Continuous Pan from scene to scene

Broken Science Films

Broken Science Films

Active member
I have a shot that I'm trying to pull off and I'm trying to figure out the best way to shoot it. Let me explain the scene first:

It is a continuous 360 degree pan where we start in an apartment with one character sitting on a couch and then end up in a classroom, where students are sitting around the camera, on chairs, in a circle. *This is supposed to look like one fluid, continuous pan, regardless if their is a cut or effect.

The ideas I have are to hide the cut by passing over a pillar, which should fill the screen black, allowing a cut point from both settings.

or:

To shut the lights off from the initial lighting set-up, while simultaneously bringing up a lower key lighting set-up (essentially spot-lighting the characters). Then mimicking that same move at the other setting and cutting on an area that falls to complete blackness. This would be similar to an effect seen in theatre.

I am going to do test shots for both these methods but would really appreciate any ideas on how else to acheive this shot (on the cheap!). And if anyone knows of any examples of this shot in another movie, that would be great as well.

Thanks!
 
It could potentially be a dolly, although I only have a pvc-track dolly that can go only forward and backward, but what's your idea? I could always rig something or rent.
 
Pan's Labrynth has a lot of transitions using the first method you described. Although I believe they are mostly tracking shots not pans.

davide
 
I did something very similar (transfer from a classroom into a stage in one continuous shot via a pvc-track dolly)

It takes place at ~1:35 here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWmHRIIbZ6s

What I did for the shot was measure the distance between the desks, the focal length of the camera (widest setting), the distance from both legs of the closest chair to the dolly track (gets the distance and the track angle to the chairs) so those things where the same in both locations, and then pushed the dolly back and forth 5 times on each location. I found two the matched closely in speed (one in each location) during editing. Crossfade between them.

So basically I just found a camera move that I could cover twice in two separate locations focused around an object present in both locations. So for your shot, if the actor is in both locations, you could start wide, zoom and pan around the room so that when you see the actor he/she is in CU and pan completely across their face. Then in the classroom start in a close-up on their face and continue panning in the same direction and zoom out to reveal the new location.

Hopefully this will help.
 
Pan's Labyrinth is a great movie for transitions. Rope is a great film in many ways, but those transitions don't hold up for me. Great concept, but obvious in its execution.

I would stick with the pillar idea. It's simple and effective. If you control the rate of the pan, you should't have any problems in editing. When I come across something like this I do a simple test. Find a pillar, or a wall, or something similar and do a 180 degree pan through it. Then do another pan in a different environment and see how well you can match the footage to see how smooth it looks. Matching your lighting to smooth things out will help, but first see if that plan will fit your needs.
 
If your motion is consistent you won't need to wipe completely to black, assuming you can do any sort of primitive effect in post. A motorized pan head might be ideal for this concept.
 
Cryogenic Filmworks said:
Try watching ROPE by Hitchcock. He used methods such as this for the movie which is essentially a one shot movie.
Click to expand...

Yea, that's a great movie, the cuts only coming when the film runs out. If I remember correctly he used a lot of cuts where he would go in on a characters back or something else in the scene and then cut to that same shot and come out of it for the transition. Maybe I'll go back and watch that again, its been some time...
 
Gohanto said:
I did something very similar (transfer from a classroom into a stage in one continuous shot via a pvc-track dolly)

It takes place at ~1:35 here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWmHRIIbZ6s

What I did for the shot was measure the distance between the desks, the focal length of the camera (widest setting), the distance from both legs of the closest chair to the dolly track (gets the distance and the track angle to the chairs) so those things where the same in both locations, and then pushed the dolly back and forth 5 times on each location. I found two the matched closely in speed (one in each location) during editing. Crossfade between them.

So basically I just found a camera move that I could cover twice in two separate locations focused around an object present in both locations. So for your shot, if the actor is in both locations, you could start wide, zoom and pan around the room so that when you see the actor he/she is in CU and pan completely across their face. Then in the classroom start in a close-up on their face and continue panning in the same direction and zoom out to reveal the new location.

Hopefully this will help.
Click to expand...

I liked the shot. Even though your could see the fade, you surged up the sound to draw attention to it, which made it kind of stylish and it worked better than if it stood on its own, which would have drawn attention to itself in a bad way. Thanks..
 
ProfessorU said:
If your motion is consistent you won't need to wipe completely to black, assuming you can do any sort of primitive effect in post. A motorized pan head might be ideal for this concept.
Click to expand...


I have after effects, but what would you suggest for the effect? I want it to look seemless, so the black pillar idea is not ideal. I want it to look as if the set is actually split into two sections, the apartment and the classroom. Would I do some sort of wipe, but keyframe it so it matches perfectly and doesn't appear to be a wipe? Would that look fluid and not obvious? I'm not all that skilled with after effects and all of its possiblilities yet. Any suggestions?

Good suggestion about using a motorized pan head, that would help out a lot.
 
Well - this might sound ridiculous - but have you thought about doing this as a practical on-set effect? If you could mimic the walls of the apartment, you could build a set within the classroom covering part of two walls...then do a 180 degree pan revealing the classroom behind (possibly dimming the lights on the apartment set, and bringing up the lights on the classroom set - treating it like a stage transition).

From that point you would cut into the rest of your shots with the set removed.
This might be more time/money/effort than you wanted - but it would be a visually smooth way of pulling it off.

Otherwise, I would go with ProfessorU's suggestion of a motorized Pan head.
 
I figured if you have two tripod shots with motorized heads, you could use almost any object, moving or not, that spans the frame from top to bottom and crosses against the movement of the pan.
You just matte out the part of the shot beyond the wiping object. It will probably look cooler if the object is something moving, like a person.
 
this shot is in the Pawnbroker. they pan 360 degrees around the interior of a subway to transition to a 360 pan of the interior of a nazi train.

I would just do some tests and try to match your pan speed as best you can. Throw em together and see if it works. I would guess that as long as the speeds are pretty close it'll work. And if it does work it'll be pretty easy.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys! i did a test today and it worked really well. What I did was matched a corner from each room and then used that as the cutting point. I then put the two images together, having the next image come in when we first see the corner from the first shot. I then keyframed in a matte to follow the seam (corner), eventually taking over the whole frame with the second pan. I'll post the finished shot as we start shooting over the next couple of week.
 
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