Dolly through a wall

[djkarn105]

I'm trying to figure out how to pull this shot off.

The shot starts off a longish medium shot of a little girl watching tv. The camera starts to truck right and the wall comes in to frame, and passes through the foreground revealing the people in the next room.

I know ideally this would be shot on a set and I'd just pass across one of the flats but in the house where we're shooting the two rooms are on opposite ends of the house.

The best I can think of is doing the dolly for both shots and putting them together.
Will that sell without a motion control system?

 

[seejay1031]

Off the top of my head...
The wall is probably 5 inches think, much wider than the lens of your camera, therefore if a camera could pass through a wall the entire wall would cover the frame for at least a couple frames, therefore identical speeds (but you should shoot for similar speeds) are not neccesary, so neither is motion control, but...
The wall itself is an issue. The speed of the dolly should not slow to a stop as you approch and "break through" the wall, therefore you need to either
1. Bulid a false wall that the camera can "pass through" and will block out all light visible to the camera on the non action side of the false wall, for both rooms. Then its just a matter of cutting on black.
2. Dolly right up to the physical wall and start right at the wall in the other room. Get good referance photos of the two walls. Planar Track both scenes and add new 3d walls in several feet from the real wall so that the camera can pass through the virtual one. Garbage matte out the remainder of the room, realistically comp the two scenes and again cut on black.

 

[Dzip]

Great suggestions seejay!
Along seejay's reasoning Adding an object like a desk against the wall will give you the opportunity to do the wipe before going through the actual wall. Having other objects in the foreground before you get to the object could make this less suspicious (say a lamp, a plant). Same thing when you start from the wall in the other room, this time, you could put a shelf against the wall. Just enough room to start off from black.

Let us know how it went!

 

[clang]

So long as you only need to see the wall end-on (which depends somewhat on your camera angle), then you can do the whole thing in post. Just film both rooms at exactly the same dolly speed, and then it's relatively easy to do a sliding cut between them so it all looks continuous, including some sort of wall end-on between them.

But check with your editor first!

 

[djkarn105]

Just film both rooms at exactly the same dolly speed!

Easier said than done.

2. Dolly right up to the physical wall and start right at the wall in the other room. Get good referance photos of the two walls. Planar Track both scenes and add new 3d walls in several feet from the real wall so that the camera can pass through the virtual one. Garbage matte out the remainder of the room, realistically comp the two scenes and again cut on black.

I probably should have mentioned that I want both rooms to be on screen at the same time. Maybe it's in unrealistically thin wall?
I thought about shooting a plate of the actual walls and comping those in as well. With a good matchmove it would probably sell better than a 3d render anyway.

good thoughts,
thanks guys

 

[clang]

If both rooms are to be on screen at the same time, then yeah, you probably don't want to have the wall end sitting in the middle of the screen taking up space.

So just be open to the audience that they're seeing splitscreen. You can still pretend to dolly through the wall, that's probably a good way to orient the audience so they realise they're seeing both sides of the wall. You just don't need to worry about it being done seamlessly because the wall no longer needs to seem real.