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Green screen moving portraits on a wall

K

kazze

Good Morning,

I am trying to achieve this but am a bit stuck at the moment.

A person is walking down a hallway where there are portraits on each side of the wall...that are moving.

So they need to be at angle and I am gathering everything has be done via a green screen.

I would shoot a person moving. I would shoot a frame. Then in post I would put the person moving inside the frame however I still need to angle it in such a way that it is not facing the camera but rather the other wall.

I don't know if this is something I have to do while shooting or in post...because right now I am still using Vegas and it doesn't allow me to angle something that way (only move it around up or down or make smaller)

I don't know if this post makes sense either. But I was wondering if this is something for a more pro editing system or is there something I can do?

Thanks.
 
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Thanks.

I will check that out.

Meanwhile I am going to experiement with it for a while. I realize Vegas cannot do what I want it to. I was thinking of hanging up empty picture frames against a green wall while the camera moves forward. Then separately place the camera on a tripod (as I am doing this alone) and take a shot at the same angle of me moving around in limited motion. Moving the camera about an inch forward each time. Perhaps in post it will look like walking forward? I don't know if that even makes sense.

Checking out after effects too. I am sure they have a trial period.
 
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If vegas allows you to skew an image, you can hand track it (PITA, but it works-ish). Just line up the corners of your picture frame to the corners of the video frame... this will stretch the image so that it matches the apparent angle of the picture frame on the wall a'la the pictures in the hallways at Hogwart's. If your foreground actor moves in front of the frames, you'll also have to hand roto the pass so the image is obscured by them. It's tedious and gives so-so results, but will get the point across. Blender is free 3D software and has tracking and matchmoving functions (a bit of a learning curve, but quite powerful). Plenty of youtube tutorials up there for it -- even some linked here on IT to them, search up top of this page for "blender tracking" and you should find some overviews and tutorials that are quite good.
 
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Oh... and you don't necessarily need to greenscreen the picture frames... I've had quite a bit of success with a pure black sheet in the frame with the glass over it... you can then layer the background plate, the image you want inside it, then the black+glass reflections back over it in multiply or add transfer mode to bring the comp into the real world... works great!
 
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If I understand what you're trying to do, this isn't really something you'd want to do in post. I'm not 100% sure I know what you're going for, but the way you describe it, it reminds me of these statues at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion -- as you walk past them, their gaze follows you. It's an optical illusion, of course, and kind of cool. Anyway, the way I read your OP is that as the camera moves, you want the gaze of the portrait to stay fixed to the opposite wall (and therefore change relative to the moving camera). If that is in fact what you want, you're gonna have to shoot for this; there's nothing you can do in post to actually change the perspective of an object.

Off the top of my head, here's how I would do it:

Shoot the "portrait" actor in front of a green screen. To sell it, I think they'd have to have a large stationary sheet of glass in front of them, and the lighting reflecting off the glass would hopefully reflect the environment they'll eventually be placed in.

Or, maybe it might be better to just shoot them in front of a green screen, and then add fake glass in front of them in post.

Either way, you're gonna end up needing to track the footage, so that as the camera moves, the actor in the "portrait" stays in the correct position.

And, of course, the camera movement in the green screen "portrait" shoot would have to match the camera movement in the final composited shot. I imagine this will take a good deal of trial and error, but I don't see why you couldn't pull it off.
 
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Thanks. I am going to check out the youtube videos also.

The portraits are moving...so its a pov shot really. You are walking down a hallway and the portraits are moving inside the frame. One shot I want to do probably wouldn't be that hard (we will see!). Is a woman standing there while the camera is facing her and then gets up and walks out of the portrait. I have done this before with the subject jumping out of the t.v. and it required the use of a great imagination and a box to stand on that matched the green room...and to step down from.

So basically you are walking down a dark hallway and are aware the portraits are alive and yes very much like Disney in a way....Or the easier one is to have the camera on a tripod and showing the person walking down a hallway and passing the portrait...after the person walks by the camera lens then the lady in the portriat steps out and follows that person. if that makes an ounce of sense.
Yes it is going to be a pita.
 
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This is all part of some short I want to do that involves a crystal ball. However I have decided that I wont use a crystal ball. Instead, I will have a person (me) drapped in black doing some black magic to make the face that would be in a crystal ball appear...instead the head will appear over candles...simply because its seems I cannot quite get it right with the whole crystal ball thing. I will drop the opacity of the face to about 50% or so...for that ghostly appearance.

This is actually a humours take on old fashion spook shows.

The head over the candles will clearly be someone in a green suit and just shoot the head...the difficult part is the scripting between the two subjects as they will be talking to each other...timing is what I will have to work on.

Sometimes these ideas work for me and sometimes they are duds. I did something where I had used nothing but a green screen. I photographed a tv, radio , desk and all things like that and put them together in post. Then I had a person walk around inside the tv and climb out and then turn the radio on and start dancing. It didn't come out too bad but it required a lot of tracks.
 
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You need to shoot your scene first with green in your frames.

Make comprehensive notes on camera angles to each frame, as well as camera height and distance, and you need to match that, as well as any camera movement when you shoot what's actually in the frames, assumedly on a green screen.

It might be easier to shoot the whole thing on a green screen (ie shoot the people walking through the hall on a green screen, then shoot each frame) as it might be easier to match camera movement, and composite the entire shot. You should shoot your background plate (the hallway) first, if that's going to be the case. If you do it this way, you could potentially even put the frames in in the composite, but would probably be easier to do it on-set with green frames (remember to remove the glass).
 
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I would suggest:
shoot the scene in the hallway with frames.
Depending on the light you can use black or green in the frames.
Are the frames pictureframes or paintingframes? (With or without glass... without glass would be easier).

In AE you can either extract the black from the frames of key the green.
Than put the distorted images behing that layers. (Or those layers if you use masking to seperate the different frames from the rest of the image.)

Actually: different layers is better for motion tracking the corners of each frame.

I think you are complicating this with different greenscreen-shots.
All you need to make transparant is the inside of the frames.
Everytime you add a layer of greenscreen to your image you complicate postproduction.

The mainquestion is: do the portraits have to look like portraits usually do (but moving): as a flat image?
Or do you want to create 'windows' in the frames that look into a different space?

In the first case:
shoot the portrait from the front and distort the image in post. Just as pictures look when looked at from the side.
This is the easiest solution.
Just make sure to make these videoclips have the same aspectration as your frames to make tracking easier. (In AE this means putting them in a composition with the right aspectratio for the frames and using those comps in the final composition.)

In the second case you need to take notes on angles, but it will never be precisely the same. It overcomplicates it all....
 
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