puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi all:
I shot a documentary this year about a famous musician where we went to South America and shot tons of green screen interviews. We are now wrapped and I have a day next week to shoot the backdrops. The producer has hired an art director and our motion graphics artist will be on set as well. The challenge is, the art director has strongly advocated for shooting the sets in miniature at a scale of 1' = 1". I shot all of my interviews with a S35 imager camera at 23.98 fps, camera to subject was 10-12' on a 75-85mm focal length at a 3.2 typically. I used an 8x8 green screen in all cases. So the backdrop sets the art director will build will be 2' wide by 10" high. We will shoot lock offs but the producer also wants some slow subtle movement. I own the 42" and 24" Rhino Slider with Motion so I am thinking we can do small scale moves that should look smooth.
Questions?
1. If we shot our interviews at 23.98p, it seems to me that it would make sense to shoot the miniature background plates, because they are reduced scale, at a higher frame rate, especially with the moves. I am thinking at least 30p and possibly 60p. My camera won't shoot at 48FPS which would be double. A higher frame rate will smooth out little imperfections in the movement and would give the compositor a lot of flexibility about the speed of the move, correct? Is there any sort of formula I should be using? I have the C200 so I can shoot 1080 up to 120 FPS but producer keeps telling me to shoot at 23.98, which seems wrong. 24p on laterial moves is stroby and stuttery unless you are moving at a glacially slow pace. THe compositor and editor flat out refuse to let me shoot 4K 60p RAW, they say, "we are not set up at all for any kind of 4K workflow or processing." So I am stuck shooting 1080, so I can shoot up to 1080 30p 4:2:2 10-bit to my Ninja Blade or can shoot internal 8-bit 4:2:0 at up to 120 fps. These particular plates will not be keyed as they are the BG plate so not sure if 4:2:0 8-bit will suffice. Not sure if the higher frame rate wins out over the 10-bit 4:2:2 I could record with the Blade but only up to 30p versus 60 or 120 fps with the C200 .MP4. I wish I could shoot some tests but no time and resources are available to do so. Sets are being built tomorrow for shoot Monday.
2. As far as lighting, the producer wants lots of mottled and potentially slowly moving lighting. I am bringing my wooden and screen cucs, a big roll of 24" wide cine foil, a Branch-o-loris (tree or bush branches to use as moving gobos), scissors to cut up the cine foil into patterns and gobos. We are also going to shine lights through some slowly moving Mason jars, possibly with colored water in them. The whole feel is very Tropical, South American Jungle so lots of ways to break up the light and add slow and subtle movement are needed. Any more suggestions on other ways to control the light in this manner? I'll probably make a "shaker" by putting strips of gaff tape on a C-stand arm and rigging that with a slight fan on it to add some moving shade and light.
3. We are shooting full sized tropical plants as well, compositor wants them on blue screen, but we are bringing a red screen as well for safety as many green plants will have a lot of blue in them. Has anyone shot and composited jungle plants before? Did you have success with blue screen? I am going to rent a Hazer for the miniatures and for some shafts of light on props as well as plants.
4. Will also be shooting some props like musical instruments, masks, etc. These will be full sized and shot on an 8x8 blue or red screen to be composited against the reduced scale backgrounds. Anything I should be concerned with? We are mounting the props and plants on Apple boxes wrapped with blue or red material as well for keying it out so the objects should be totally scalable in compositing?
I have shot lots of tabletop so I am pretty aware of how to light and make smaller things look good. But I have never shot minature for full size, what other gotchas are there to watch out for?
Thanks!
I shot a documentary this year about a famous musician where we went to South America and shot tons of green screen interviews. We are now wrapped and I have a day next week to shoot the backdrops. The producer has hired an art director and our motion graphics artist will be on set as well. The challenge is, the art director has strongly advocated for shooting the sets in miniature at a scale of 1' = 1". I shot all of my interviews with a S35 imager camera at 23.98 fps, camera to subject was 10-12' on a 75-85mm focal length at a 3.2 typically. I used an 8x8 green screen in all cases. So the backdrop sets the art director will build will be 2' wide by 10" high. We will shoot lock offs but the producer also wants some slow subtle movement. I own the 42" and 24" Rhino Slider with Motion so I am thinking we can do small scale moves that should look smooth.
Questions?
1. If we shot our interviews at 23.98p, it seems to me that it would make sense to shoot the miniature background plates, because they are reduced scale, at a higher frame rate, especially with the moves. I am thinking at least 30p and possibly 60p. My camera won't shoot at 48FPS which would be double. A higher frame rate will smooth out little imperfections in the movement and would give the compositor a lot of flexibility about the speed of the move, correct? Is there any sort of formula I should be using? I have the C200 so I can shoot 1080 up to 120 FPS but producer keeps telling me to shoot at 23.98, which seems wrong. 24p on laterial moves is stroby and stuttery unless you are moving at a glacially slow pace. THe compositor and editor flat out refuse to let me shoot 4K 60p RAW, they say, "we are not set up at all for any kind of 4K workflow or processing." So I am stuck shooting 1080, so I can shoot up to 1080 30p 4:2:2 10-bit to my Ninja Blade or can shoot internal 8-bit 4:2:0 at up to 120 fps. These particular plates will not be keyed as they are the BG plate so not sure if 4:2:0 8-bit will suffice. Not sure if the higher frame rate wins out over the 10-bit 4:2:2 I could record with the Blade but only up to 30p versus 60 or 120 fps with the C200 .MP4. I wish I could shoot some tests but no time and resources are available to do so. Sets are being built tomorrow for shoot Monday.
2. As far as lighting, the producer wants lots of mottled and potentially slowly moving lighting. I am bringing my wooden and screen cucs, a big roll of 24" wide cine foil, a Branch-o-loris (tree or bush branches to use as moving gobos), scissors to cut up the cine foil into patterns and gobos. We are also going to shine lights through some slowly moving Mason jars, possibly with colored water in them. The whole feel is very Tropical, South American Jungle so lots of ways to break up the light and add slow and subtle movement are needed. Any more suggestions on other ways to control the light in this manner? I'll probably make a "shaker" by putting strips of gaff tape on a C-stand arm and rigging that with a slight fan on it to add some moving shade and light.
3. We are shooting full sized tropical plants as well, compositor wants them on blue screen, but we are bringing a red screen as well for safety as many green plants will have a lot of blue in them. Has anyone shot and composited jungle plants before? Did you have success with blue screen? I am going to rent a Hazer for the miniatures and for some shafts of light on props as well as plants.
4. Will also be shooting some props like musical instruments, masks, etc. These will be full sized and shot on an 8x8 blue or red screen to be composited against the reduced scale backgrounds. Anything I should be concerned with? We are mounting the props and plants on Apple boxes wrapped with blue or red material as well for keying it out so the objects should be totally scalable in compositing?
I have shot lots of tabletop so I am pretty aware of how to light and make smaller things look good. But I have never shot minature for full size, what other gotchas are there to watch out for?
Thanks!
