A Ghost

Gohanto

Gohanto

Veteran
Planning out an FX shot where I need a ghost to appear in frame. A real character steps up to her and just as he tries to hug her she vanishes.

I need coverage from 3 angles, 2 OTS and a profile two-shot.

I hate completely locked off camera work, so my idea was recording the scene three times. Once with the "real" actor only first and putting a card in frame with dots on it to motion track any subtle camera moves (just minor corrections to actor movement). Then recording with the "ghost" actor running the motions with another card in frame to track at a slightly wider setting so that I can zoom in slightly during post and match the tracking of the first shot. Then a final shot of the scene without anything so I can have information behind wherever the card was in frame.

Will this work or are there any other suggestions for this effect?

Thanks.
 
First of all, what type of camera are you using to shoot the scene? DVX? HVX? Something else? Are you using a 35mm adapter?
 
Panasonic GS 500, no adapter. Not the greatest, but it has controls on iris, gain, white balance, and shutter speed.
 
You might be able to pull a luma key if you're shooting against a black background. Other than that, a moving shot will be really hard to pull off. You can't just match the cameras because they're both live plates. If you had a CG ghost, you could do it, of course, by working a match move. But what you're talking about just isn't achievable. The only way your method would work is if you were using a motion control setup which would exactly replicate the same camera move for multiple passes of the same scene.
 
It's not a black background. If I shot the footage on a tripod, zoomed in slightly in post, and then added a slight camera shake in AE using the wiggler to give a handheld feeling, would that be a better option?

Thanks again,
 
you should just greenscreen/blackscreen your ghost into the scene. its really the most practical way of achieving what you want to do. motion track some actual practical elements in the shot, and composite your ghost in with the tracking data for movement matching. you may have to grow/shrik the ghost for any push/pull or zoom in /zoom out matcing of relative size, but thats very easy to do by hand. keep practical items in the forground out of the line to your ghost, or if you need forground elements for perspective change with camera movement try to only use items with flat edges to make any roto work easier.
 
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