nPut a black bar over it. Using a simple matte effect, you can create a black bar to cover the offending area and use key frames to make sure it follows any movement.

nPaint some clothes on it. We’ve seen TV shows paint over footage to make bikinis less revealing and so on. It’s time-consuming, but it can be done.

For audio, the standard TV choice is to add a bleep to cover the soundtrack, but if you don’t want to call that much attention to it, you can simply drop the audio out. Some movies also record inoffensive words such as “frick” to replace bad words in ADR.

Moving On

Perhaps the most important thing to know about effects work is that there’s rarely ever a “best” way to do something. Every effects shot is a puzzle with many different solutions. In the end, if you get the look you want, then it doesn’t really matter how you pulled it off. Don’t be afraid to experiment and explore, and be prepared to try different approaches to your effects troubles. As long as you keep your original files backed up, and you are diligent about not compressing video through your workflow, then there’s nothing to risk by experimenting.