Shooting for matchmoving: Best camera movements

[Theiamania]

Shooting for matchmoving: Best camera movements

Hallo everybody,
In Post Prod I'd like to insert on footage 2D or 3D Object and I'm studying the right camera movements for a correct matchmoving. Up to now I realize that PAN, TILT, ROLL movements are really not good... cause create few parallax effect.

The right camera movements are of course Dolly, Crab, Boom, and a combination of them. But which is (which are) the best?
Any other suggestions?

Many thanks!

 

[mörkö]

I've only done very little matchmoving, mostly just tests. But, I've found the most important thing is not so much the "type" of camera movement, but what it reveals and obscures, and that depends on the type of set/scene. So you'll want to make sure that there are enough areas that are visible for the duration of whole shot. And that you have such areas at different depths.

Matchmaking softwares are really good at figuring out the camera movement, but it's always serious trouble if you need to track through areas that are even momentarily obscured or out of frame.

For example, (i'm not a cinematographer, and not even native english speaker, so pardon my misuse of terminology..) if you have dolly on long rails/tracks, and shoot so that the camera moves from left to right only ("truck"?), it's bad because stuff disappears on the left and new stuff appears on the right - little continuous areas. But if you pan at the same time so that the subject stays at the center, you might have more continuous information available (depending on how close the subject is, and how far the background...). I _think_ it would also introduce more parallax, but not sure, brain melts..

 

[Theiamania]

Hi M,
when you say:

if you have dolly on long rails/tracks, and shoot so that the camera moves from left to right only ("truck"?), it's bad because stuff disappears on the left and new stuff appears on the right - little continuous areas.

is for me not so right: all camera movements hides something and figures out other things... Pan camera movement creates many few parallax then dolly, crab and boom movements.
What you say here:

But if you pan at the same time so that the subject stays at the center, you might have more continuous information available

is right I think.
It means (maybe) that the best camera movement is a Dolly (in/out) where the center of image stays at the center.
With Crab and Boom Camera movements (Horizontal and Vertical dolly I mean) you have maybe to combine with Pan to stay on your subject: dolly movements creates parallax While panning movements allow you to stay on the subject.
But I want to personally experience these possibilities and we'll talk.

Bye