OK... Here's what I'm thinking...

ryan brown

ryan brown

lOwEr CaSe Member
I'm shooting a music video soon, and I have a story idea, but no idea how to get it done.

I'm going to shoot the band sitting on a couch approximately 10-15 feet away from the camera. Couch will be in a large greenscreen environment.

Then, I'm going to stick my camera on a car rig behind my vehicle. Then I'm going to drive down a road at 20 miles an hour and shoot the road behind me.

Now I want to place the couch so it looks like it's slowly cruising down the road.

I can manage to fing a stretch of road without turns or hills (to avoid 3d'ing the couch), but I'd have no idea how to get the couch footage to match the camera footage. I know the camera will shake, but I don't know how to link the two so the couch shake's with the road footage. Can I just track the shake's somehow?

I'm a AE newbie, by the way.

Is this idea going to come out looking realistic AT ALL? Why or why not?

Should I go back to plan "A" and scratch the whole greenscreen thing?


Any and all thoughts appreciated.

-brown
 
You're going to need a good understanding of compositing and lighting to pull this off "realistically", realistically being the key word. You can make it passable, but it all boils down the level you want to pull off.
 
If you get the lighting and perspective right, it should be easy to do. Just do some tracking, basic comping and some CC and that should be it. If you don't get it right, however, it will look pretty fake.
 
If you shoot the road scene first then it will be easier to match up the couch to it you could even project the road scene behind the talent and match up some couch moves on some kind of rig for uber cool realism and negate the 3d work.
Use the projected footage as reference for when the road twists and turns and turn the couch accordingly at those points then key/ roto out the couch and then composite the original road footage in back voila perfect.
 
A couple things to consider.

1) CAMERA POSITION
Nicholas is right to suggest shooting the road scene first. As you shoot, take a tape measure and a level, and document exactly how high off the ground the camera is and at what angle it is pointing. Later, you'll want to replicate that exactly on your stage.

2) LIGHTING
As you drive, you'll likely encounter changes in lighting. Whether caused by turns in the road, tree/powerline shadows, the sun moving behind clouds... you'll need to match these in post if you want everything to feel realistic.

3) MOVEMENT OF THE COUCH
Nothing stays perfectly stable as it moves along a road. To be "realistic", your composited couch will probably need to exhibit some sort of bounce and wobble, as if it has a suspension of sorts. How to achieve this is another question, I don't have any brilliant and easy suggestions at the moment.

4) MOVEMENT OF THE CAMERA
You're right that there will be some camera shake. It seems like the best way to deal with it would be to shoot your master road frame with the back of your vehicle visible around the edges of the frame. You can then use those visible corners as tracking markers to get your camera shake data, and apply the same data to your couch footage to match. Crop out the part of the shot where we see the vehicle, or don't, if you like it there.

Most important of all: shoot a test! Go out and give it a try. At least do the road stuff and see what unexpected consequences happen.
 
Excellent ideas, my friends. I'm lovin the idea to leave a bit of the vehicle in frame for tracking points.

And Nicholas... very creative ideas. I'll see what I can (and cannot) accomplish.

I'm going to go out and do some testing early next week.

I'll keep this thread going to show my progress, and the finished video, which needs to be done my May 20th or so...

thanks a ton, and keep 'em coming if you think of anything else.

-brown
 
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