The window and wall background plate (the one with the actor removed) was de-saturated and softened to make a displacement map for the blood and brains to make it look a little more like it belonged in the scene, and not just a badly painted series of red strokes (which is what it was). I spent a little time trying to match up the colour, noise and softness levels too, which really helped sell that quite bad blood and brains image.

I then pre-comped the blood and brains image and had a circular mask reveal it over 3 frames expanding outwards.

IIn the main composition the blood and brains comp was placed just before the head shot reaction of the actor, and sandwiched between two layers of the “chav” footage. The alpha matte I made earlier was used as a mask to occlude the blood and brains layer. Lastly displacement for the blood and brains layer was taken from the de-saturated still I’d prepared. With some more time or if I were to do it again I’d add the liquefy effect to the blood to make it drip down the wall.

Like I said, a really simple one to start with for our first tutorial, which doesn’t tell you how to do it for yourself exactly , just lets you know we weren’t above using fast and nasty video production techniques if they worked (er… I was in a hurry).

However we did do some more involved compositing which I’d like to explain to you next time…

Images for the Sonny Hay Tutorial (click the image to see the larger picture)

Blood background	Black Screen	Final product