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Direct a Director (me) with your Expert Knowledge (you)
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Seth is right.
It’s a bad idea to come to VFX artists for creative. Come to us for execution, not creative.
The question should be: “I *know* I want to have horses fighting in the window because it will show inner conflict in the characters’ minds. I have greenscreens available. How should I shoot this to make it easy to composite in AE?”
Sorry to say mate, but if you don’t know what you want creatively, your film is sunk. Only include the ideas that are yours, you believe in, and you can justify as a director.
If you’re not sure something’s a good idea, don’t do it. Only execute the ideas you believe in from the get-go.
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When you do the camera matching you can account for changes in lenses, focal length etc. on a per-shot basis. That way any post effects that use this little 3d camera will always match the shots. If you used this to do some sort of wallpaper effect, it would change in each shot to properly match in.
By the way, you do not have to use greenscreen on the walls to do camera tracking. It is commonly done when shooting in normal environments, such as a set. You will only need to do greenscreen walls if you plan to completely replace them with something the actors can move in front of.
If you’d like to learn more about camera tracking, here’s some good resources:
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/smc01.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_tracking
https://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/3d__and__animation/the_rules_of_camera_tracking
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Here’s another idea you might consider – Since it is loosely based on a children’s story, and you need sets that essentially don’t exist, maybe you could use the camera tracking technique mentioned above to create 3d bedrooms/sets that have more of a Tim Burton, almost other-worldly feel. If you have access to a few decent 3D artists (if your story is good and you shoot it well, you can find some who will help for credits I’m sure) they could create your sets to look fairly realistic in 3d, but very strange and interesting.
If you go the route of using greenscreen and replacing the set in post, make sure to have as many real-world objects, set dressing etc as possible for your actors to interact with where needed. This also draws some attention away from your otherwise CG sets.
Pan’s Labrinth is a good example of a movie that used CG in interesting, subtle and very effective ways, primarily as set extensions (or replacing greenscreen with artificial sets).
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
[beenyweenies] “When you do the camera matching you can account for changes in lenses, focal length etc. on a per-shot basis.”
This is one thing I was going to mention. It will be important to keep a detailed log of your shots if you want to match the camera properly, this includes the height of the camera from the floor and the tilt of the camera as well as lens information.
For this reason I would recommend limiting yourself in number of shots on the greenscreen to just the basics: establishing shot and close ups. Keep your camera locked down or, if you’re adventurous, limit yourself to very basic tracks and pans.
You also need to think about the environment in which the actors/props will be composited, things like: where is the light source? As far as I’m concerned, the more physical props you can include in the green screen shoot the better. This can provide for more challenging keys, but will give your talent something to interact with. In the final product it will sell it that much better if the talent sits down in a chair during the shot.
The other thing that could help is distracting your audience… Do something crazy, have your actor sitting there pretending to listen to their mother rant about how irresponsible they are, meanwhile in the background the actor is imagining an epic (or not) war, bombs, explosions whatever. The fact that the shot is a composite should give you some freedom to explore these options, and in the end they will simultaneously confirm to the audience that it is a composite and distract them from caring that it’s a composite.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Wasn’t Natural Born Killers shot with a lot of projected scenes behind the actors? Maybe you should skip the GS altogether. Put together your montages beforehand and project them during filming. I don’t know if a white sheet would work for rear projection, but if so, you could even have the sheet waving a little for added effect, or something of the sort.
My 2 cents.
sjc
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Agreed. And as one last note from me on the subject, pans are not easy to camera track, most tracking software needs actual translation (aka physical movement in space) of the camera to interpret the movement.
All of this may add up to a lot of technical craziness to keep track of, but the alternative might be having to use less impressive, potentially cheesy tactics. If you want to explore computer enhanced cinematography, be prepared to get technical!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com
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