Put something on a television in a film

[Round_Brix]

Hello everyone. I've made a short film (it was my first!) and there's this scene in the film:

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in which the character is watching a silent film. Now that intertitle on the TV is very important for the audience and they should be able to read it. But it's small. It was my mistake, I should've made that intertitle in a larger font. Now my question is how can I put a new picture (or a video) in that television? I want that intertitle to be bigger so the audience could read it easily.

Many thanks in advance

[poisondeathray]

It's called a "screen replacement"

If there is no camera motion , task becomes easier - you just put an overlay in a video editor

If there is camera motion, you motion track the screen and insert the overlay

If there are occluding / blocking foreground objects (e.g. maybe actor's head goes in front of TV screen), they need to be masked out

Often other things like color correction and manipulations are done to make the composite look and match better, as if it were actually from the TV (add things like relighting, glow)


Typically this is done with something like after effects and mocha , but it can be done with other programs like hitfilm, nuke, blender , many others

[Round_Brix]

It's called a "screen replacement"

If there is no camera motion , task becomes easier - you just put an overlay in a video editor

If there is camera motion, you motion track the screen and insert the overlay

If there are occluding / blocking foreground objects (e.g. maybe actor's head goes in front of TV screen), they need to be masked out

Often other things like color correction and manipulations are done to make the composite look and match better, as if it were actually from the TV (add things like relighting, glow)


Typically this is done with something like after effects and mocha , but it can be done with other programs like hitfilm, nuke, blender , many others

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. It's this case:

If there is no camera motion , task becomes easier - you just put an overlay in a video editor

I mean the camera is fixed (OS shot) and only the character's hand is moving (moving the remote control) and his hand doesn't block anything. I'm a newbie in editing and unfortunately I have no budget so I have to do this on my own. Which of the suggested programs is easiest one? I just want to replace a picture, and put a new picture instead of the old picture/intertitle. It's not a moving shot and the intertitle is also still.

[poisondeathray]

What programs are you using ?

The only mildly "tricky" thing here is matching the perspective of the TV screen ; it's not perfectly parallel and flush to the camera - so your inserted still has to match that

If it's a short shot I can do it for you quickly, or try to walk you through one of the programs

[poisondeathray]

Another approach to consider is some editing or inserting a reframed closeup shot of the TV.

For example, show the shot as is , then cut to an edit of the TV zoomed in . Because at this camera distance, even if you made the text /insert very large, it will still be "small"

[Round_Brix]

What programs are you using ?

The only mildly "tricky" thing here is matching the perspective of the TV screen ; it's not perfectly parallel and flush to the camera - so your inserted still has to match that

If it's a short shot I can do it for you quickly, or try to walk you through one of the programs

I don't have any of the softwares but the computers at our university has almost every possible editing software. I'd be eternally grateful to you if you do it for me. But how can we do that? it's about 4 seconds, should I trim and upload the mp4 file? Many thanks.

[poisondeathray]

Did you see my last post #5 ? It might be a "smarter" way to go


But if you just want the insert as originally planned , upload the cut of the original shot either here or some free hosting site . Also upload the "large" replacement image you want inserted. PM me if you don't want it public

[Round_Brix]

Did you see my last post #5 ? It might be a "smarter" way to go


But if you just want the insert as originally planned , upload the cut of the original shot either here or some free hosting site . Also upload the "large" replacement image you want inserted. PM me if you don't want it public

Unfortunately I can't shoot the scene again and I don't want it to be a jump cut. I should've shot some inserts I'll pm you the file and the image

[Round_Brix]

Thanks to poisondeathray, it is solved.