Sky Replacement Stock Footage
Perfect for Compositors, Colorists, Editors and Digital Artists of all Kinds!
When a production needs to shoot on location, but the weather is less than perfect, this can create anything from a mediocre/bland sky to a downright ugly sky. The solution? A sky replacement! The general technique has been around for a long time, but modern compositing software like Adobe After Effects have made sky replacements extremely easy. In fact, as long as you can find the appropriate replacement video or image, you should be able to produce believable results in just minutes!
In this article, we’ll cover:
- What is sky replacement stock footage?
- What makes good sky replacement footage?
- How to choose the right sky for your project
- Free Sky Replacement Footage
- Conclusion
What is sky replacement stock footage?
Sky replacement stock footage is a type of video footage or still image that is used to replace the sky in a background plate, in other words, to give your shot a brand new sky. The original footage can be anything from a landscape to a shot involving characters outdoors to a sky visible through a window, such as a scene in a car or a house. The possibilities are endless; essentially, anytime the sky is visible on camera, it can be replaced when you have access to the appropriate footage.
There are a number of reasons why you might want to use sky replacement stock footage in your productions. Some of the most common reasons include:
- To create a more professional look
- To improve the believability of your shots
- To match the weather of shots filmed in different conditions
What makes good sky replacement footage?
An important thing to consider is the overall quality of the footage. Make sure that the footage you choose is high-quality and is not overly stylized. A heavily color-corrected (or high contrast) sky can look nice on its own, but compositing such a piece of footage will be a nightmare.
Additionally, the resolution of the file is of great importance. You don’t want any artifacts or obvious compression in your final composite. All of our footage is available in 4k ProRes, 4K EXR, and 8k RAW R3D (each frame equivalent to a 35-megapixel still image). It was captured professionally with extremely high-quality Leica lenses and an 8k RED Helium cinema camera.
Finally, make sure that the footage you choose has been properly framed. The sky should fill up most of the frame, with no distracting elements in the foreground. This is often difficult to locate and remains one of our primary concerns when we film our sky footage.
The vast majority of our footage is completely devoid of any obstacles or foreground objects, no buildings, towers, or antennas that fill a third of the frame. That said, at times, our footage will have the occasional treetops or stray branches that have encroached into the bottom and corners of the frame, but these are easily removed via cropping or simply paint and roto work.
How to choose the right sky for your project
When choosing sky replacement stock footage for your project, it’s important to consider a few things:
- The lighting in your scene
- The time of day or weather conditions in your scene
- The color palette of your scene
Once you have considered these factors, you can start to narrow down your search for the right sky replacement stock footage.
We have organized all of our sky footage by the time of year (season) and time of day. Within those subcategories, you can further refine your search using keywords such as the type of clouds you’d like to have in your scene and the colors featured. For example, if you are working on a scene with a pink sky, you can filter for seasonal footage which contains pink tones.
Much of the time, your footage will require some creative color grading to match your scene. For this reason, our footage has a neutral, very minimal color correction applied. All of our footage has a wide color gamut to allow for maximum flexibility in your color grade, and we are especially careful to protect the highlights so that overexposure and blown-out clouds are not a problem.
Free Sky Replacement Footage
Getting started with sky replacements doesn’t need to be expensive. We offer a variety of downloadable sky stock footage for free to help you get started.
Conclusion
Sky replacement stock footage can be an essential tool in your video compositing arsenal. Replacing the sky in video compositing programs isn’t an incredibly complicated process, but it is one that can help you to take your project to the next level. Not only can it create a more natural look for your project, but it is also possible to use footage of the correct location or time of day for your shoot. By choosing the right footage for your project, you can create a more believable and professional-looking final product. In this article, we’ve given you some tips on how to choose the right sky for your project, as well as a few examples of great sky replacement footage.