Forced Perspective

[Wilshireblvd]

Here's what I want to do...a great old trick used in Holy Grail, LOTR, and many others. I want to insert a scale model of an ancient ruined building into a scene in the woods, with three actors between the camera and the 'ruined building'. All of these passes would be on location so I'm not dealing with recreating the lighting. Here's what I'm thinking:

First pass with nothing but the shot lined up with the framing I want. This gets all the possible background (trees, etc)

Second pass with a bluescreen taking up whatever space the model will take in the frame, but with some of the closer trees in front of the blue.

Third pass with the actors in front of a large bluescreen, farther away from camera.

Fourth pass, the model using forced perspective on a platform in front of the camera.

Does what I'm going for make sense? Anyone know of a better way to do this?

 

[Mark Johnson]

There's a good discussion of using forced persepctive in Mark Sawicki's book "Filming the Fantastic" that may be helpful to you on this issue.

 

[tcindie]

It's also covered pretty well in the DV Rebel's Guide

 

[Loney Childress]

Yeh, if you green screen your actors and then use something like Andrew Kramer's 'Set Extension' tutorial (videocopilot.net) that should do the trick.