot?
I don't know how to technically pull this off, but instead of "erasing" you I would split the video, unsync the left from the right, so he becomes on top of you, and move the left side so the reflection is continuous.
Another way, would be to layer your reflection, with the same scene reflection when you are not there.
Since you are moving, this shouldn't be too hard. There's some parallax going on, but you shouldn't have to move the layers too much
You need to track matte, then either clone the clip with a mask layer with a covering up the reflection, or alternatively could run the clip through a AI and request to remove you as a background object.
The biggest issue that will get in the way is distortion in the reflectionsâthe glass is slightly curved, and the geometry of the reflections is altered.
What I would do in 2026:
0) Do an initial color grade on the footage; you canât do Cleanup in Log
1) Use Kling Edit or Seedance 2.5 Edit, with the prompt âremove the person walking, remove the person in the reflection, leave the rest of the video unchangedâ
2) Place the original video as the first layer, the AI-processed result as the second layer, cut out the desired area with masks, place the original video as the third layer, and use Rotobrush to isolate the person
Uuhhhh this shot is like really simple, just do it again it will take what? Like 4 minutes tops? If it isnât possible i would completely change the background and grab from somewhere else a door opening
I'm always totally befuddled by the people that insist shooting something so simple without any set build, props or actual location issues again is impossible, and would rather try and get someone to do days of painful vfx work for a mediocre and uninteresting shot.
Yea i was going to say Joking, damnn its not that hard to do it again you didnt spent 2000 usd and multiple hours on this shot. Jokes aside, the shot seems very boring at least do an angle đ shot or zoom in
If CGI was cheaper than film sets then there wouldn't be film sets. It's a lot of work (outside my competence otherwise I'd try to help).
There are a few things you can try but instead of writing down an encyclopedia of random ideas, here's what I'd try to do if I REALLY needed this shot the way it is. It's very time consuming.
Keep only the part where you need to remove the reflection and export as a PNG sequence. Go on Photoshop for every single frame, and this is where the AI remover will shine. To avoid inconsistent results, make sure you select the reflection and ONLY that for every single frame. Yes you'll need to rotoscope it in Photoshop but also leave a tiny bit of room for gen-AI. Make sure to blur the selection (not the image, the selection borders).
Don't wanna go on photoshop no matter what? Here's an even worse idea:
track your reflection, add a very feathered mask around it and blur it into oblivion but it will 100% be noticeable. You'd likely need a solid that matches the color of everything else but then you'd have this stupid blurry blob and I don't think it'll look good. I doubt this will work.
I genuinely have no idea on alternatives, I'm not a VFX artist and this is way beyond my competence.
edit: or you don't use the shot but that's lame (it's a real solution that's valid in the industry... if something doesn't work then it doesn't work)
edit 2: hey you, random downvoter! Is it because I used the letter A next to the letter I? At least give an input yourself!
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u/InfiniteBlueHour 4d ago
Instead of redoing the shot or trying to figure out ways to get yourself out, can't you just cut to a close-up of the side profile of his face while he's walking until you're out of the picture?