How to do this shot?

[jack05282]

Hi, I am making a short film and it has this shot where a guy locks himself in a room and waits for days to pass.
i want to make this shot look like time lapse where he doesn't move but there is a little light ray coming from the slit of the window, it and the room ambiance changes between night and day. something like what happens in the movie "garden state" drug party scene.
Can this be done without spending any money, like in the post using after effects or something....

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

Why not use a light through through the slit in the window? You can use almost any type of light. Just alter the angle that the light hits the window and it's distance from the window. To really make the effect more believable, his beard should grow during this scene and his hair should get progressively messier. Darkening circles under his eyes will help sell his emotional state.

 

[icba pictures]

One way to speed things up, so to speak, is to shoot at night using a flood light on the end of a board with a hole drilled in the middle and a dowel place to hold onto. Spin the board past the window area (not directly, but to one side), in effect creating day and night with someone to pull the plug/turn the light off remotely as it reaches the bottom of the path, then back on as it starts to lift again... Don't know the location or details of the "set" but this effect can be done for free with a handheld lamp, or a flashlight too. Just more consistent with the board.

 

[jack05282]

Thanks for the answers. if i don't want to include that light ray, is there a way to change room ambiance while editing.
and how can we get the characters movements look like time lapse...

 

[icba pictures]

Hit pause or stop then start again at regular intervals for the duration of the shot. If it's to be 30 seconds, then hit pause for 5 seconds over the course of 60 seconds waiting 5 seconds between. Count it out if you need to, natural movements from the actor will provide the effect. Have him/her look around the room a little throughout the scene.

 

[Jeff Troiano]

You could always lock your shot, of the room down, and shoot a timelapse of the room (assuming you might be using a DSLR). Figure out the length of screen time you want (say 25 Seconds), and multiply that by your frame rate (say 24p). You would need 600 shots of the room, for 25 seconds. Now figure out the length of time your character is in the room (say 3 days). So you might set your camera intervals to 1 shot every 7min 20sec (if my math is correct). Then without moving the tripod. Put your character in the room, and film him in various positions (in real time). Edit that down to 25 seconds, maybe doing a cross fade transition between positions. Composite the two shots together, in AE, masking closely around the shot of the character, so the background is always the timeplapse of the room. With the real time shot, every time you cross fade, you can slightly alter the characters appearance, to give the illusion hours, or days have passed. Do a little color correcting , so the real time guy doesn't stand out during the night shots. Maybe even during the night parts,of the timelapse, you turn a lamp on from time to time, to show even more action. Sounds like a fun sequence to shoot. You could draw the character shot out over a few days, also, so his beard grows out, hair gets messy, and so forth.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[icba pictures]

Aahah, after watching a clip of the scene you mentioned in the op, you don't need time lapse as much as you need to speed up the frame rate. Editing software is the only way to do that. Film longer than needed then randomly speed up frame rate to pass time more quickly. Sorry I wasn't familiar with the movie you mentioned. You may still want to do several changes in clothes, have actor mill about doing things like make bed, get in bed, fold clothes, drink water, read books, eat, etc. Then chop the scenes up into best looking takes, and speed boost some random spots to get your segment. If you do it during day and at night you can juxtapose the scenes while editing. Just let a little natural light in the slit of the covered window. if you start in the evening you could shoot it all in a matter of 2 or 3 hours.

 

[Alcove Audio]

You can also use sounds to give the passage of time. Crickets at night, birds during the day, garbage pick-up early in the morning, morning and evening rush hours, etc. The radio is on giving news and traffic & weather reports ("It's six eighteen and here's Incredibly Stupid with the traffic report. Incredibly???") and TV News ("Welcome to the Six O'Clock News. I'm Impossibly Dense and here are the headlines for Tuesday November sixth.") You can even use holidays and other important dates as touchstones. Here in the U.S. today is election day, and many of the cable news channels were counting down until election day ("With only seven days until Americans head to the polls...").

It's tough to give advice without the script/story line, but, aside from the slit window, sounds will be the protagonists primary link with his immediate outside world (unless he has a security system). What you need to do is create the world surrounding the story/plot/character. This allows the protagonist to react to both the normal and abnormal sounds in the outside environment - and even to question which is which. And, of course, having established sounds withdrawing them give the character - and the audience - all sorts of information.

On the visual side you can show dates and times on his laptop. The growth of his beard will also give indications of the passage of time. And, of course, there are the calendar cliché or the marks on the wall.

 

[chitoryu12]

Simplest is probably just to set up an electric light on a dimmer outside the window to simulate sunlight, turning it from brightness to black to bright as many times as you need with the dimmer, and film it. Then put your actor in a location where he's out of the light (so he can remain consistently lit) and have him rapidly change position. Turn the frame rate on your camera down low to get the time lapse effect, so when sped up it'll make it look like you're watching his few movements in his little corner as the days pass.

Then take a program like Adobe Aftereffects and put in the footage you have of the empty room with the lights changing, then mask out the part of the room that has your actor and add in his little bit of the room from the time lapse footage. With some careful editing of the frame rates, you'll get the effect of the sun rising and setting through the window as the character waits in the corner. This allows for the time lapse effect that you want while not REALLY locking the guy in a room and turning the camera on.