Dissapearing Effect

[Steve Roberts]

One way ($$$) is to use motion control to shoot two identical passes: one with, one without.

Now unless you shoot it twice identically that way, one thing (talent or room) has to be CG.

You could shoot the talent on greenscreen with markers, matchmove it (syntheyes, etc.) and create a 3D room around the person using the 3D camera created from the matchmove data.

Another way is to shoot it without, then matchmove (syntheyes, etc.), then using a 3D camera created from the matchmove data you model a 3D person with texture maps from reality, and place that person in the scene. That’s more difficult, but great if the talent has to perform superhuman feats.

All those might be out of your budget. You could try staging the scene so it’s tracking, and the talent is walking with the camera. You shoot the scene without, then reshoot with a greenscreen on wheels behind the talent as he/she walks. Or do that in the studio so you don’t have to roto the feet. The idea is: the talent is essentially static to camera, and his/her position can be calculated by just measuring to set her position … as long as he/she can keep pace with the tracking camera. Poor man’s motion control?

Anyway, I’d look into ways of staging it so you have the talent in a medium shot (no feet), and the camera is tracking steadily, or you’re spinning around a fixed point where the talent is (Scorsese, Color of Money) not moving. It might work …

Anybody else?

[Mike Derk]

To that I’d add: make sure the background is fairly clean (it’s not swirly wallpaper with a flower arrangement sitting on a desk next to a fountain…).

Oh, and I just had an idea (that I’ve never tried). If you have access to two identical cameras, and you can mount them side by side, they will move identically. One will just be a second “behind” so to speak. You’ll have “pre-tracked” poor-man’s motion control. You’ll probably have to futz with the color some, to get it to match perfectly, but you can plan ahead for that and use a grey-card.

Also, I’d watch out for the actor’s shadow in the 2nd camera if you do this. But you could probably keep that terrible wallpaper and the flowers.

[Daniel Reynolds]

I did figure out a way to make it seem it is filmed hand held. I filmed the footage on a tripod the old fasioned way, but in after effects, added data from some other footage that I motion tracked (This footage was hand held). Looked pretty good. Heres what I did with it: