So I've been talking with Brandon Pedersen about camera and layout and I really love cinematography and I never knew how cool layout could be. It was really taking a long time to make the camera movements look anything close to what I wanted, so I did some research online and found this camera rig idea. Our goal is to make the camera moves feel like it's actually being held by a real camera boom and crane and dolly. Just thought I'd share the cool find- we will be implementing this into the film.
Okay...THAT is freaking cool
ReplyDeletelooks intense! I ain't gonna mess with that.
ReplyDeleteso, I don't know much about 3-d layout, is that mostly just figuring out camera work and making a solid composition in 3d space?
Yeah man you nailed it. It's literally the same exact thing a DP (director of photography) does on a live action film. It's essentially cinematography, camera angles, composition, mix in a little rigging and animation and you've got layout. Once youre done with the rig for Larry shoot it over my way and we will start cracking down on these shots. I have figured out we can't load every shot into once maya scene, but we will have to individually load camera shots- itd be a lot of stuff to keep track of for the lighters, so based off of Wesley's storyboards and Alyssa's color script we will create a shot breakdown. I am pretty busy with texturing so if someone wants to help out with getting a shot breakdown things will move a little faster. But if no one is up to it I'll do it with Wesley.
ReplyDeleteAs cool as it is, given the kind of deadline schedule you have in place and the kind of film you're making, I don't know if I'd worry about this too much. Yeah, it's cool, but it's also a huge time suck and requires much more than just moving the camera. Instead of just moving and angling the actual Maya camera, now you have to worry about the camera rig, positioning it correctly, making sure you see what you need to see and adjusting accordingly if it's not right. You've just turned something that could've potentially taken two steps into something that requires many more steps, and the result will probably be the same. I'd think about it a bit before implementing it into your pipeline.
ReplyDeleteAlso, cinematography in CG doesn't necessarily require some kind of rig, which is kind of the beauty of it. I've worked extensively in live-action with jibs, dollies and cranes, and I can't tell you how liberating it is not to worry about any of that stuff in CG. Granted, you want the camera work to look good (I'm not a fan of "camera-of-God" shots) but going to this extent for this kind of project seems like overkill to me.
I've looked over the storyboards and based on what I've seen, the camera doesn't move very much, and the little movement you have is very simple -- unless you want this to be all handheld, in which case you're nuts. In my opinion, what you're going for in mimicking live-action camera rigs doesn't justify the time you'd put into it. Besides, for a piece like this, you want the focus to be on the action and the humor, not the camera work.
I applaud your enthusiasm, but as I said, I don't think it's worth the time to implement something like this, especially given the length of the film and the size of your crew. Just move the camera. If you need to focus on something specific with the camera rotating around it or something, use a camera & aim. Work smart.
Here's some advice...
If you want to make your camera work look good and feel like there's a camera operator behind the camera, ease into your moves and ease out of your moves. A lot of the student films I've seen come out of BYU have this problem -- "Butcher'd Meats" and "X-ing" come to mind. The camera juts and jerks into and out of position. Don't do that. Make it smooth in and out. Basic stuff, but it seems to be forgotten when it comes to student work.
Another way to give this more of an authentic feel is to have the camera move just slightly toward or away from your subject for the duration of a shot. You don't want to do that for every shot, of course, but it makes for more of a realistic, cinematic feel.
I see this using wider lenses -- anything 27mm and below. Look at lens sets on websites for Panavision (www.panavision.com) and Arriflex (www.arri.com), and choose your lenses. The lenses you use will help give the film more nuance, especially if you choose specific focal lengths and use a specific set (18mm, 21mm, 27mm, 32mm, etc). Trust me, the lenses you choose are much more important than creating rigs for the camera, and your time would be well-spent trying and testing the lenses you want to use.
Above all, try to strike a balance with the movement of the camera in each shot, and make sure the camera work reflects the tone of the piece.
Sorry for the long comment. Wish I had time to help on this, but I'm excited to see the final product. All the best, Team Pigeon!
Well considering you're about 100x more experienced that I am- I think it would be sound to follow your advice. I really appreciate you saying something. I really just started to mess with it and I thought it was pretty cool, but you're absolutely right about making things simple and eliminating unnecessary steps. The camera makes sense to me- Easing in and out, never having a jolting start or finish to a move. The nice thing about the pigeon film is that camera moves are simple, so it will be a good learning experience. Although you don't have a lot of free time on your hands, it's cool you're checking in on us to make sure we don't do something stupid. I'll do more research on lenses and see what fits our film. Thanks John.
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