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Shooting in a moving car

Dutchboy

Dutchboy

I haven't gotten here yet, but I can stop thinking about how I would shoot in a moving vehicle. Has anyone done this before? Do you need lighting inside of the car? It will obviously be a very wide shot, no? If anyone has done so, please share your experience. I am very curious.
 
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We had numerous shots inside a moving car in the movie I produced. All were shot during the day, so we just used natural lighting. For the two character wide shot we had a rig setup on the hood of the car.
 
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One thing I can let you know in advance is, if your shooting during the day, and you live in a warm/hot area, be prepared to get extremely hot and sweaty.. drink alot of water. When we were doing car shoots, you have to do numerous takes ofcourse, and with the windows closed (so we dont hear outside noise) it can get very hot for the cameraman..

As for lighting. Try using reflectors. I used car reflectors, you know the ones you can buy to reflect outside light so your car doesnt get hot inside?

Im not sure how you would bring artificial light source in a moving car? IT must get extremely hot too..

make sure you and your actors stay hydrated, cant stress that enough.
 
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I've done a lot of work in cars and it always presents challenges. Large cars help, cars with removable seats help, and of course a camera mount for outside the car is a huge plus. Use hidden lavaliere microphones on your actors. But get creative...I've seen two clever ways of shooting inside cars just within the past year on network television. The first, from an episode of "House," had the actors handing a handheld camera back and forth in the front seat. It was zoomed close so all you could see was bits of their faces at any given time. You knew it was a car from the dialog, sound effects, occasionally seeing a seat belt or gear shift, but the shots never featured anything outside the car. It was unique...an extremely oppressive feeling, which matched the scene exactly. Then later on "The Office" they had the camera in the back seat shooting the passenger in profile talking to the driver, who was visible in the rearview mirror. You got to see both actors in the shot but realistically. Good luck, let me see what you come up with when you do!

-Joe
http://uraniumcityfilms.com
 
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MelonDome said:
One thing I can let you know in advance is, if your shooting during the day, and you live in a warm/hot area, be prepared to get extremely hot and sweaty..
Click to expand...

In additon to this, if its really sunny out and you are shooting with a car mount on the hood, or a camera in the back of the truck looking in the rear window, prepare for glare from the sun...you will be able to see yourself. Be aware of that. It's worse when the sun is facing you. It is best to shoot when its cloudy...like most exterior scenes i guess.
 
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I like the idea of the shooting the passenger and/or having the actors trade the camera back and forth.

1. Any recommendations for a camera mount?
2. Any lense filters used to keep reflections away and dealing with car windows?
 
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Dutchboy said:
I like the idea of the shooting the passenger and/or having the actors trade the camera back and forth.

1. Any recommendations for a camera mount?
2. Any lense filters used to keep reflections away and dealing with car windows?
Click to expand...

1. There are tutorials and such for building car mounts - you can probably find some online with a little searching. I had this DIY book with directions on how to build different filming devices. Tried the car mount one, it worked alright. I'll see if i can find the name of the book for you.

2. Reflections aren't that bad as long as your shooting away from the sun (or is it towards the sun, i forget).



Another thing you could do is just sit the passenger seat to get a good shot of the driver. If the actor is good, they could play it like the person they are talking to is actually there. Of course, if u want to get a more front on shot, you might not be able to wear your seat belt.....haha.
 
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Do you really need to shoot in a moving vehicle, or do you just need to present the effect that the car is actually moving? Many people opt to do the green screen thing, it's cheaper, and safer, and you can control all of the lighting, sound, etc. Video Copilot.net has an awesome tutorial on how to do this, it works! I just did a scene last weekend where I have my kids driving my pick-up in a high speed chase, just to experiment with the tutorial and mess around more with my green screen. My kids loved it, but want to do the chase scene for real, not gonna happen!
 
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The great thing about a green screen is that you can set it up anywhere. One method is to set a green screen up on the outside of the passenger's side window. You have both windwos rolled down so you can have a clear shot for the camera. The reflection of the moving exterior is done through VFX work in Post production. You can also build a prop set like I did once for an experiement. I had two people sit in two chairs in a room and one holding a steering wheel. Then you can build a virtual set around the characters, it takes a little time to do this, but it is another method. You can make a green screen out of anything that is light or bright green, it doesn't have to be an actual $300 vinyl screen. I use a large cloth section I bought for $40 at a fabric store. The important part in green screen though is getting the light even, otherwise you'll have to deal with shadows when chroma keying the green screen out. I bought the cheaper $40 cloth versus a $150-$300 vinyl screen because I can lengthen or shorten the cloth to the exact measurements I need, I can fold the cloth up quickly and transport it anywhere I want and lighting is still an issue whether you spend $40 or $300.
 
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Very interesting. I like the idea of the green cloth outside of the rolled-down windows. I might have to try that... Some questions:

1. What is the difference between green and blue screens?

2. When you shoot inside the car with the green screen outside. How do you go about adding the background (moving street signs, houses, etc.)?
 
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What's the difference between green, blue, purple? nothing. It all depends on what the characters are wearing. Green is also easier to work with in regards to lighting due to the dark primary color of blue (harder to chroma key out cleanly because of dark spots). But you can use blue if you have a lot of green in the background or green clothing. As far as adding the moving background, it's really a simple video track chroma keyed in for the background. For the opposite view (like looking at the driver's window and seeing a reflection of moving footage, you simply add the same video, play it in reverse (because you're audience won't notice that it's the same video in reverse), and lower the opacity so that it's nearly transparent, now, you'll have to tweak the video to shape it to the actual window size and shape and probably add either a bezel or bulge effect (in After Effects).
 
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I started a thread a few days ago about the Steddiepod, I've actually tried sitting in the passenger seat with this device standing up, just gotta plant your feet on two of it's legs to secure it to the floor, and it makes a quite decent in-car stabilization device. However, you would probably want to try this in the middle row of a minivan with the camera pointed out toward the side door, (with the door wide open) to get side-traveling shots. Hope that made sense...
 
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I mixed a cop movie-Evenhand- we pulled car with a tow bar did a hood mount for wide master shots. Then window trays per sides for coverage. Small blimped honda genie mounted on front grill of truck powered 1200 hmi joker thru softbox for a little light on the faces. At night they used Kino car kit (two small 6" florescent tubes one per side) taped to dash. I miked with cardiod mics on each side hid wires layed down in back floorboard to run dat and do timecode slate it seemed to work fine. Shot 35mm looked and sounded great at the theater.
 
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We tried using the Cinesaddle on a dirt road, but with disappointing results. You can see the footage below (the shots of the bicycle). It would probably work much better on a paved road though. The key is to get it stabilized enough so you can correct in Motion, Shake or After Effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUSbxzcMs_4&fmt=22


for long shots, it was impossible for me to satisfactorily stabilize the footage in post, but for medium and closeups, I was able to just stabilize it.
 
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