Break Dance Marker Removal

Description

This shot was created for Jarrett Randazzo'z "Every Time" Music Video.
There were three main factors that made this clean plate particularly tricky:

1. The camera is a free-moving camera.
2. The lights are constantly changing and the glancing angle of the floor makes it extremely reflective.
3. The break dancer is constantly moving and occluding the tape.

Were any one of these factors removed, the complexity of this shot would have been greatly reduced. However, since all three were present, extreme attention to detail was required to execute the tape removal!

My first attempt at this shot included keying the tape (which is difficult given all of the different lighting conditions), and then eroding and dilating the surrounding areas to fill in the missing pixels. Unfortunately, the quick movement of the break dancer made this approach unsuccessful.

I knew I needed more precise rotos, so I ended up carefully drawing the shapes and then using MochaPro's planar tracking feature to track them across the shot. After everything was filled in, I meticulously roto painted each and every marker on every frame, which was necessary due to the constantly changing lighting, shadows, and occlusion. The final touch was rotoing the brake dancer's shoes and legs through the shot in order to recomp this over the roto paint. I am very proud of the result!