Moving into production, now we have a problem

Grug said:
It's called 'digital matte painting'. Get up real early, get some footage and high-res stills of the mostly empty streets (get footage of your actors walking down the middle of the road whilst it's empty), then photoshop them into complete emptiness. Add in some overturned cars, damage to buildings and some vfx smoke and viola! desolation.

That's a relatively easy way to go about it, and you can fairly simply do it as a test before you do any other shooting to see whether it is in fact possible to get the shots you want.

As for the 28 Days Later stuff, they had 7 cameras running because they did have the streets shut down, and they only had a very limited time to get the shots they needed.
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Yep that's why I said it on the previous page and it was not met with "I'm not sure I can do that" or "Thanks I'll try it" or "Are there any web tutorials on how to do that?" There was no reply because it's not what the original poster wants to hear.

Mattykins said:
Thanks for the help. Yeah, it's an ambitious project. But I just figured that a few people here would be able to at least be nice about it. Maybe I do have high expectations. I came here for help, not to be told I am an idiot for thinking I can pull this off. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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No you didn't come here for help. You came here for encouragement that your idea was viable. If you came here for actual help you would listen and discuss our responses.

No one called you an idiot. Just everyone said, there is no way this will happen and most even said here's an alternative, i.e., help. If you take that as being called an idiot then again, "help" is the last thing you were looking for. You wanted either "here is how you go about it, go see the mayor in person and slip him $50 under the table and he'll shut down anything you want, seems counter intuitive that he would cost the city thousands or millions by shutting down traffic and pissing off everyone in the city for $50 but trust me it happens all the time." or "Great idea. I see no problem with that. Go for it!"

There are people here who have participated in every DVXuser fest and have done well despite hurricanes, unemployment, and moving from one side of the state to the other - in other words that don't make excuses about "my camera this or that so golly, once again I couldn't pull it together." Just maybe one of their secrets is writing for their resources. Maybe as someone with 0 at bats, you might be inclined to listen to them.

Maybe you are afraid of completing a project so you pick ones that could never be completed. That's not meant as a dig at all. Really saying you should at least consider that. If you pick something that odds are slim to none in pulling off then that's very safe. For me my fear of success manifests in the form of procrastination. So again, not a dig. I just feel like you are setting yourself up to fail. Maybe there is a reason. Or maybe you are just super gung ho and I am full of beans. Could be either.

So write and go into pre-production for your deserted city, giant lizard, space odessy. We're all looking forward to you coming back to this thread in a couple of weeks and telling us we are all a bunch of grumpy old men who didn't know what they were talking about.

One last piece of advice - get this book.
The DV Rebel's Guide
The guy who wrote it does visual FX for Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and invented Magic Bullet. He will tell you the same thing at least two people already have. The DV rebel fakes it or steals it. You cannot steal it, you cannot pay for it, so you will have to fake it. Personally I would love to see you fake it. It could be a great effect and it's a much better story. "Wow these guys did this cool deserted city effect with stills from an SLR camera, it cost them NOTHING!"

Good luck :beer:
 
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Jack, I did come here for help. Yeah, I am entirely excited to do this. I had no idea how to even pull of the shot. I know we are pressing the envelope here.

If I came here for encouragement I would have said I am the best film maker in the world and look what I can do. I am only a kid still. 18 and on the brink of my career. My screenplays have been entered in competition, a few of my films did well that we did for fun. I didn't have a DVX so I couldn't enter drama fest and horror fest. Believe me I tried to pull money together. I had to settle on a HV20. Rather than enter films with cameras that would disqualify me I decided to spend my time writing. I finished my first feature film and entered it into Final Draft's Big Break competition. I have been working hard. Just not behind the camera.

So yeah, I am going to look into faking it. Our city here, Utica NY, is pretty quiet in the mornings. After talking it over with my other producer I think we are going to try it the vangard way, set up, and fake it. I have a lot of the stock footage from demolition films. So smoke and stuff is easy to do. But how would I go about adding in cars and such in post? Try to do it in AE I assume?

Now this is the forum I knew. Just in the future, rather than try and make someone feel stupid for asking for help, just try to give them some assistance. That's all many of us ask for. I do what I can, and I know many of you have far more experience than I do. I have done shorts, one 15min film and that's about it. You guys have far more experience than I. So lets try and learn as a group. That's why I love this forum. People generally seem helpful, I wasn't expecting the response I got. I was assuming someone once tried exactly what I am trying and had some tips.

So that said, should I try to go searching for some tutorials on how to insert cars and such. I have done very little compositing in my day. So I am kinda lost on how to do this. I'll give the web a search though. Thanks guys. I am sorry if I came off like a jackass or anything. I want to get this project going.

Cheers,

-Matt
 
Again - I didn't see any posts that said anything other than "it won't work" nothing condemning until maybe my last long post, which I hope you understand where I was coming from, but no posts in this thread that say "gee what dumbass" only, again, "no way that will work".

EDIT: OK maybe Aram's was a tad harsh since he focused on follow through, but you did just come right out and say "I have a problem with follow through" and every single other post suggested a way to do it, who you might talk to, was a joke, or simply stated why it wouldn't work.

As far as compositing let me know if you need any help in that area. There are a few basic "modes" that are pretty much standard across NLE's and AE and Motion.

The first thing you are going to do is try to make a digital matte of what you want which will mostly be just photoshop. You are just going to try and make a 2d flat matte painting. It will just involve cutting out areas that have people in it and replacing them with the same area from a photo from a different time of day when no one walked through that area.

If you think you can get an area that's virtually deserted then you can shoot your scene with live action and lock the camera down and as long as no one passes in front of or behind your actors then you can just matte out the areas where people do pass through - this is assuming a pretty far away wide shot.

As far as putting cars in if it is 2D then you can probably just do that with a combination of Photoshop and FCP or some other NLE's. You would want to take the car photo into photoshop and make a transparent PNG with just the car in the middle. or have the car surrounded by white, black, or green depending on the colors of the car and then in FCP or some other NLE's you can remove the color area. Black and white will go away easiest, again depending what colors are on the car.

If you need 3D elements then you would want to use AE or motion. I found a website with some free 3D models and some cheap ones. Can't remember where it was though ... will look for it later.

If you are using still shots, remember to add some noise so it matches the video.

In the book I recommended Stu Maschwitz describes how he blacked out an entire town for a national television commercial using shots he stole of the town from his SLR still camera. He doesn't go into technical detail, but it's just a good example of someone who actually has some resources getting even greater production value with this type of thinking.

I'll look for that site with the free 3d stuff. Of course the free stuff does not look as great as the non free stuff, but if it is for a still shot you could do a lot to dirty it up etc.
 
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Just so you know Matt, all cameras were welcome for the last DVXfest (Spyfest). Also, no need to list your credits... if you're good, you don't have to prove it :)

:thumbsup:
 
Mattykins said:
Just in the future, rather than try and make someone feel stupid for asking for help, just try to give them some assistance. That's all many of us ask for.
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you're just lucky this isn't the audio forum and you're not asking what microphone is the best. on second thought, go over there and ask that if you dare. :nads:
 
Thanks guys, I'll look into messing around on my street to see if I can pull that compositing off. One other thing I am stuck on now. Anyone know of a good place to buy military BDUs. We are looking into getting some from the production of V for Vendetta. But does anyone know of another place to buy them? We are having amazing luck with getting the costumes together.

Like I said, the next 63 days now should be interesting to say the least.
 
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