First of all, hello to everyone. I think finding a professional video forum was my best bet for getting some answers to my question(s).

Okey-dokey, if I could just please direct your attention to this video for one moment:

YouTube - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of Davey Jones Locker

I'm basically trying to create this same montage effect. It's a simple way of creating a nice little "multiple character" effect by, I guess, filming two shots with the same background then merging them together.

I'm very experienced with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and although I own After Effects 7.0, I'm a complete and utter amateur with it.

A helping hand/tongue/finger would be much obliged

That clip was not done very well, at least not as far as the cloning techniques anyways. You can often see the join quite clearly.

The normal way of doing this is to film your talent on a blue or green screen, then just dump as many layers as your wqant over your background in your compositing tool of choice. However, in that movie they didn't use a bluescreen (at least not always) and it shows. They filmed the same actor on different occasions and spliced them together. Trouble with this is that even making the next take five minuteslater the lighting will likely have changed and you'll see the join.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

And for any compositing work shoot it using a tripod and use the manual controls on your camcorder as the auto controls will give different results. Lock items such as white balance, focus and exposure if it is possible on the camcorder you will be using. That way you won't see a noticable change between one scene and another.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Thank you for the replies. I'm planning on doing this against a white background in a controlled lighting environment and I would just like to basically know how to create this effect, whether or not it looks professional.

You'd be better shooting it against a blue or greenscreen as Alan suggests. Shooting against a white backgroud will give you exposure problems as it is too bright and will force the camcorder to close down the iris and let less light in. This will result in underexposure of anyone or anything in front of the background. If you have manual exposure on your camcorder then use it and see how it looks, but whatever you do don't set the camcorder to auto.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Well, I would just like to know how exactly I could achieve this effect in Premiere Pro 2.0 before I worry about camera exposure.

Put your video's on separate video tracks, then put the 8 or 16 point garbage matte round the subjects on each video, don't worry about lining them up with the edges of the subject exactly if you are using controlled lighting and are careful with shadows.

Key frame the shape of the garbage mattes, over time, to roughly follow the movements of the subjects making sure no part of the subject crosses the garbage matte.

Then adjust the position of each of the video tracks using the motion controls to line them up so as not to cross over each other, if the matte edges do, you can tighten them closer to the subjects.

Remember to take some footage of your background without the subjects, put this in the lowest track of the time line, behind the subjects.

If you want the subjects to cross then you'll really need to shoot them against blue/green screen as suggested. Or spend more time working with more accurate asks in After Effects than with Premiere's garbage mattes.

Don't worry about the iris if your shooting against a white screen either, not unless your camera only has auto exposure, set it manually if you can and the camera wont be forced to do anything.

When shooting against a white background you can get a really nice look by deliberately over exposing a little. Anything not quite perfect flat white, corners etc. will washout and give a nice bright look. It's common...

...I can't offhand remember it's name. It works the same for a black background and slightly under exposing, I can't remember the name fo that technique either I'm afraid, sorry.

David.