Bird in Shot

[Ki-Ki]

Will be shooting a scene soon, where a person is lying sprawled across some rocks, and a bird is sitting next to her, keeping watch.

How, the heck could I have a bird trained, to sit down next to her.

There's no trained animals of any kind within the area I live. I can't really CGI it.

I was thinking of putting bird food down, bread, crumbs, something similar. Though then it'd just be pecking the food and rocks. Then fly off like a greedy ass.

Any suggestions?

[grinner]

Just shoot em seperately. You'd go mad tryiung to get a bird to hang with the chick. Not that hard to shoot it alone though. Lock it down and mask away.

[Richard J. Johnson]

If the bird is keeping watch, then I would say you really need to find someone with a trained bird somewhere. You could always CGI it if you have the means. And what kind of bird were you thinking about using? Dropping bird feed could cause a lot birds to swoop down for free lunch and that could get ugly.

Or what grinner said.

[Ki-Ki]

The first option sounds easier, yet I don't know the specifics on how to do things like that. I'd have to find someone - which I don't think would be to hard.. just need to learn about it.

Either a Seagull or a Crow. The concept is a lot of people have either been washed up, some dead, some survivors.

[lhdor]

You could get a real stuffed bird for the long shots (if you can get two in different positions), then on close ups focus on a live bird near by. Hopefully there is an over cast so you can key out the background of the real bird and then you can put in the rocks, (out of focus of course).

[Justin Kuhn]

You could even try shooting them separately and then combining them by keying out the sky. Or rotoscoping.

[GenJerDan]

I'd do the separate shots.