Technical question - extreme eye zoom

P

Peter Reynolds

Well-known member
Hi there.

I'm trying to transition from black, to my actors face, by zooming out from the actor's pupil (which of course is black).

The previous scene is the actor's childhood memory, so I thought it would be effective to essentially be zooming out from the window of the actor's soul.

I've seen the effect in a variety of movies, one in particular I believe is the opening sequence from Star Trek: First Contact. The camera (from black) zooms out from Picard's pupil to reveal him inside a borg vessel.

Regardless, does anyone have an idea of how this shot can be done? Is it a macro lens or animation? Any suggestions or instructions you might have would be much appreciated.

Best,

Peter
 
I believe it might be fairly easy to accomplish in two steps- The first step is a large close up of the character, the second being normal footage zooming out. You start with the photo on your timeline, extremely blown up to where all you see is the pupil, slowly zooming that out and blending it with the footage.
 
Extreme eye zoom

Extreme eye zoom

Ok. So your suggesting taking a digital still photo of the actor's eye (so you can zoom out from the iris) and then blending it with a video zoom (say from an HVX) from the eye to the actor's face.

If this is what you mean, how would you suggest doing the blending from still photo to moving video? Is this something that can be done in a standard NE like Premiere or Avid? Or do I need to use Photoshop before hand?

Any step-by-step techniques you (or anyone else reading this) may have, would be very helpful.

Cheers,

Peter
 
If it's a lightning-fast zoom, you won't notice the low res anyway. Zoom in as far as you can and fake the rest digitally.

What are you shooting this on?
 
You take a full on eye and partial face shot of the character in position, and increase the scale until the pupil fully fills your monitor. Increase it's duration to maybe 2 seconds, decreasing the scale at the end frame. Then you match that to the speed of your video zooming out, which will be shot from close up face zooming out. It should work at least as well as trying to cg it.
 
Great advice

Great advice

Thanks Everyone.

Professor U - I'll be shooting this on a HVX200

Capt Quirk - Your advice sounds good. I'm going to do a couple of test shots and post them in the next few days.

The zoom isn't particularly fast, so I'll have to be careful so the transition (from still to video) isn't that noticable. We'll see.

Have a great night.

Peter
 
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