How to rewind one character while everyone else in the shot keeps moving forward
Tell Vizard Agent which character rewinds and which one does not. It reverses the shot so the rewound character retraces their exact path, then takes the other character from a forward copy using a matte cut to their shape and places them on top, so one person moves backwards through time while the other carries on normally.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Name the target and spell out what must stay in normal time. A rewind gag depends on the contrast: if the person holding the remote also twitches backwards, the joke is lost, and a generated "walking backwards" shot never retraces a real path the way reversed footage does.
When he presses rewind, the targeted character retraces his recent movements backwards. Only he is affected. The one holding the remote and the room are not. The rewind carries him back into the holder for the collision.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It builds the shot from two time directions and a matte that decides which pixels belong to which. The reversed plate supplies the rewound character and the room; a forward copy supplies the other character. In the session behind this article it:
- Reversed the existing forward run so the character retraces his exact route, with the sound reversed and fitted to the new timing.
- Tried a soft vertical split first, then saw a flicker on the sofa in a ten-frames-a-second check and measured it as the reversed character's colour leaking into the forward side.
- Replaced the split with a matte shaped to the remote holder, segmented from a forward copy stretched to the same length, and widened slightly so no edge showed.
- Laid that forward character over the reversed plate and trimmed the shot to an exact frame count.
- Checked the result again at ten frames a second for any trace of backward motion on the wrong character, and reused the recipe in a later cut.
When does this not work well?
When the two characters touch or overlap for long. A matte can separate them while they are apart, but when one walks behind the other, the pixels of both are mixed in every frame and no clean split exists. Keep them apart in the shot until the collision.
Common questions
Can only one person rewind? Yes. Vizard Agent mattes the others back in normal time.
Why does a simple reverse not work? It rewinds everything. Vizard Agent combines two time directions.
How do I know nothing else moves backwards? Vizard Agent checks the edges at ten frames a second.