The Making of 'The Ten Doctors Part One' by Babelcolour

Having very limited software, all the "special" effects in my 'Ten Doctors' video were achieved frame-by-frame in adobe Photoshop. Due to a number of PMs asking me how I did this, I have made a short video explaining how a couple of the effect shots were executed, with nothing more than Photoshop and a lot of patience! I hope some find it interesting.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Doctor
• Who
• Dr
• special
• effects
• FX
• version
• 10
• Doctors
• Drs
• Dalek
• Daleks
• edition
• new
• CGI
• redux
• recon
• David
• Tennant
• Tom
• Baker
• Jon
• Pertwee
• Pat
• Patrick
• Troughton
• Peter
• Davison
• Colin
• reconstruction
• tribute
• trailer
• episode
• Paul
• McGann
• Sylvester
• McCoy
• Christopher
• Eccleston
• Chris
• TARDIS
• Cyberman
• Cybermen
• Raston
• Warrior
• robot
• robots
• mashup
• greenscreen
• CSO
• bluescreen
• matt
• green screen
• blue Screen
• Sonataran
• Sontarans
• color
• colorized
• colorization
• colour
• colourised
• colourisation

[blackpoolprince]

You mention the 'Clear Tool' in Photoshop. I've been using Photoshop and Premier for years, but have never found that. Where is it and how do you apply it to a moving image?

[BabelColour]

You misunderstand if you think I apply it to moving images. I work frame-by-frame in Photoshop. If you select the brush tool, the "mode" window has a drop-down menu and you can pick the 4th one down, called "Clear". This is only selectable if you have one layer overlaid on top of the other.

[dfarmbrough]

Cleverly done - thank you. I am interested in why you colour graded the first shot "downwards". I assume it was to match the poor-quality film transfer we expect from 1970s location footage and to match any scenes taken from similar sources, is that right? If so, did you have to make a policy decision not to upgrade the colour in the 1970s to the faithful or vibrant colours we expect today?

Also, are you working on 50 frames per second? Or a smaller number with intermediates done by computer?

[BabelColour]

That's an interesting question. I did initially try matching the old film footage colours to the new series pallette, but I have very rudimentary tools and when I got one thing looking right, something else in shot would look completely wrong, so I opted for the easier task of desaturating the new material and giving it a green bias to match the old. And I'm working with 25 frames-a-second, input and output. No intermediated frames generated or used.

[albicifilms]

fantastic - you deserve a medal, perhaps an OBE and a fullsize dalek in real gold

wonderful work - please keep them coming - we really enjoy watching all your new short films and look forward to part two of the 10 doctors.

thank you so much for sharing these with us and also for all the tips on film editing/

yours truly

another dr who fanatic

[Alexoneil]

Excellent work! Doing anything frame by frame would drive me mad.

[DoctorWhoFanactic]

I have no idea how to use photoshop so this makes no sense at all to me

[wcywing]

neat, i wonder if you can get a scene with all the doctors in it. keep up the good work. 

[MrAntbant]

Absolutely stellar work - wonderful. Hope to see something this good fron the Beeb for the 50th.

Not a criticism by any means (clear from this labour of love that you are a true perfectionist) but in the section from Unicorn and the Wasp you appear to have missed deleting Donna's leg as you can still see her jeans behind Davids leg as he exits the TARDIS. Please don't mistake this for ungrateful nature but you know it is the fans credo to nit-pick lol!

[CastChaos]

You edit frame by frame with 25 fps? That is heroically diligent! I wondered if you used some video edit tricks to track down objects and remove the rest... so you didn't.

You are truly wonderful!

[animationdude56]

With your skills I think you should work in the Doctor Who restoration team. You really know your way around photoshop.

[sgdeluxedoc]

I use PS a lot so i know how much work is involved filling in all those bits. I have to say that your work is excellent and appreciated.. if you're not working in the CGI dept at a film studio, you really should be!

[terriblethomas101]

so thats how you pronounce BabelColour!

[evildonkey]

Its pretty well done. Though I can't help thinking you made it harder for yourself then needed by using Photoshop to achieve the effects. Some of the shots I reckon didn't need to be done frame by frame etc. 

[00420433]

@babelcolour Dear babelcolour, why did you mask out the UNIT soldier at 3:44? The doctor enters the car with an soldier anyway?

[AKnightAtPeace]

so much work which turned out into a brilliant job keep up the work! ha it reminds me of how I had to do frame by frame editing of a school project due in the next day. Made me a little mad with not much patience :P