Exterior shot to interior shot through the window ...

T

tejas9999

Hey guys, i'm working on pre-production on a short film, where the film begins with a few Aerial shots of a City and then we zoom in on an apartment building .... then the camera closes up on a particular window ... and then we go from exterior of the building to the interior of the building in one continuous shot ...

i'd like to know how it can be done in the most minimal budget ...

plus i've seen this particular kind of scene in many films, although i don't remember which ones .... could you suggest me some titles where this kind of shot is used so i can check it out for reference. ...

Thanks ...
i know my English is poor so i hope I've been able to explain what I'm looking for ...:blush:
 
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I think picking the right window is critical ;) Two shots and some post VFX...

ZOOM SHOT:
Start with a zoom from across the street (or a few block away) zoom in to "a" window. (Note, I said A window not THE window, exterior and interior aren't the same location) zoom in until the frame is filled with glass. (green screen the window if you like, but since its a nice solid zoom to a fixed shape, rotoscope would be just about as easy in post)

ENTRY SHOT:
The other shot is continuous and starts just out side a DOOR, yes a door, not a window (a big balcony door might work well).. You shout into the room from just out side the door for however long you want your "zoom" to last.. have some action going on.. etc.. then, smoothly move INTO the room thought the door and start panning around, finally settling on the bit of action you want..

Youll want to be sure and match the angles. If the camera used for the zoom shot is a bit higher and pointing DOWN at an angel into the "window" then start your ENTRY SHOT at the same angle, leave it there for the duration of the ZOOM. you might be pointing at some interesting object... if the angle is at all steep, you'll just see floor, or ceiling .... so consider that when picking your location from which to zoom..


In Post:
For the ZOOM shot: Rotoscope the window glass (or green screen) OUT of the zoom shot, replace it with the suitably scaled down and placed footage from the ENTRY SHOT:

As you zoom in, the ENTRY SHOT fills more and more of the frame until finally your only seeing the ENTRY SHOT at which time the movement INTO the room begins. With the right timing and a little patience, this could look good..

For realism check out this "magic glass" AE tut.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/magic_glass/
 
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Another idea is to cause some external "action" to give you a natural transition..

Say your zooming in form a mile away... as you approach the location a large VAN or truck passes by on some street between you and the window.. completely filling and blurring the frame.. then you start your next part of the zoom from that spot, and so on until your inside the room.. the idea is to use what is a natural random action you might encounter, a cat jumping out the window etc, to cover what could be an awkward transition..
 
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And one more post trick that might be fun, modify the above technique to ...

zoom into a reflection, like series of mirrors.. this lets you reposition your camera a few times along the zoom route.. the reflections aren't real of course, there just your NEXT shot in the sequence.. might be fun! Maybe you can introduce some key characters this way.. real quickly too!

For example. Your first leg of the zoom starts on the roof of a high building, zooming into the office building across the street. The window across the streets reflects a street level store.. you zoom in on the reflection of a street level store front window. As you zoom in to the store front, you see some the reflection from the security mirror over the cash register.. you zoom into that, in which we see an armed robery taking place.... in the security mirror we see the get away van parked just out side on the street.. we zoom into its driver side mirror, passing through the van and meeting a few more characters along the way, from the car mirror we see reflected something else.. so on and so on, until you arrive at the apartment where we see the big crime boss plucking nose hairs in the little hand held mirror he took from the hooker lying next to him in bed..
 
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The way to get good results for this AND do do cheaply is going to be to spend a bunch of time making a very detailed 3D model of your building, and all the surrounding buildings, and anything that will be seen in the 'aerial footage' prior to the camera flying into the building.

Don't expect this to be a fast process... you know the old saying... good, fast, or cheap.. pick two.



The other way to manage this would be to get live footage of just the last portion, camera moves from outside to inside and window is added in post.

Then take that first frame of footage from outside, and create the 3D that leads up to it. basically you transition from 3D to live footage on that frame.

It's doable, but it's not going to be super easy. Does it actually help tell the story, or is it just an extra element you want to add because it would look cool?

Lets be realistic for a moment.. That one shot will not make or break your film. If it does, your film is crap, write a better story.
 
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