cinematography Mixing miniature puppets with full-size humans

Cracker Funk

Cracker Funk

I'd like to shoot some footage that blends both full-scale humans and small-scale puppets.

So, I'd obviously be using a whole lot of green screen, and I'd also have to have a scale miniature set.

As far as camera work is concerned, so long as I make sure the iris is in the same relative position, same lens, same focal length, yadda yadda, camera on same pitch, yaw, etc., the smaller green screen footage should match up with the larger plate, no?

But what about focus? In my head, keeping the depth of field relative between the two shots seems really complicated.

And what about wide shots, in which the feet would be seen by the camera? How do you green screen feet touching the ground? Do you just have to saturate the shit out of it, so as to literally eliminate all shadows?

I welcome all comments and thoughts, expert or not. Thanks! :)
 
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Non-expert comment coming up….

The “DV Rebels Guide” has a short section on shooting miniatures. I don’t have it to hand, but one thing I do remember it mentioning is the speed of the miniatures. They need to be slowed down. IRC, the example given is about Godzilla dropping a car. If the real Godzilla dropped a car, it would take a few second to hit the ground. If a man in a suit drops a toy car, it’d take half a second to hit the ground. There must be some ratio between speed and scale, it might be listed in that book, but I have no idea what it is… Sorry…
 
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I looked into shooting miniatures for a project about two years ago and opted for a different route. The specifics were pretty different to this, but I found that lensing miniatures is completely different to lensing full scale.

At the very least you'll want pretty long lenses, and/or macro lenses to get the miniature stuff looking like it's the correct scale. The type of miniatures we were looking at creating were going to require probe/snorkel lenses, which were simply way out of our budget, compared to standard lenses.

You'll need to look into matching the lenses and focal lengths etc. for the miniatures to the full scale green screen stuff. Depending on how you shoot it, you could potentially simply shoot everything full body on a high enough resolution camera, and then scale in post to fit the correct scale/perspective.

DOF shouldn't be too big an issue, unless you're shooting your miniatures with razor-thin DOF (i.e. light your miniatures ;)). As long as your green screened subject is lit the same way, it should key relatively seamlessly.

There's going to be a bit of work involved, but it will certainly be rewarding when you get it done!
 
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Sounds fun and ambitious! Music video? Short? So it'll be a combination of shrinking the greenscreened human actors to fit the miniatures and puppets and enlarging the puppets to fit human scale sets as well?
 
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Thanks for the input, guys!

Jax, why would I want long lenses? Is that to make things look more flat?

Test-footage is happening soon. We're gettin' all scientific and shit (or at least as best we can, seeing as how none of us are scientists).

The overall concept of the video has shifted a bit in the last couple days, and I no longer care about depth of field. Everything is going to be in focus, and almost everything is going to be green screened.

That is, IF the test-footage works out well enough to make me think that we can pull it off. I'm feeling optimistic at the moment, but I can't say for sure.

Mr. Lawson -- yep, you got it right. It's a music video. And it's currently planned as a green screen bonanza, with three different scales. The set would be probably 1:6, the puppets would be 1:3 (or, at least the first test-footage puppet, Sticky McStickerson, has been built to 1:3).

David, in the early phases of the conceptualization of the video, forced perspective was a major consideration. The current concept for the video is very digital, almost like Max Hedroom.

By the way, I've kinda been lying, by using the word "puppet". Sticky McStickerson isn't a puppet, he's a prototype stop motion animation model.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1/1511071_10202774606076531_1931525525_n.jpg
 
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Stop motion, 100%. Actually, he's going to give new meaning to "stop motion", because I only plan to animate 25% of the frames. That's not to say that he'll move at 6 frames per second, but that he'll move for six frames, at 24 FPS, then stay stationary for 18 frames, rinse and repeat.

So he'll have motion, then stop. Then motion, then stop. :lol:
 
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