Has anyone ever attempted making small < 20sec short film of their model?
Photographing/Filming
Moderators: DasPhule, Moderators
Photographing/Filming
Ok, everybody takes pictures of their completed models to show on the net. Is there any desire out there to see your model actually moving and flying through the sky or space? I mean you spend so much time on the thing - I would like to see mine fly! On the another hand - special effect filming is a pretty complicated affair - the last thing I need is another hobby!
Has anyone ever attempted making small < 20sec short film of their model?
Has anyone ever attempted making small < 20sec short film of their model?
A few thoughts from a motion graphics artist who has gripped on indies and commercials (but never shot a spaceship, admittedly):
1. Shoot like the (recent) pros: move the camera, not the model. Figure out a way to move the camera along tracks or wheels. Consider making a dolly from skateboard parts and ABS pipe. Make sure it is clean and level with no joins or bumps in the pipes or floor. Weigh down your dolly with sandbags or water bags. Or if the model and camera are small, maybe you could try some O scale cars and tracks, but they may be too shaky. You could also make some kind of rack & pinion affair and shoot stop-motion with a digital stills camera, then import the sequence of stills into a video-editing app that accepts sequences.
2. Light like the pros: if you want to show a model with internal lighting, add some light to the top/back/side of the model so you can see its edge. Look at shots of Voyager. There's some light on the ship there, to separate it (visually) from the black starfield.
3. Try to remove the sound from the video and replace with music or something. Clicking and breathing is distracting.
4. If you want to replace the background with stars, get a saturated blue background. Not blue-gray, dark blue, nor pale blue. Place it far enough away from the model to avoid blue light spilling back onto the model. Cover your stand with the same colour material and try to light it too. Light the background with blue gels. It needs to be even (no bright or dark spots) and very blue. You want no gray in it, or your background will start to match your ship and you won't be able to key out the background easily, if at all. You can also use bright green, but at any rate you want your BG colour to be pure & saturated. You'd be surprised how much gray is in something that appears green or blue.
5. To key out the background, I'd use Adobe After Effects (AE) pro version, but if you're shooting DV, I hear that DVMatte Pro works well. But you need AE, Final Cut Pro or Motion to use it. You may have to mask out (rotoscope) the model's stand frame-by-frame (or so).
6. Then you grab a starfield or make your own and composite it behind.
Still want to do it?
Anybody else? Lestatdelc?
1. Shoot like the (recent) pros: move the camera, not the model. Figure out a way to move the camera along tracks or wheels. Consider making a dolly from skateboard parts and ABS pipe. Make sure it is clean and level with no joins or bumps in the pipes or floor. Weigh down your dolly with sandbags or water bags. Or if the model and camera are small, maybe you could try some O scale cars and tracks, but they may be too shaky. You could also make some kind of rack & pinion affair and shoot stop-motion with a digital stills camera, then import the sequence of stills into a video-editing app that accepts sequences.
2. Light like the pros: if you want to show a model with internal lighting, add some light to the top/back/side of the model so you can see its edge. Look at shots of Voyager. There's some light on the ship there, to separate it (visually) from the black starfield.
3. Try to remove the sound from the video and replace with music or something. Clicking and breathing is distracting.
4. If you want to replace the background with stars, get a saturated blue background. Not blue-gray, dark blue, nor pale blue. Place it far enough away from the model to avoid blue light spilling back onto the model. Cover your stand with the same colour material and try to light it too. Light the background with blue gels. It needs to be even (no bright or dark spots) and very blue. You want no gray in it, or your background will start to match your ship and you won't be able to key out the background easily, if at all. You can also use bright green, but at any rate you want your BG colour to be pure & saturated. You'd be surprised how much gray is in something that appears green or blue.
5. To key out the background, I'd use Adobe After Effects (AE) pro version, but if you're shooting DV, I hear that DVMatte Pro works well. But you need AE, Final Cut Pro or Motion to use it. You may have to mask out (rotoscope) the model's stand frame-by-frame (or so).
6. Then you grab a starfield or make your own and composite it behind.
Still want to do it?
Anybody else? Lestatdelc?