How to film first person shots

ramsaur

ramsaur

Veteran
I have a friend (not with dvxuser) who is wondering how to do a shot of a gun in first person. Like what we see in the shooter video games. First person with gun pointed out. I'm interested to so let me hear from you.
 
I once grip clipped a sword to the rods of my camera and it gave a sort of first person shooter look. Perhaps you could use something to attach a gun in that position....I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is one of those mini cardelinni's -> 20 inch C-stand arm -> cardelinni onto the gun. Then you can position the gun in frame and it'll move right with the camera.
 
It's really pretty simple. Just pulled it off in a feature we wrapped a couple of weeks ago. It's a handheld shot with the operator holding the cam with one hand and extending the pistol into the frame with the other. With cameras the size of the HVX it works very well. Heavier would require a rig.

But you want to maintain the organic feel of an arm and hand holding the weapon. The pistol scanning back and forth within the frame actuall looks pretty good as opposed to just locked in place. A little of both worked well.
 
Yea, I did something like this before, made it look like counter strike source in real life.

One method is just film all the shots walking with the camera at eye level. Then record some shots of your hand and gun and whatever weapon on a green screen. and composite them together with a hud overlay.

If I can find the footage I will post
 
Masta T said:
Yea, I did something like this before, made it look like counter strike source in real life.

One method is just film all the shots walking with the camera at eye level. Then record some shots of your hand and gun and whatever weapon on a green screen. and composite them together with a hud overlay.

If I can find the footage I will post
Click to expand...

That sounds really interesting. If you can upload. I'd like to see.
 
The greenscreen method sounds good, but I don't know if it would work if there's a lot of movement. If you didn't have to keep the lighting the same, it'd be pretty awesome.

Just holding it into frame is probably the best idea. I feel like you'd have to try a few of these out to figure out what looks most like a first person shooter though.
 
I made this in school several years ago, before I had a good cam.
This was just made for fun. You can see the shot of the gun and hand looping.
Lighting for hand will be the only main issue, but if its real quick, most people wont notice, and older fps games didn't have light on the hands anyway.

This mainly shows the principle works, and with good planning and execution, it should come out good.

http://burpsicola.com/video/css.mov
 
The most realistic way to do it is using a steadicam. Since your brain compensates for shake,vibration and horizon issues, a steadicam creates the most true-to-life looking shots. Then you can add a green screen composite of an arm.

For example the movie Doom or strange days.
 
Steadicam op here. It takes two hands to operate Steadicam thus the hand holding the gun would have to be another person's or a prop arm and hand or the aforementioned green screen technique.

Folks don't over think this one. It's great to be creative but I'm telling ya the simple way is sometimes the best.
 
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