Edited out of Masterchef

With the shot of (usually) 4 of them walking slowly towards the camera, I was thinking that they are spread out, and there was possibly some clean background already on the rushes where the 4th person was.
As you say, it was done before computers on still images, but on video it would have to involve computers.
Film could be doctored of course, but increadibly slow to do.
Or they just got the other 3 back to do it again!

Did the invisible contestant get eliminated?

Fair play to them for doing something other than just dropping the episode or the entire series from reruns.

It's difficult to tell....!!

Yes it's perfectly possible to do it, just look at all the scarily clever stuff that's being done with 'deep fake' technology. But whether it's worth the time and money for the production company to do is another matter.

This photo was on the Daily Mails article about the programme*, I don't know if its just a publicity still or actually appeared in the programme.

It does look like there was someone else there just by the way they're positioned. The repeating patterns of the floor and the hedge make it fairly easy to photoshop someone out. A lot more difficult with moving images of course



*don't bother, it's several hundred words to say 'I don't know'

Most recent visual effects post production software includes Content Aware Fill tools to allow you to remove elements from moving sequences these days - some now use AI techniques. (I think After Effects added it a year or two ago - and other products have had it for a while). It may need a bit of assistance with some reference frames - but it's entirely do-able.

It's a shot from the programme - watching it in motion, it appears they've just cropped out a contestant walking on the right, as the camera sees them.

That would be a MUCH easier solution than art working them out...

The classic "pan across 4 people waiting to hear their fate" shot was noticeably missing, as was the 4 people walking through a door, and there were no wide shots during the second half challenge where they all cook together in the kitchen.

I suspect apart from only seeing one skills test not two on the second skills test - if you hadn't told me there was a person removed, I wouldn't have known.

That is true – but as anybody who has used it will attest, it's far from perfect. It's amazing technology, but works much better with stationary shots and smaller details. Removing elements from video can be tricky because not only do you have to match the surrounding footage on a frame, you also have to match it through time, to allow for imperceptible variations in light, temperature and so on. The videos from Adobe et al show it at its best and, like I say, it's amazing technology but not always the right solution. It can be much easier to go for a 'manual' solution like the cropping mentioned above.

It can also be incredibly resource intensive. Certainly on the example of the walking Masterchef shot, only a few seconds long, it would be very doable – but for longer shots most editors would explore what other options are available before tying up processing time.

I appreciate that the point you were making was different, but for the benefit of other members who are less familiar with video editing technology I thought it was worth pointing out that content-aware fill is much harder in motion than for stills.

Aha, yes I didn't think of that. A good thing they out him on the right of frame then

Half-related, but many years ago (2002-3) I felt like an editing king when I went through every frame of an animated Central cake endcap and airbrushed out the Challenge TV logo in all of them, which as a 13-14 year old I was pretty chuffed about - it was for a pres website that never ended up being made. Didn't require too much work as the ancient capture card I was using only recorded about 12 frames a second, most of which just had the logo on a black background and the only major editing was when the blocks passed the top left of the screen where the logo was.

I'm glad they were still able to air the episode rather than just can the whole thing and show a repeat in its place, which would have been a bit annoying for the other contestants as with the 15-to-1 example described.

The repeat in question being Bill McKaig's 433 show, unless I'm mistaken.

This feels like the most plausible - two go through from that round, but while one was above the rest and went straight through, they then judged the two featured contestants to pick the next.

So it appeared they were only judging three to me - so either the edited out chef was awful - or if they’d told someone to F off, disqualified.

But then that doesn’t explain the lack of a group shot in the reveal.... unless they refilmed the judging and reveal, but presumably it would need to be quickly after for the rest of the competition.

All really odd!