BORIS RED "Tread Secrets"

By: Vivek "Vik" Narayan
Investigative & Special Projects Editor
KNXV/ ABC 15

Platform: Avid Xpress Meredien, BORIS RED 4, After Effects 6.5, Photoshop CS

The documentary I was working on dealt with tire tread separation causing, in some cases, fatal crashes. While we had many accident scene photographs, we did not have any video to illustrate the actual tread separation. So I turned to the 3D compositing features of BORIS RED to do the job.

Click here to watch the finished movie »

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STEP ONE: I imported the video clip of a moving car (named Tread Sep.mov). This was my base layer.

STEP TWO: I created a new Natural Media track with a Weave Texture and added the BCC Bump Map filter to further accentuate the depth of the texture.

STEP THREE: Next, I nested the Weave inside a 3D Cylinder track that I named ‘Cylinder Weave.’

STEP FOUR: I then rotated the Cylinder by 90°, applied a crop to reduce the width of the cylinder, and arrived at the skeleton of the tire tread.

STEP FIVE: Now, the fitting; I matched the Position, Rotation, and Scale of the tire tread to the actual tire from the video I was compositing on.

STEP SIX: I nested a spline outline of the car’s body in the Mask track of the Cylinder to put the tread ‘inside the wheel-well of the vehicle.’

STEP SEVEN:  Since the Cylinder track was rotated 90°, now the ‘Spin’ functioned as the ‘Tumble.’ I manipulated the Cylinder’s Spin to roughly match the rotation of the tire in the video.

STEP EIGHT: With the Spin set, I manipulated the X/Y/Z Position, Tumble, and Rotate functions in the Cylinder track to make the tread come away from the car and towards the camera (for dramatic effect) before exiting the frame.

STEP NINE: I managed to achieve good movement and Spin, but the tread looked too pristine and plastic. It was time for some destruction. I created a jagged edged Spline track and nested it into the Mask track of the Face media. With some adjustments, I was able to shred the tire pretty convincingly.

STEP TEN: I was almost there but the ‘tread separation’ seemed jerky in motion. So I added motion blur to the Cylinder track. Now, I had a realistic tread separation simulation.

STEP ELEVEN: After the tread ‘hits the camera’ (and hence the video noise effect), I used the ‘Shake’ parameter in the BCC Film Damage filter to simulate the vehicle shaking vigorously and subsequently losing control. I used the ‘Smear’ function in the ‘Shake’ parameter to allow the frame to move around without showing black (in the final edited form, a 16:9 mask covers some of the smear elements visible in the image below).

Click here to watch the finished movie »

With the help of some ‘Red Magic,’ I was able to create a visual illustration that was key to the subject of the documentary. This project titled ‘Tread Secrets’ won me an Emmy for Editing and also bagged the Emmy for Investigative Report at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards.

For the sake of brevity, I have not provided a detailed account of the various steps in the project. I have a assumed the reader’s familiarity with the Boris Red interface and its basic operations. This testimonial is meant to give a good idea of how I went about creating this effect. If the reader has any questions, please feel free to email: VNARAYAN@abc15.com

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