ANONYMOUS: DOUBLE EXPOSURE TEST

As I have mentioned earlier in the blog as part of the idea for anonymous piece working in reverse and creating work style first and then finding subjects to use with it I wanted to investigate ways of making them anonymous. The idea being that the subject is never actually revealed but their character, narrative and story is still able to. I thought the double exposure technique I had seen used in photographs was a really interesting one and wanted to explore this further as I felt stylistically, visually and conceptually it fitted with the mood tone and ideology I was wanting to communicate. 

To this end after research and consideration I wanted to do a very basic test to check I could make the technique work and to progress my skills in After Effects. I found the excellent tutorial below and worked my way through it. the process that I followed is all in here so I will not bore you with it here.



Before I started work on the test I shot a few basic pieces of footage against the green screen at the college I work at. I have used green screen before so this was not an issue and as long as the green is well lit and the subject casts no shadows on to the background it is fairly easy. I filmed a few turning heads in a few different shot sizes. The finished experiment/test is below.


DOUBLE EXPOSURE TEST from Jon Saward on Vimeo.

The process is a little complicated and involves a few processes in After Effects and as a test I feel it works. As well as the turning head I shot against the green screen I found some interesting paint in water footage online to use as the basic double exposure. I could have used anything but I felt that I wanted to try something that was a shot of colour and had an interesting texture and movement. I did not take the test as far as it could go and overlay the image of the face back over the top again at the end as I felt I had achieved my objective and had spent far too much time on it anyway but this would not have been too tricky to do. If I use the techniques then I will certainly do this stage though. I did toy with using a mid shot or medium long shot of the character for a while but felt that the technique works best over big expanses and went for the medium close up in the end. This is something to remember for when I really use the technique though. Also it was good to see it worked in real time as well as slow-mo in the True Detective title sequence. Overall pretty pleased and given the time a great technique to use.