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Creating the illusion of more people.

Dreadylocks

Dreadylocks

I've got a shoot coming up this Tuesday, it's basically a 50's style horror B-movie trailer that will play between features at a horror festival coming up this fall here in Chicago. The concept is our 'monster'(The Man Without a Face) shows up at a party and terrorizes everyone/their faces start melting off, etc.

What I'm wondering is if anyone has any tips for making it seem like we've got more 'guests' at the party than we actually do. We've just got four people for it, but luckily at least the space is pretty small. My thoughts so far are to keep some of the shots pretty tight and with a fair amount of movement. Obviously we need some wide/master angles so it doesn't get too claustrophobic, but any tips/ideas/advice to make it feel like more people would be awesome.

Thanks!
 
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What I'll suggest is to keep all the shots tight and to have all those 4 people to change clothes , wear hats , maybe some of them will drink beer ,others coca cola etc . Do a lot of movements and switch angles quickly so the audience is not going to recognize their faces .

Other thing I would suggest is to make close ups of something like their beers for example and have your audio sell the effect , make it sound crowded and it will be crowded .

Something else is maybe have quite a bit of shots only of their legs and foots using a dolly and rotating around them .

For the masters use the same technique people use to make cloning effects ( you can search it over youtube ) and basically get your actors to change clothing again and just move on different positions .
 
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Do "all" of the people need to be in a shot at the same time, or does it need to just appear that there are more people at the party than there actually are?

If the former... then that's kinda problematic.
Green screening and keying in layers is kinduva PITA.

If the latter then keeping the camera off faces and on principle actor's face while seated as others walk past or mill about in the bokeh background might help.
Change or two of clothes might help.
Some audio dubbing of a larger party group will also help.

You can have a person or two inside commenting on a cluster of people outside composed of the same four people and edited with movie magic.

And if you wanna get real cheap and lazy, hang a shirt on a hanger and film over-the-shoulder of that at your four actors! Violá! Now there's FIVE people <wink! wink!>

And talking on the phone can also create the illusion that there's more people involved than just the one person we see.
 
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Firstly. While you're on set, get audio of the actors and crew talking for a minute or so. When shooting, don't have any of the background actors actually talk. Rather have them mouth their words. In post, add that audio in the background to simulate the effect that there's a bunch of people in the house.

Unless the 4 people are the only ones that you'll have on set, use the crew. I highly doubt that crews would mind being on screen.

Let everyone know to bring an extra pair of clothes.

Don't have all of them on screen at the same time.

People walking in the background always helps. Sometimes even the foreground if you shoot it correctly.
 
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If you have 4 extras, when shooting your OTS shots, put one actor in the foreground and 3 in the back. When turning your shot around, move 2 of the actors to the other side (with costume changes). The 1 on each side that remain provide a consistent person for the audience to sell the turn (they'll assume each of those characters are still conversing with the other 2 actors that would be behind the camera giving the room 6 folks instead of 4... or move the whole group each time and have 4 on each side... and have a grip walk across the lens pause, then back again with shirt changes at each pass.
 
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In addition to the other suggestions, you might do one wide establishing shot of the room. Lock the camera off, have people run through the foreground. Change outfits, run through the middle. Change outfits, run through the back - etc. How many you do depends on the size of the room. Also get a shot of the empty room.

Use the empty shot to pull a difference matte on each of the various takes and then layer them appropriately. Won't hold up to careful scrutiny, but for a quick few seconds to show the whole crowd at once it should work.
 
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I think your advantage is that it's a mock-trailer. You don't need to follow conventional rules of continuity. You can show quick glimpses of images to send only the info you need shown. If you turn it into a montage, you can use the same actors over and over again, in different situations.

Let's say we start with an establishing shot, showing an apartment complex, from outside. One particular apartment has a whole lot of shadowy silhouettes -- it's a party! I guess you'd accomplish this with compositing?

Next shot (I'm just spit-ballin' here), extra-close-up of four high-heeled ladies running up apartment steps (we only see from knees/shins down). Cut to extra-close-up of dude answering door, making some drunk-guy smart-ass remark (as seen from over the shoulder of anonymous girl). In this instance, we've clearly established that there's a party, yet the audience has only seen one person's face. I suppose, you could actually pull it off without showing his face, if you wanted to.

Anyway, from there, you can cut to the "tropes" of a party. Once the audience has accepted that it's a party, with lot's of people, they don't need to see every single person there. At least not in a trailer.

If the monster is gonna kill some kid after they do a keg stand on the back porch, the only face you need to see is the victim. All the schmucks helping him/her do the keg stand can remain face-anonymous.

Oh, and of course your biggest asset is going to be sound. Stuff is happening off screen? Then let us hear it! :)

Sounds like a fun project!
 
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Hope this helps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKl2Qo3fwhI (skip to 2.22 to avoid mac bashing)

If you can take the end frame of a shot, replicate it and and put a load of people in, you can cut them out and composite them in the original shot to make the scene look more lively...if that makes sense. It should be easy if they are static shots, but a lot more difficult if they are pans or any type of movements.

It depends how busy you want it to be. You can either, as suggested above, just have 4 people float around using some cheats, or you can composite people in which has unlimited flexibility
 
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After shooting, set up a green screen and have some people walk from the left to right side (or the other way) quickly. Blur that and put it in your scene. I'm not sure if this has a technical term, but I saw George Lucas using it in the behind the scenes for one of the 50 Star Wars re-releases
 
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Thanks everyone for the awesome suggestions! We just wrapped up and everything went really well!

This was mostly just a fun shoot and with some folks' having limited time we kept it simple so no green screen or split screen action. I decided to keep a lot of the shots pretty tight to OTS stuff and mixed up positioning around the room (it's a trailer and supposed to be cheesy/B-movie so continuity wasn't super important. Also the long lens tip was really helpful. I shot mainly with my 50mm for that reason then and supplemented with my 28mm. I also got to use my dolly a TON which made for some awesome shots. I feel like putting up a reel of just the unused stuff, it's gonna be hard to nail this down to under a minute (a feeling I'm sure we can all relate to :) )

Not all of our actors had on-screen experience but those who did really got everyone in the right mindset/spirit of things and everyone really went for it and churned out some great performances. And not to mention they are delivered in spades when it came to showing up in cool '50s style attire. So many pretty people.

And the makeup. Sooooo cool. The project itself was really the MUA's (the same one I worked with on that last Halloween short) brainchild/baby and she went above and beyond with a full face prosthetic of like a 'skinless' face with a magnetic attachment that peeled off. And also some cool peely face latex for our party guests as they are being attacked/melted/infected by the monster.

Yeah, overall, so much fun. Got some GREAT shots. Can't wait to get to editing. :D :cool: :D
 
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Dreadylocks said:
Thanks everyone for the awesome suggestions! We just wrapped up and everything went really well!

This was mostly just a fun shoot and with some folks' having limited time we kept it simple so no green screen or split screen action. I decided to keep a lot of the shots pretty tight to OTS stuff and mixed up positioning around the room (it's a trailer and supposed to be cheesy/B-movie so continuity wasn't super important. Also the long lens tip was really helpful. I shot mainly with my 50mm for that reason then and supplemented with my 28mm. I also got to use my dolly a TON which made for some awesome shots. I feel like putting up a reel of just the unused stuff, it's gonna be hard to nail this down to under a minute (a feeling I'm sure we can all relate to :) )

Not all of our actors had on-screen experience but those who did really got everyone in the right mindset/spirit of things and everyone really went for it and churned out some great performances. And not to mention they are delivered in spades when it came to showing up in cool '50s style attire. So many pretty people.

And the makeup. Sooooo cool. The project itself was really the MUA's (the same one I worked with on that last Halloween short) brainchild/baby and she went above and beyond with a full face prosthetic of like a 'skinless' face with a magnetic attachment that peeled off. And also some cool peely face latex for our party guests as they are being attacked/melted/infected by the monster.

Yeah, overall, so much fun. Got some GREAT shots. Can't wait to get to editing. :D :cool: :D
Click to expand...

Sounds like you had a great time! Can't wait to see it :cool:
 
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