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[Willard M]

I have discovered an effect that is quite interesting and one that may be of interest to others.

I am making a movie of my son and grandson fishing in Alaska. One of the still pictures has my grandson holding up a fish while kneeling on a gravel river bank. Using Adobe Photoshop Elements (Also possible in Photo Suite) I made a mask around my grandson and saved that image as a .png format. I then found an excellent grizzzly bear on the Internet and using the masking tools I made a .png format of the bear.

Then back to my movie in Video Wave I first sized the bear to 65% and overlayed it to the background pic of my grandson. Using the Setting command I selected Scroll-Fast Crawl right to left. I then added another overlay of the bear resized again to 65% and applied that as the second overlay. I then added as a third overlay the .png image of my grandson and placed him directly over the background picture of him kneeling on the ground being careful to match the image exactly.

Now the tricky part. Back to bear #1. I wanted the bear to pass behind my grandson and stop right behind his left shoulder. It is necessary at this point to be in Timeline and set the duration so bear #1 disappears at exactly the point you want him. Because the Ending point is greyed out in the Scroll selection box bear #1 either disappears or depending on the duration will pass out of the picture. Now enter bear #2. Bear #2 will be a fixed position bear that will be placed very carefully exactly where bear #1 has been set to disappear. By very carefully adjusting duration times and placement the effect is very 3 dimensional. When done properly the effect is almost seamless.

Hope this all makes sense. If not let me know and I will try to elaborate.