Best way to shoot transparent character?

K

Kugar13

Well-known member
I have a shoot coming up where I want to have a male character transparent on screen interacting with a female character. A bad example would be a ghost interacting with the living. Please forgive the bad example.

I wasn't sure what would be the best way to shoot this.

Should I shoot the same scene twice and change the opacity of one of the shots?

Should I shoot the transparent person on a green screen? If I did this what advice/tips would you have for someone who hasn't worked w/ green screen?

Are there options I didn't think of?

Should I have posted this in the editing section?

I've played with this before on a music video I did. The results we got look great for that video, but won't work for the new shoot. I don't want the opacity of the person not translucent to be hampered by the transparent footage.

Here's a link to my previous project:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=i4yxCGdrYm8


Thanks!
 
If you can shoot as a lock-off, or series of lock-offs, with the transparent character alone, then the other char alone, you can then do the math (this is the part I don't know how to do, but I hear it's pretty easy) in the editing you can control the transparency.

Who knows what I'm talking about? Same thing they use for motion control shots.
 
just fading a locked off shot on top of a plate will make both characters transparent. You could rotoscope the 'ghost' character, but if you're doing that you might as well use green screen.

Best tips for greenscreen...

Shoot a plate to put behind it. Don't forget that, or you'll end up kicking yourself. To death.

Seperate the screen from the actor as much as possible.

Light it evenly; try to get all sections of it within a half stop.

Make sure it is flat. Folds or wrinkles can be a nightmare.

Ensure that your actor does not wear ANY green.



Hope that helped.
 
thanks

thanks

thanks for the suggestions guys!

a few quick questions...

when you say lock-off you mean to lock the camera in a spot and don't move it, right?

what is meant by 'shoot a plate to put behind it'?

thanks for the help! much appreciated!!!!
 
correct, locking the camera off means to keep it from moving at all. The idea is that each shot will be the EXACT same frame and in most cases lighting.

A plate is a recording of the locked off frame with no actors or models in place. You use this blank "background" as a replacement background for a green screen composite (you have to replace all that green with something after all).

When shooting your plate, be sure to remember NOT to rack your focus from where it should be with actors in place. This means that in a lot of cases your plate will be blurry. That's exactly what you want. Focusing to the background for your plate means you have to re-blur it in post and match it to the actual blurred background, which will be a pain.
 
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