Making Someone Levitate

[allhorrormovies]

How would you guys go about making someone levitate on film? I'm guessing that with tricks of the camera it could work. I have a scene in an upcoming short film where a girl with telekinetic abilities lifts someone up and levitates them out of a room. Any suggestions on how to pull this off without looking cheesy?

[Gopher_Greene]

Here's a few you can consider;

1. Use a cabling system. Put the actor in a harnass attached to cables. Takes a lot of rigging and a bit of expertise.

2. Green screen the floator and composite.

3. dress a coupls of big guys up in a uniformly colored, perferably chrome a key green and have them carry her out and erase them in post.

[MarkG]

I saw a demo on TV once where they had two guys completely dressed in black against a black background in shadow, with a bright light on the girl. They carried her out, and because of the low contrast range of video they were invisible in the darkness behind her.

Of course you'd need complete control of the setting and lights to make that work.

[Bogdan]

If you have enough space on the set, cable support is the best choice for best image quality, but it costs more and requires extra care. Wires are much easier to remove in post than making decent composite.

If you don't have resources/space for that, consider heavy duty dolly or truck that will carry your actor out of the room. Again, lifting an actor up and removing the truck (or whatever your actor will be standing on) in post will be easier than doing composite.

Green screen is probably the last option, but most likely it won't look as good as actual footage on the set. You will have many problems with the light, shadows and compositing, which of course can be overcome, but it won't be easy. Summarizing, my suggestion is do whatever you can to shoot the scene on the spot and remove unecessary objects in post. To do that you will need extra footage of empty room.

Good luck! Post some images when you're done with the scene.

[PopcornFlix]

Do NOT try to rig your own cabling system. You could seriously injure someone. Only fly someone on wires if you have an experienced, bonded rigger on your crew. To do this properly, you need special harnesses and structural supoort for the rigging.

I'd suggest doing the shot old-school. Put the talent on a doorway dolly, frame above her feet and roll her backwards. Then do an insert of her feet hovering above the ground, while some off-camera grips are lifting her by her arms . A little editing, and she's floating.