shooting/compositing a person falling from a great height

[Todd Terry]

I’m with you, I don’t think the 60fps would be fast enough, I don’t think it would give you realistic motion, even with your fake fall lasting in real time much longer than if you really fell off a building that tall. The biggest giveaways would be the flapping of clothes, skin, hair, etc… which wouldn’t be at the realistic rate.

I think the harness, fans, and greenscreens etc. are all workable. But I think I’d use a faster camera, and I definitely wouldn’t use a DSLR unless that’s the only real choice. Sounds like a job for the Phantom or other legit high-speed camera….. Phantom Flex, or HD GOLD or whatever. Shoot it with your wind machines, etc., but the actual duration of the shot in real time would be about the same as it would actually take a person to fall that distance.

How long would it take to actually fall 11 stories? I dunno (although it’s probably easily enough researchable), but just as an example I’m guessing 5 seconds. If that were the case, a real shot for 5 seconds at about 300fps (which would stretch the shot to more or less 60 seconds) would probably look pretty realistic. I’d really crank that wind machine up.

If you have to shoot it with a DSLR at 60fps, you might be able to stretch it to :30 if you use Twixtor or some other frame interpolation software to double the frames (effectively giving you a 120fps framerate).

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Kevin Knutson]

Thanks Todd-

Did a quick calculation. 11 stories is roughly 36 meters. Rounding to 40 meters, an object would take about 2.8 seconds to fall.

I was worried about the obvious Phantom route, as currently I just dont have access to hardware like that. Maybe time to call in a long list of favors.

I’ve never had real success with Twixtor, and just can’t stand the lack of support on it. So I’d rather avoid it.

I guess cheating can only get you so far, yeah?

visit Very Loud Ideas

[Todd Terry]

[Kevin Knutson] “I guess cheating can only get you so far, yeah?”

Yep.

Depending on where you live, a Phantom will start at about two grand, I think, with operator (and you have to have the operator, you can’t just rent the camera).

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

I would be tempted to do this shot in CGI and just worry about compositing the actor’s head onto the digital dummy. The neat thing in CGI is of course the physics are very tweakable. Hair and cloth simulations are not exceptionally good right off the shelf, if you know what you’re doing, that is.

[Jason Jenkins]

[Kevin Knutson] “b) is there another creative way to achieve it?”

I think you’d be amazed at what you can achieve with just an actor moving slowly in front of a greensreen and a virtual set in After Effects.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Kevin Knutson]

An interesting idea, Mark. Thanks.

visit Very Loud Ideas

[Kevin Knutson]

True enough, Jason. My concern however would be the clothes/wind effect. Certainly we could exaggerate slow movements of the body, but the clothes are another issue. I think it may boil down to a bunch of trial and error 😉

visit Very Loud Ideas

[Mark Suszko]

The last time I had to fake some “zero-gee” shots, I put the green screen on the floor, put the camera up above, looking down, and had the talent balance on one foot while thrashing both arms and one leg around, while looking up into the camera. It came off surprisingly well, for that one angle.

[Emre Tufekcioglu]

Here is a sample of digital version of falling from a tall building:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-5Sm8rNPr8

Please note that a lot of things were done wrong so you can learn from the mistakes:

-Actors movements are wrong, people make circular motions with their arms when falling.
-Content was shot DVCPROHD 8bit as opposed to AVC-I 10bit. Making the composition work harder.
-Fan was in the wrong place to making realistic wind.
-The camera was dollied away from the actor as opposed to being dollied to the actor. Footage had to be reversed.
-Dolly was moved too slowly for the FPS of the shoot.
-The background plates were shot at wrong time of day and with wrong lenses, required additional painting and barrel distortion correction prior to stitching.
-Additional shots like actor from the side, and wide shot to composite over the actor reaching the top was not filmed.

Overall it is an poor execution what this effect could have been but I personally believe with the right talent behind the camera and in post, you can make an exceptionally believable shot.

Hope this helps.

Emre Tufekci
Production Pit

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[Todd Terry]

I agree with Emre… while that comp shot is at first glance pretty bad, it’s just the little details that so readily give it away as fake… the idea behind it is ok. It’s bad in execution, not in concept.

With a little more care to have fixed all those booboos (most of them before the shoot), it could have been quite passable.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com