Hi,

Basically i'm making a short film for school in which I require a ghost like character. I don't want this character to be transparent, or particulary ghost like beacuse it doesn't suit the style, what I want to be able to do is a shot where the character's hand passes through an object. I'm an amatuer and have no idea how to pull this off, can anyone help me.

Cheers

Well there are a variety of techniques you could use, mainly depending on what type of object you want your ghost's hand to pass through. Are you thinking a wall/door, a table, or a smaller object?

The ghost is at a party. A waiter goes past with a tray of ordurves (spelt wrong i'm sure) and he tries to grab some, but his hand passes right through the tray.

Well I guess the two next questions are:

What kind of shot do you have in mind? (close up of hand, tracking shot of the waiter from a few feet away, etc)

What kind of video editing software are you using?)

Ideally a tracking shot, but if i need to get the waiter to stop stand for a few second and then exit a stationary shot then i guess thats fine as well.

The software i'm getting but don't yet have is sony movie studio 7.

Bump.

Sorry, but i do need help with this :P

I think you could pull this off with some clever physical effects. For example if you cut a 3 "X6" strip from the edge of a large silver platter going in towards the middle, if the waiter is holding the platter level to the camera at a distance of 8 feet away, and he is tilting the platter perhaps 5 degrees away from the camera, the hole will not be able to be seen because of foreshortening.

However if you want to do a significant close up, you are going to have to do some work with masking and layering which won't be easy if you haven't had any previous experience with it.