Sky Replacement

When we filmed out on location, the sky was very grey and bland, so I decided to create a sky replacement to make it more interesting and visually appealing. I had already done a basic one on a test of the first shot awhile back but now I thought it would be better to advance this and create something I was more happy with. I wanted the sky to change colour as the spaceships came into view and I came across this tutorial which proved to be really useful. I took what I learnt here, about adjustment layers and the use of CC Rain and CC Mr. Mercury to create a comp that pushed my skills further.

I took the basics and adapted it to suit my comp. In the first shot I keyframed the different types of colour correction I used on the adjustment layer and sky layer, in order to achieve a gradual change in colour when the ships appeared. Because I did this to the first shot, I also had to do the same on the other two shots after it for continuity. The edit below is not finished at all, there are still tweaks I need to do on the compositing, especially changing the rain effect. Even though it was quite visible when I first made it, it could do with increasing in size so it is slightly more visible to the eye, at the minute it blends too well into the background and the droplets are too thin. Obviously as well, my animation isn't fully rendered, these are just playblasts. It's just in this stage at the minute as I have to send this off to John Waugh, the guy who has offered to do my music for me and the main thing that he needs is for the timing of each shot to be how it is when it is fully finished.