How to make a pond?

[alejandra]

Hello everyone!

This forum is kind of new to me but I have a slight problem at the moment with my up-coming film.

I have a scene that consists on an old man having to enter a pond and sit in there for some time. The pond is in the middle of a forest. The problem here is that we don't have a pond and we are not allowed to dig in the forest, therefore we would need to some how construct it? Any good suggestions about this? the other problem is that were shooting in mid-Feb where the weather will be quite cold and we are worried of making our elderly actor have to enter the pond in such conditions. Water heaters are expensive, and we thought of pond heaters but were not sure if they will make the water warm enough for the man to be in, since pond heaters are only designed to keep the water from not freezing so that the fish don't die.

Please have in mind this is a student production and so our budget is terribly limited. The scene however is of extreme importance.

I would very much appreciate any help and support!!!

 

[indietalk]

 

[jeremyhung]

I'm not sure if this is going to help (I'm not at all proffesional; just a young student... really young)

But what would make sense to me... is to add a 'carpet' of grass just big enough for you to film (the area where the old man is sitting), then make a (not so deep) pond: Just fill the space with water. If you get me...

Sort of like this:

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Like add another later of grass above the grass in the forest, then make a whole in that top layer and fill with water... I think that if this is done correctly it'll look believable.


You did say that the old man has to enter the pond??? Well... I think if you had a pond in a studio against a greescreen, it might help. (Just this part though.)

I hope i helpd

 

[oakstreetphotovideo]

I did a shot with a very small "pond" and a green screen. I then embedded the small pond into a larger pond with natural looking surroundings. There were a myriad of problems with masking and blending. I ended up with a bunch of hand edited masks, and I wrote a problem to combine and blend the masks with the one that was generated from the chroma-key. In the end, it was barely believable , if you didn't look at it too hard. The problem is getting waves and reflections to match up. You'll always have one or the other, or both. My advice would be to either;

a) do the entire scene in CG and project your actor on to a 3D model of himself

b) find a real pond and make it work using selective camera angles or whatever you need to do.

The second option (b) is by far the more realistic choice. However, I've seen some nice CG water generators, and if your actor isn't moving around, creating a cut-out model to project his image onto, so you can put him into the scene isn't that difficult. However, if your actor is moving around, or the camera angle changes drastically, you'll have a nightmare on your hands.

Here's a thought ... can you do your scene with a silhouette of your actor, it might be pretty easy to layer him into another scene. You could also do this with a full color version, but getting the reflections on the water in front of him to move with the water can be difficult at best. If you just have a black shadow in front of him with little or no light, the reflections would not be as difficult.

If you actor is very still, the CG scene would be quite doable. I've done this with still objects. Getting the waves to interact with your actor is the tricky part, when doing an animation.

 

[alejandra]

Thank you both your help. It is a tricky one to do.

First reply: Jeremy that's a good point, I actually didn't think I could have missed any other ways to do it, but you've found an extra way so it proves that the scene can definitely be done in different ways. I guess the problem with this is one is that I would need to find out how thick I can get those layers of grass. Because if their thin, I'm going to need a lot of them!And then cover them with soil. But anyway, I will discuss it with the crew see what they think.

Second reply: As with the CGI solution it would be the most convenient and I know that to a certain extent it will definitely look believable. However, I don't have access to these facilities as were talking about a very low-budget production (no blue/Green screen). Which gives us no choice but to adapt ourlseves to more "home-made" solutions.

I suppose that to some extent I could create the illusion that he is inside the pond, but it will ruin the context. We need to see him physically inside. I think one of my other concerns is the temperature. We have the forest location and the spot for the pond scene, but it worries me having to have an old guy inside a pond in the middle of a forest at the end of Feb in London (not the warmest of cities).

But anyways, so far thank you very much for the support, if anybody as any other suggestions/ideas please add it on!I would fully appreciate it!

Alejandra xox