Need advice on how to pull of a spinning, downward moving shot on a low budget

MikeWilkinson

MikeWilkinson

Veteran
Here's the shot I'd like to get:

Scene: A large industrial/techno dance club, filled with dancers on the dance floor.

Shot: A wide angle shot looking directly down onto the floor, centered on one dancer. The dancer begins to spin (she is starting to freakout) and the camera spins in the same direction she does, while pushing in towards her. This makes the scene spin out of control while keeping her somewhat static (to the eye) The shot ends when she stops spinning and is looking up at the camera.


Any idea how could I pull this off? I need the camera (7D or HVX) to spin around the center of the lens, and I need it to be relatively controlled from the high height to the low height, and obviously keep my talent safe. I don't have much money to put into this, but can drop a couple hundred bucks for a working solution. I've got a few rough ideas in my head, but would love input you can think of a solution!
 
If your shooting 720p, shoot this shot in 1080 and then zoom in and add the spin in post. Might have to be subtle but it would work.

Otherwise you have to rig something up (or hang for the ceiling which could be dangerous). Two really tall ladders with boards between them might work. Not sure how high you need to get but it could be dangerous.

If the club has a balcony just shooting a static shot overhead from the balcony straight down and then manipulate in post would be the safest/cheapest. Remember, changing the script to make it work is often the best idea with no budget.
 
As a jib owner, I'd advocate for using one with a remote head. Rental days aren't that expensive and you'd have the rig (and likely the operator) there to execute more than the one shot. The shot you're describing could be set up in a few minutes from an underslung remote head.

If you're doing a big move in a relatively dark set, your focus change is going to be a consideration. Off the jib, which should have a wireless FF available in the package, you might enable auto-focus for this one particular shot. The HVX auto-focus is especially slow in 24 frame modes, but in a wider shot, you should be able to get a faster response without hunting.
 
Erik- with a jib, wouldn't I get an arc on the move down, as opposed to straight up/down? I hadn't considered renting a package, that's an interesting thought.

Chris- I checked out that link the other day, there is some good stuff on there. I found an interesting setup for having the camera rotate around the lens, but that purchase would be about $800, which is a bit more than I'm trying to pay (all out of pocket here) for this. I may need to scale my expectation back a bit, but I'm not through exploring options just yet!

Thanks for the input, keep it coming.
 
You need the camera spin to match the dancer spin, i.e. have the dancer look reasonably static while the surroundings spin? Then I agree with Jimmy Moss that doing it in post would be the easiest option.
 
arges03 said:
Erik- with a jib, wouldn't I get an arc on the move down, as opposed to straight up/down? I hadn't considered renting a package, that's an interesting thought.
Click to expand...

Not much on a 12 - 16' jib, but certainly 20' arm will give you a noticeable arc.
 
I'd do it mainly in post with a compositing application such as After Effects from two takes:

One wide with the surrounding dance floor with rest of clubbers. Mark out a area in the middle for the main character and make sure it stays empty from the cam's point of view.

Now get her in-place, keep the camera in the same position but zoom in or use a telelens to frame her as tight as possible without any arm hitting the edge of the image.

Then in post match in her take in the middle of the first wider take. (You might want to shoot a take from each field-of-view with reference-markers on the floor to make this easier). If you are lucky you'll get away with a soft circular matte but chances are you have to do some roto-mattes. However with a frantic club lighting going the audience's eye will be distracted anyway so you are likely to get away with some fairly simple matting.

Link the first take to the second so when you start scaling into it they both stay snugly matched. Then start rotating the whole package once you are with-in a 'safe' area of the wide take. This whole trick relies on that the audience stay focused on the girl and will not really care that the surround part of the shot start to loose resolution. Also by using motion blur in the composting application you'll hide some of that res loss anyway.

Good luck!
 
i did a similar shot on a terrible short film back in college. http://www.youtube.com/user/CallipygousD#p/u/22/9-Mr3QvaLAs

i had no idea what i was doing at the time, but we took a painters pole, wrapped a bunch of wires around it, and then strapped an xl2 on the other end of the wires. one guy held this in the air over the actor. we then attached another cord to the handle and had one guy run around the room with it, causing it to spin. there's almost no way to control the spin, and it certainly swayed all over the place. now, that's what not to do.

as far as what you should do, if you can't afford the motorized head, i'd second the advice of cropping in and adding the spin in post, and just lowering on a jib, or a suspended slider dolly-- if you have something to elevate it with. we did this for Trapped, shooting down into a hole. we attached a pegasus slider to a tripod, and stretched the tripod legs across the hole. we used the slider a little different, and attached the sled directly to the tripod, and the camera to the slider footpeg. that way we could move the entire slider up and down and wouldn't get the rails in the shot. super steady and straight up and down. there's pictures of the shot and the setup on the Trapped page.
 
You could get a jib arm, and using a very strong L-shape bracket, invert a strong, but small fluidhead.

I have an example of a rig I built about three years ago, for a shot where we needed the camera to spin around as we trucked back on a dolly. You can probably see how to adapt it to a jib arm. I would however safety chain everything. Having things above the actors head is always to be approached with great caution.

See the link: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1836657&postcount=14
 
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