Need help with shot (pull out from actor's iris)

P

Peter Reynolds

Well-known member
Hi there.

We're shooting a short fantasy film, and there's an FX shot that's proving to be a challenge. In this scene our actor is talking about the universe, which is represented on screen as blackness with a few stars. We then want to transitition to the actor's iris and pull out from the iris to a full shot of the actor's face.

My DP and I figure that the move from the iris (full frame) to a medium shot of the actors face can't be done in one move.

We'd love to get anyone's thoughts on how to get this effect and what gear (lenses, diopters, etc) we would need to accomplish it. Can it be done in one move? Do we need to do an FX morph between two moves?

We'll most likely be shooting with an Arriflex BL4 with a green screen backdrop.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Peter
 
you MAY be able to do it..... try an extension tube, and a LONG lens. like a 105 or 135. you may just get away with it.... Though you need a hellva 1st.
 
go for a zoom.

I spent 3 hrs (midnight to 3am) one morning trying to perfect that shot because the director wanted a dolly out instead of a zoom out. 200mm macro on SR3.
Looked good, but a zoom would have been sooo much easier...

http://www.emrl.com/j/downloads/Demo2.wmv 16 seconds in.
 
Any kind of dolly movement will require an intense focus pull from your 1st, like Timur said. This will be a very difficult shot depending on how far out of the iris you want to come. I would suggest a macro lens, wide angle very close to the actor, with a slow dolly out. This will help with your depth of field, so you have more than just 1-2 inches to work with, as well as steadying a dolly move, as compared to having to do the same move on a 135mm lens...not fun.
 
Blow up shot to get effect

Blow up shot to get effect

Thanks for tips.

I have another thought. Would it be easier to start with the whole eye (full fame) and the dolly out to the face?

The movement from the iris to the eye could them be done as a digital zoom in post. We just have to match the speed of the digital zoom to the dolly.

Would this work? We'd be shooting in 35mm and transfering to HDCam for editing. My first thought is that the image should hold up to some zooming, particularly considering that the shot shouldn't last more than a second or so.

Let me know what you think. If you have any examples, that would be even better.

Cheers,

Peter
 
Hitchcock did this in Physco but froze the frame at one point during the rotating transition

Instead of talking about it; get to actually practicing it.
 
Practice makes perfect

Practice makes perfect

Thanks for the suggestions.

Though normally I'd agree that practice makes perfect, the expensive rental of the camera (35mm), processing, HD transfer and all the other gear means I need to talk about it a little bit first :)

Any other suggestions people may have (including technical specs for scanning the film for our compositor to do the digital zoom) would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Peter
 
Ahhhhh Didn't catch the 35mm

I think the Close up and Dolly out is the best bet

Is it s low or fast pull ?
 
Pull speed

Pull speed

It's a fairly fast pull, so my gut tells me that any graininess that comes from the digital zooming our compositor does will be masked by the speed.

The key I believe is just to match the speed of the digital zoom to the camera dolly.

I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

Cheers,

Peter
 
Thanks for the link J.R. Hudson. It gives me some ideas.

If anyone else has some thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Otherwise, I'll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes.

Have a great weekend.

Peter
 
I did a shot like this with a dolly and a zoom(all digital) and founf it much easier to start with the wide shot and zoom into the iris then reverse it in post. It was just too difficult hitting the final frame consistently doing it with the pull out.
 
>It was just too difficult hitting the final frame consistently
>doing it with the pull out.

I had the opposite experience. odd.
 
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