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Post Advice for Two Shot Ideas

Graeme

Graeme

I have an upcoming short where I want a guy fending off a hoard of his clones. I have two complicated shots that I need to do and I'm wondering if the following shot set-ups are the best way (from your experience).

SHOT #1
My Initial Plan is to shoot the scene in two sections.

Section #1 - Guy Attacking Rock
Will be clips (linked together) of this guy running at the location (a rock) where he will be later fending off the attackers, I will set-up the camera on a tripod on that rock and rotate it to show where guys are coming from.

Note: Rock will be a stool with paper mache around it.

Section #2 - Guy on Rock
Now I'll put this 'rock' on a rotating base and the guy will be on the rock and in-front of a green screen.
As the scene progresses and to match the rotation from before I will rotate the rock with the guy on it to simulate the camera rotation.

Merge
Merge in post (how) so that the Green-screen is front of the moving background, with luck it will all match up (I'll do multiple takes of course with the goal of timing up the rotations as best as possible.)
Afterwards I'll add the FXs between the two layers.

SHOT #2
I want a hoard of guys (of which I don't have and can't get - I got a small cast) running over a complex scene location. What I was thinking to do is shoot the scene without guys for the background and then have my guy run various patterns over the scene one by one then in post put all those take together.

Sort of using the initial shot as a method of excluding it from all the shots where the guy is running so I can overlay all those shots into one comp. (Not really sure how to do this:weird:).

Add FX after.

Thanks for your Advice, recommendations, and friendly comments.
 
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This seems like a scene better left OFF of green screen.

Dont forget the "overlay" and "add" modes.

Hers hows Iv read it being done.. (in my own words)

Do lots of short "shots" with no camera movement.

For each "shot"
  • you first shot a "plate" which is the shot with NO actors.
  • Then with out moving the camera, you shot a shot with your attacking actor moving to position A and doing some action.
  • Then again without moving the camera, you shot a shot with your attacking actor moving to position B and doing some action
(you can do this as many times for as many clones you want in the shot)

Finally, with the camera in yet the SAME spot you shot the NON-CLONE up on the rock pretending to fend off the clones.

Now move the camera to another dramatic position.. repeat the above..


When your in post, just add the layers for each shot group (I just made that term up, might be a better one elsewhere:) ), playing with the different modes (assuming AE by the way)
Now if your careful in your placement during shooting, so that none of the clones occupy the same space at the same time you don't even have to mask or rotoscope, though its very likely you'll have to do some..

This is the method used in that movie where Michel Keaton has a bunch of clones..

I think with this mode, you don't have to be inside and you can find a better rock which will separate the attackers form the attacked making your post that much easier.

Just thinking here..
 
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As I think of this I see further improvements...

If for a few shots you might want to see the attackers interacting with the attacked in a real way, hitting him on the shins with a stick or somit. To do this, get a stand in, have him dress in the Attacked outfit, shoes and pants at least, then if your shot is tight enough, just showing his legs and feet on the rock, then you can get some nice action of a clone breaking a balsam board over the shin of the "original" .. Youd want to have this cut with some wider shots where we see the "original" with the attacking clones.. but again, if you keep the face of the CLONES out of some of the shots (say just there hands and backs of there heads) you can use some more stand ins.. and get some more REAL interaction .. so in the end you really end up with only a few fished shots with the clones AND the Original in the same frame at the same time.. with the impression that the guy is being attacked by many clones..

Also, for the stand in shots, you can have camera movement, so the entire sequence doesn't have to consist of entirely static shots. Maybe even hand held for the shots with stand ins..
 
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and finally, you can create "difference mattes" and have basically all the flexibility of green screen with out any of the limitations..

this is where the "plate shot" comes in, since the only difference between the plate and the shot with the actor, is the actor, then a matte of the differences will be the same as having a tight green screen mask. Look into it, you can easily play with this with your camera on a tripod..
 
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As I study Im starting to believe that green screen is SELDOM the right answer for indie film.

Seems that only for impossible scenes, like me floating in space or something like that, would green screen be useful, and even the floating in space image would work with just shooting in a dark room, or outside at night with really good lighting on the subject letting the background fall of to black.. again.
 
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Well I tried a bit of green screen tonight

Using iSight Webcam
http://blip.tv/file/3334123

Using Flip Ultra HD
http://HPFP.blip.tv/file/3334130/

Basically the quality wasn't as high as I would of hoped (note I think it is the program I used for the Green Screen doesn't like a lot of processing power to handle 720p) I'll have to see how to do this with my DSLR and a better post program (Likely FCS at the end of the month), anyhow it is a test, hopefully I will get the knack.
 
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