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sonnyboo

sonnyboo

Okay, I've been working on a project for 9 months, but I've just been overwhelmed with work, both good and bad. It's a simple 2-3 minute short shot with the Canon 5D MkII. When we did the original shoot in August 2010, we didn't have a location locked for a bar with a giant front window, so I thought I'd just pick that up and do another short in the web series at a bar and incorporate the pick up shots into that. I didn't shoot the 2nd video in the series until last month (where I got to shoot with a Panasonic AF100 for that one).

The movie theater location did have a bar, but not a front window. I decided, screw it, I'll make one in After Effects. I used the technique from the VideoCopilot tutorial http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/magic_glass/ as a base, but it did need a great deal of customization from that, but it was a phenomenal starting point.

Unfortunately, I would have needed to have planned properly in the original shoot because I needed a static shot (on sticks) of the actor to pose for this, but I originally intended to shoot a week or two later with the same guy in a pickup shot, non-CGI, so in order to make do, I took a still frame and added some elements to it, like a moving car and some lens flares that flicker, to liven the shot up and not feel so static.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCEScg6AwYU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCEScg6AwYU

Let me know what you think of this. It's my first crack at it and I'll need to clean it up, as I'm not digging the pacing yet, but it has no sound or music to it yet that greatly affect the perception of rhythm.
 
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Freaking amazing shot ONCE inside.. :)
The composite is just OK...

The car looks a bit cheesy wrong perspective, plus it looked like animation. Can you find some suitable canned live action footage?

Hold outside longer? Can you get a second or two of live footage of the actor and then stabilize the footage?

Something that will help sell the exterior shot is if you can separate the actor and the street in Z space. When the camera moves in through the window, we should see some parallax motion going on, without it looks very flat.

Id start the camera move before the rack focus. Id also lose the wobble effect, it just draws attention to the move, I know it seems like you need to "explain" whats going on, but try it without it, I think it will flow better..

I would track the interior shot, save the track data to a null layer and use that as the "camera" shake data for the CGI stuff. Sorta looks like thats what you did so, ignore this and all my comments.
 
wheatgrinder said:
Can you get a second or two of live footage of the actor and then stabilize the footage?
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That's exactly what I'm thinking I'll do.

wheatgrinder said:
Freaking amazing shot ONCE inside.. :)
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The interior shots were all done with prototype LED lights from http://www.zabolight.com/ which were operated off of batteries and that moved the shoot ten times faster without having to worry about stingers.

wheatgrinder said:
Something that will help sell the exterior shot is if you can separate the actor and the street in Z space. When the camera moves in through the window, we should see some parallax motion going on, without it looks very flat.
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Yeah, I think you're right. The tough thing is that the letters on the window should NOT do that, but the dude in the window DOES need to move further away during the hand held IN.

wheatgrinder said:
I would track the interior shot, save the track data to a null layer and use that as the "camera" shake data for the CGI stuff. Sorta looks like thats what you did
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Yup, that's what I did, a 4 point track, but the hand held camera with the CMOS sensor doing the jello effect make it imperfect, but workable tracking data.
 
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Here is my revision done today in a hasty 10 minutes....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpUZqohjXGU

There's some bricks added to the left side for the window (not even visible at 480, but in HD they can be seen). A different shot of the actor, now a video clip instead of a still, and a new name for the bar and some revisions to the glass itself.
 
That looks terrific. I think it'd look better if the transition was a little slower, changing from mostly seeing his reflection, to his reflection becoming less visible as what is on the other side of the windo becomes more visible.
 
Looks great and I may just be looking at it wrong but: at the start the shot is from the restaurant out at the guy outside, right? And then it changes into his reflection but the shot is now from the outside in, right? And then the camera moves from the outside into the bar, right? The text on the glass stays the same from start to finish though, despite the fact that we're seeing reverse shots...

The effect is cool and what you've done from the original is awesome but, even if it's intentional, I found this to be a little bit disorientating.
 
Cracker Funk said:
That looks terrific. I think it'd look better if the transition was a little slower, changing from mostly seeing his reflection, to his reflection becoming less visible as what is on the other side of the windo becomes more visible.
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I considered that, but without context of the whole edit, it won't work. It's a fast, jump-cutty kind of piece. The faster wrack focus works better, but there's no way for you to know that from just a shot.
 
NickClapper said:
Looks great and I may just be looking at it wrong but: at the start the shot is from the restaurant out at the guy outside, right? And then it changes into his reflection but the shot is now from the outside in, right? And then the camera moves from the outside into the bar, right?
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No, it's just his reflection on the glass the whole time, then the camera moves past the glass, so there's no reason to reverse it.

This is my fear; that the spatial orientation is confusing...
 
sonnyboo said:
No, it's just his reflection on the glass the whole time, then the camera moves past the glass, so there's no reason to reverse it.

This is my fear; that the spatial orientation is confusing...
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Oh, ok, I see what you mean now.

In my opinion the change in focus happens to quickly- that's why I thought we were changing shot rather than just changing focus. Perhaps if you did it slower then the bar could gradually come into focus and the spacial orientation issue might resolve itself...?

Just another thought but it would be quite cool if, whilst the camera 'travels' through the glass we also saw it travel through the lettering. At the moment the lettering just kind of vanishes when the camera arroves, but it might look quite snazzy to go through a portion of the text...?
 
sonnyboo said:
No, it's just his reflection on the glass the whole time, then the camera moves past the glass, so there's no reason to reverse it.

This is my fear; that the spatial orientation is confusing...
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FWIW, I knew it was a reflection the whole time. I wonder if maybe it would become more obvious if you made his reflection slightly less clear, right from the beginning. Come to think of it, I didn't think about this the first time I watched it, but now that Nick mentions it, his reflection is a little too clear in the beginning -- it's almost as clear as if he were looking in a mirror, and that's not really accurate to real-life.
 
oi_rubin_vase01.jpg


I think it's just a case of how you instantly see it. To some it will look like his reflection, to me it looked like we were looking out through the glass.

All in all it's probably best to avoid any sort of confusion where possible...
 
I didn't realize the little story within the shot in the first version... in the second, it was much more obvious that the guy was outside calling the lady inside. Well done!
 
Vast improvement.

Maybe it was because I just reviewed the first attempt (the car did look cheesy), but I immediately understood the opening image of the male caller was looking through the bar window from the outside, the camera was focussed on the reflection - then dollied in, through the glass, to the interior just feet away from the couple.

Nice effect.
For a three minute short this will be fine.

I understand 100% this is a patch job for a shot that just didn't get picked up the way you wanted the first go-round, but this is fine lemonade from lemons.

The EXT. caller appears to be looking at the INT. male rather than the female.
For composition reasons I understand why the three are placed where they are.
The camera does appear to be originating from the EXT. caller's right shoulder, so if anything looks a little "off" the physics might be it.
If story-wise he's supposed to be focusing on the INT. female then the EXT caller's image needs to be flipped and positioned in the same spot.

Like CF said: Context is everything.
But technically, it's fine and generally works well in principle, IMHO.
Proof of Concept I believe it's called.
 
NickClapper said:
Just another thought but it would be quite cool if, whilst the camera 'travels' through the glass we also saw it travel through the lettering. At the moment the lettering just kind of vanishes when the camera arroves, but it might look quite snazzy to go through a portion of the text...?
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That's a good idea. I'll probably do that in the final shot.


Cracker Funk said:
Come to think of it, I didn't think about this the first time I watched it, but now that Nick mentions it, his reflection is a little too clear in the beginning -- it's almost as clear as if he were looking in a mirror, and that's not really accurate to real-life.
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Another good note that I will change in the opacity. Not a lot, but a subtle amount of transparency.


These are all good ideas. I'm not really an FX guy. I prefer to find people who are experts on this kind of stuff, but other times I like to tinker for fun.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone.
 
sonny boo said:
These are all good ideas. I'm not really an FX guy. I prefer to find people who are experts on this kind of stuff, but other times I like to tinker for fun.
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Sir, if I could do those FX I'd print a set of business cards that said 'I'm the FX guy, bitch.'
 
interesting note

rayw said:
(the car did look cheesy)
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FYI, for anyone who saw the original and did NOT know it was an FX shot, they never noticed the car in the slightest. Point it out and they see how cheesy it is. For more people, the eye is drawn to the woman and the car passing is pure noise, and no one can see how fake it looks.

In the end, I stablized a handheld shot so there's no need to add something like that, as opposed to trying to liven up a still shot like the original FX shot.

Again, I really really like the Canon 5D mkII footage on this piece. We had at least 8 different hunks of glass (Zeiss primes and some good zooms) to work with. The Jello-Effect is pretty bad when it comes to handheld and I would personally never shoot a feature with the 5D or DSLR because of the limitations of the rolling shutter, but for short films and commercials it is one hell of a camera.
 
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