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How to do this? Rotation/lighting
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[Mark D'Agostino] “How did you do the zoom into the screen closeup?”
Well it was a fake zoom (pretty obviously)… you can see you lose a fair little bit of resolution on the bit of the computer bezel that you can see at the edge of the screen.
The stuff that’s on the screen is fake (also pretty obviously), motion-tracked onto the computer screen… and that fake screenshot artwork was created at much much greater resolution, so that when we did the digital zoom into it, it still had greater-than 1080 effective resolution for the zoomed-in portion that was used.
We actually did shoot it practically, with the company’s real website on the screen, but it just didn’t photograph quite good looking enough… so we replaced it with the fake screen then added back in things like the moving screen reflection when it spins etc to try to give it a more realistic look. Had we had more time or money I could have probably got it better looking…. but it is what it is.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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We did something quite similar but I’m always curious if someone has a different method. We get a bit insulated up here in Upstate NY
Mark D’Agostino
http://www.synergeticproductions.com -
Thank you all for the response… great advice.
Only questions I have remaining is this:
The cyclorama we are using is white.. and I was wondering if it would be better for whatever support I use to be green, or white? I was thinking a couple thick dowel rods or something similar coming up from the base of whatever is turning. I’m asking because it seems the green would be better, and I just key it out in post… however, im worried about the shadows directly underneath the unit. SO – that being said, what the eff is rotoscoping? i trying googling it and I looked at a few videos on youtube concerning it, however im not sure how it would be apply in this situation. If anyone could clear that newbie question up for me Id greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
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[Andy Hubright] “…what the eff is rotoscoping? i trying googling it…”
Rotoscoping is when you cut out or matte out a subject from its background, in the strictest sense by manually drawing or creating a mask in each frame.
Say, for example, you have a shot of someone walking across a room. You want to replace the background environment they are in, but it is a real practical shot… not shot on greenscreen or bluescreen or anything easily keyable. In that case you would, frame-by-frame, hand draw a mask separating the character from the background and allow you to replace it with another. There are some tips and tricks an a little bit of automation that can help with rotoscoping, but it can be a very tedious process.
In the turntable example I posted above, there was only a little bit of rotoscoping. Because our big white turntable platter was round, the “horizon” behind it appeared curved. We wanted it straight, like a true horizon. A narrow background matte with a new straight horizon was created to cover the curved one, which was simply overlayed on the shot. But because the computer was rotating its shape was constantly changing… thus the overlay horizon mask had to be rotoscoped out in the frames where it would have crossed the object. Fortunately, since the spin was pretty fast there weren’t that many frames that had to be hand roto’d.
As for whether to shoot your project practically or with greenscreen… that’s your call. You could do it either way. I’ve shot quite a few “white limbo” projects… and I’d say mine were about 50/50… about half the time I shot practically in a real white environment, and the other half I greenscreened. There were even a couple that were hybrids, a bit of both.
Practical white limbo environments can look better, in my opinion… but they can be harder to do, lighting wise. The greenscreen environements of course allow you to use any background you like, but can sometimes look artificial.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Ok so I’ve decided to use a turntable to spin the unit.. I will be making a platform on top of the turntable and then somehow mounting vertical supports (dowels or something) to another platform 2-3 feet higher which the unit will sit on. Should the vertical supports be painted chroma key green, or white?? (remember the background is a white cyclorama)
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