"Drag" transparent images over moving footage with a "mouse"

[theatermajorindistress]

I am working on my final for a mixed media theater class and have no idea how to achieve an effect I NEED for the performance. I'm having a lot of trouble finding out how to do this, none of my media studies friends have any idea how, I don't know what terminology to google, but the effect SEEMS like it should be simple. For the sake of clarity I'm just going to describe what I need.

It begins as a stand-up set, in which a confident and charismatic comedian performs a bit, but then after the first segment of jokes, a video is projected behind her of her doing a horrible, terribly awkward and unfunny set. She then runs to a computer to begin haphazardly editing the footage as it plays to try and make it look more how she wanted it to, how she "imagined" it in the first segment of the performance.

*The things she is going to do are:*
Add "curtains" to the side of the footage, in an attempt to make it look like she is in a comedy club and not alone in a white room.
Add a mic stand, for the same reason as above, because in the live performance I will be using a mic stand.
Drag in an audio play bar/button, can look very generic, and click play to trigger a bad canned laugh track that doesn't sync up with the jokes. (I can do the audio part of this just fine.)

Now, for adding the curtains and mic stand, I'm literally picturing her dragging badly photoshopped transparent stock photos of curtains and a mic stand over the footage, and I know how to prepare those images. If having an audio play bar actually move is too complicated, it can literally just be an image of a play button dragged on, that is then clicked, and replaced with a pause button to indicate something is playing. Ideally, a mouse cursor will drag them on, but I can omit that at this point.

This all needs to happen as the video of the bad performance is still playing, as if on a different "layer" on top of it, and I can't just screen share and do it live during the performance because it will mess up the rest of the tech design I've set up in the program I'm running the performance off of, Isadora (she's a fickle bitch I want as few things running through her as possible). So these parts of the video need to be pre-rendered.

It seems like this should be super simple but I don't have any clue what to do. Even an idea of what terms to google to find the tutorials I'd need would be helpful!!!!!! I'm a complete newbie to video editing. I have access to a full media editing computer lab with Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Audition, Photoshop, and Animate, plus Toon Boom Harmony. (Programs I imagine might possibly be useful. I probably have a lot more at my disposal. It's a college lab. Just tell me the names of other programs and I can see if I have them.)

Please I need this done in 15 hours, I haven't left the theater building in 12 hours and just had 3 coffees so apologies for over-explaining

[poisondeathray]

I am working on my final for a mixed media theater class and have no idea how to achieve an effect I NEED for the performance. I'm having a lot of trouble finding out how to do this, none of my media studies friends have any idea how, I don't know what terminology to google, but the effect SEEMS like it should be simple. For the sake of clarity I'm just going to describe what I need.

It begins as a stand-up set, in which a confident and charismatic comedian performs a bit, but then after the first segment of jokes, a video is projected behind her of her doing a horrible, terribly awkward and unfunny set. She then runs to a computer to begin haphazardly editing the footage as it plays to try and make it look more how she wanted it to, how she "imagined" it in the first segment of the performance.

*The things she is going to do are:*
Add "curtains" to the side of the footage, in an attempt to make it look like she is in a comedy club and not alone in a white room.
Add a mic stand, for the same reason as above, because in the live performance I will be using a mic stand.
Drag in an audio play bar/button, can look very generic, and click play to trigger a bad canned laugh track that doesn't sync up with the jokes. (I can do the audio part of this just fine.)

Now, for adding the curtains and mic stand, I'm literally picturing her dragging badly photoshopped transparent stock photos of curtains and a mic stand over the footage, and I know how to prepare those images. If having an audio play bar actually move is too complicated, it can literally just be an image of a play button dragged on, that is then clicked, and replaced with a pause button to indicate something is playing. Ideally, a mouse cursor will drag them on, but I can omit that at this point.

This all needs to happen as the video of the bad performance is still playing, as if on a different "layer" on top of it, and I can't just screen share and do it live during the performance because it will mess up the rest of the tech design I've set up in the program I'm running the performance off of, Isadora (she's a fickle bitch I want as few things running through her as possible). So these parts of the video need to be pre-rendered.

It seems like this should be super simple but I don't have any clue what to do. Even an idea of what terms to google to find the tutorials I'd need would be helpful!!!!!! I'm a complete newbie to video editing. I have access to a full media editing computer lab with Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Audition, Photoshop, and Animate, plus Toon Boom Harmony. (Programs I imagine might possibly be useful. I probably have a lot more at my disposal. It's a college lab. Just tell me the names of other programs and I can see if I have them.)

Please I need this done in 15 hours, I haven't left the theater building in 12 hours and just had 3 coffees so apologies for over-explaining

I think I got the gist of what you're trying to do...

For the video editing part - the generic term is called "compositing". You literally are dragging layers on top of the footage. It really is that simple . It can be done in any video editor. But the difference is you want to include the animation of dragging things like curtains, microphones, not just the end final image. The animation part is typically done by "keyframes". It's not very difficult

For audio seek bar/buttons it's pretty easy to make and animate depending on how complex you wanted it to look, but another approach is to screencapture a video player then composite that in


Is this a live performance ? I can see a lot of things go wrong here. There are issues with timing, a potential "disconnect" with the audience in terms of the actress driving the manipulations. You need her to be in sync with the animations . To "sell" it better , you might want to include things like cursor animation as the assets are dragged in. But a lot of it will have to do with acting and timing

[JVRaines]

You're a complete newbie to editing and you have 14 hours to make this video with no sleep? Heaven help you.

[jagabo]

Yes, epic fail.

[evile1690]

This can be done easily through Adobe After Effects if you have it. Like what the other poster has said you need to use keyframes to time the animation of dragging the composite "png" images to the video. If you know someone who knows how to use it that can help you make it, it won't take more than 3 hours to set the keyframes and render it.

The challenge would then be for the actor to time their movements along with the video.

[JVRaines]

And if you know someone with a time machine so you can go back a week and avoid failing the course, even better.