The Invisibility Cloak

Assembling Everything

I had always wondered how they pulled this off in the Harry Potter movies when I was a kid, I thought it was fascinating how Harry could just appear and disappear at will. When I got my green screen I knew this was something that I had to try.

To start I got my camera set up in the kitchen, then I got another blanket and paired them together to give the green screen another layer to make it appear like a cloak. I recorded two videos, one with me in the shot with the cloak and then another without me and added them together.

After I was happy with the clips run through times and positions, I went in and used the Ultra Key effect at Premiere Pro to get rid of the green screen on the opposite side of the extra blanket to give it the effect I was looking for.

Tweaking the settings allowed me to give the see through effect that I was looking for. I had to lower the luminance on the clip to try and match them together, the light above me in the shot where I featured was brighter due to it reflecting off of me.

I then added an additive dissolve effect to blend transition into second backdrop clip, to give the cloak the effect from the film. Whenever Harry had donned the cloak he never truly disappeared in the instant it covered him, it slowly blended into the background like a chameleon when it stayed on a surface to match the colour.

The last thing I added was my fiancé knocking on a door through I recording we had captured to help with the timing of when I look in surprise at the doo I added it to the time line and adjusted the volume of the line to make it able to be heard more easily.

Over the last few weeks of recording and experimenting with different effects, in my experimentation I have found that practical style effects like making someone disappear with an item or gunshots for example are the easiest to execute in terms of not having your own studio or space.

I think with the effects that have interested me to pull off have been limited due to the space I have available where I live. I feel like if I had a bigger clearer space and perhaps more specialised lighting to help wit the scenes a majority of these effects would have been of better quality. I would have tried to go places and film these ideas but I often find myself needing help to pull it off and due to the vulnerability of my grandparents and fiancé with their conditions I always have to put them first to keep them safe.

The Final Video

All in all I am happy with how this effect turned out, I can't wait however to return to campus next year or the year after to make use of the facilities there to experiment further with Green Screens when I have more time too.

Thanks for reading!