Changing Shoes

[TuffGong]

I am trying to figure out how to make an effect where the focal point of the shot is a woman or man's shoes, walking down the sidewalk. The camera will be near the ground next to the shoes (showing the whole side of the shoe toe to heal) Camera is moving along a track at the pace of the walker.

I want the shoes to change every couple of steps, to show the full suite of shoes and colors, but I want the walking to be continuous.

How would you go about this during the shooting and in post?

[David Jimerson]

Simplest (though not necessarily easiest) way would be to have your actor match steps exactly with every pair of shoes and do cross dissolves. Tricky, but the least amount of post.

[Curugon]

I'll assume a motion-control rig is out of the question? If so...

Easy way: have fenceposts/poles/assorted foreground object pass between the camera and person every time a shoe-change takes place. Use the fg object to mask the transitions (feathered wipes) in post.

Harder way: have the actor train for many days, practicing a walk/pace he/she can duplicate perfectly. Using a dolly of some sort, film the shot many times with each set of shoes (at least five takes per shoe), keeping the camera move as consistant as possible. In post, with a good compositing program (like AE), find one perfect take, and roto the different shoes onto it - matching the timing, and fudging the position/scale/rotation as necessary. This way you're only concerned about matching feet, not the shot or the actor's legs. It will be difficult, but not impossible.

[J_Barnes]

You need motion control. Set up the tracking shot so that the foot falls into frame from the top, sync the motion control to a click track and have the actor step on each click. repeat the shot with different paris of shoes and edit when the shoe is out of frame and before the next one falls.

[Arcburn]

it will be very difficult to be seamless. But funky edits and a good soundtrack and it probably would still look cool.

My only suggestion would be put marks on the floor with tape and have the actor step on each mark as the walk, while you dolly. repeat. repeat. repeat.
funky editing and you have it.

[Policar]

My solution to everything is greenscreening. Use a dolly tape marks for where to step then shoot with a greenscreen. Make sure the pants don't have many folds and are very stiff so that they stay in about the same position. I'd then use elastic reality or whatever morphing software you can get your hands on to morph the last few frames of one clip with the first few frames of the next clip, then greenscreen the whole thing and toss in a moving background. Fake shadows might be necessary, too....that'd be potentially tricky.

This would be time consuming and pretty darned painful, but it would have the potential to look great. Just my opinion.

[matthewd5]

whichever option you use make really sure that the lighting does not vary the slightest bit!

ligthing will give you away and/or ruin the shot with even the slightest variation.

matthew

[Rich Lee]

here is what i would do...its a combination of what others have already said...

i call it human moco...

its all about timing. so what you need to do it get a stop watch. set your dolly and track up to where you want it. and get you actors in place. do a dry run to get the speed of the camera and people to to your liking. Tape something like a wooden rod or pencil or whatever to the underside of the dolly and place a mark (piece of tape or whatever) under the rod at your start and end point. make sure you have someone timing how long the dry run is. now lets just say your shot it 10 seconds long and the distance your dolly travels is 10 feet (just an example). Put a piece of tape with a mark on it at every foot along the track. what you will do is push the dolly along the track, and keep and eye on the rod and make sure you hit those marks at every second. you will need to get someone to call out seconds for you, so that whoever is pushing the dolly can hit those marks acuratly...so get a stop watch. you will also need to time the droping of the foot as well. so make sure you put marks on the floor for where the persons foot should fall, also time the drops as well...it will probalby help to have an extra bit of marks before and after the shot begins so that the actor can get up to speed before they get into frame...that should work! i just did something LIKE this recently...for th post portion of this...i would recommend getting a plugin called RE:twixtor for After effects. this will allow you to retime the footage should you need to nudge it a few frames to get it to match.

ok thats one way! another way would be too...

shoot it all on a treadmill! camera never moves, set the speed of the treadmill to something constant...this way they actor will always be walking at the same pace...the only thing you will have to do is make sure they stay in the right portion of frame..it shouldnt be too hard though...the tricky part then would be to shoot the background ground that they walk on...again...this could be solved by shooting the background that they walk on with a dolly and track at a very slow constant speed. then in post retime the background to match the footage of the actor on the treamill. ah, and you would have to shoot the actor on the treadmilll against green as well.

hmm..hope that helps!

peace

[Beat Takeshi]

i was thinking treadmill too with the steps painted on it and if they held the rails they would be in the same position on green screen.

[Neil Rowe]

... some marks on the treadmill would allow the walker to be sure that they are walking at a constant speed with equal stepping by lining the steps up with the marks.

[sojrn]

Find a sidewalk with the separation lines cut into them (easy) and use those as your reference points. Make sure your talent starts walking with the correct foot. *Lock the camera down on some sort of dolly and then redo every move with a different pair of shoes. *Intercut and... :)

[tumblemonster]

I would do this effect in post, or at least shoot a post option, in case your in camera/ on set stuff fails:

I would shoot a single pair of shoes for the entire length of the sequence (white I think). In post, I would use a compositing app (I use Shake personally, but any with spline based masking will work) and use a spline based mask (called rotoshapes in Shake) to outline the shoe. I would then keyframe color shifts to the colors I wanted. obviously this is the short answer. but in general I would try this technique.

-tm

[ctots]

How did this wind up working out? I have a similar problem to solve and I have already gone down the road of getting a treadmill. The shot looks nice and we greened the whole thing out. The shoe change is tricky. I hard cut is not going to work but maybe some nice transition or morp? Interesting problem and we are so close to getting it right. A lot of markers and making sure the models are hitting the mark!

[clang]

are you trying to have the backgrounds match too, so that the shoes appear to be magically changing while the background is continuous? That will indeed be difficult, to do it properly might well require motion control or greenscreening as above.

But presuming you're not trying to fool your audience into believing in magic shoes :) then I don't think it matters if the backgrounds change, the only important thing is for the shoes to appear consistently in the same position in shot (some sort of simple rig to match the walker's speed to the camera on a dolly track?) and you can then transition between the various walkers in post, simply matching the footfalls.