VISUALS FOR A DRUNK DRIVER

[Daniel Aranyo AEC]

Hello everyone !!

 

I am just about to start shooting a feature film here in Spain, and living in LA all these years I feel a little crippled without turning to you guys, my well of wisdom across the Atlantic.

 

I need to shoot a scene of a drunk driver, the lead, dangerously driving at night on a deserted road and barely missing the oncoming random traffic.

*I am shooting Super16mm, with an Arri SR3, we are scannning the neg at 2k and prinnting back out to 35mm, so I have full control of a digital postproduction suite, for color correction as well as for any compositting needed.

I was thinking this scene will be shot on stage for the hero shots in the car against green screen and the plates will be shot live.

I wanted to shoot something special for this one. I was thinking bringing the shutter out of sync to create vertical streaks of the headlights that blare in the lens from the oncoming vehicles ( is that possible with the Arri SR3?, can I create horizontal streaks instead?..) ...taking the lens out of the lens mount for complete out of focus every once in a while (Would that be a bad idea for compsitting ?, would I have to do it on the foreground plates as well, or should I let the FX Guys apply the level of defocusing later ?), changing the speed in camera ? (same question...better to do it later ?)

I also would love to create motion blur combined woth the vertical streaking of the headlights (shutter out of sync). Can I shoot less frames per second and transfer at that same frame rate to achieve that effect ?.

Any crazy interesting ideas or movie refrences ?

This one I think should be in the direction of the final driving chase in "Lost Highway"...you know?, very crude, but still wacked.

 

Thank you for any help !!

This place rocks !!

Daniel Aranyo

[Michael Nash]

You already mentioned a lot of good visual techniques, but as you guessed any optical distortions could cause problems during compositing.

 

Since you have access to digital post and know some shots will be green screen, you may be better off shooting "clean" and distorting the composited image in post. Anything without green screen you can shoot in any manner you like.

 

You may want to consider different effects, or at least different degrees of effect, between the shots of the driver and his POV.

 

I don't think you can throw the shutter out of phase with the SR3.

 

Maybe shift/tilt lenses? The Clairmont "squishy lens"?