Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

[Keagan Schopfer]

Hello

 

I'm very new to this, so I hope this post is in the correct board.

 

I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions for shooting the night sky. I have a scene in mind where two characters are sitting and looking up at the sky, pointing out stars and constellations to each other. We will be shooting in MiniDV, and we don't have a budget.

 

Would it be convincing if I shot the actors with a Close up, showing them pointing, and then cut to panning across a still photo to give the illusion of a finger pointing?

Would it be possible to shoot an arm against a blue screen, then impose this over a Still photo? How are stars done in Hollywood? (Say in the sputnik scene of 'A Beautiful Mind')

 

Thank you very much

 

Keagan Schopfer

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

You won't see a thing on miniDV (And hey, don't use the word "filming" if you're not shooting film!). If you want to see the stars and the people in the same shot, then you have two options - either you do it bluescreen, which is a tough one to do because you're putting essentially black in the place of bright blue and interactive lighting is made difficult, or you hang a starcloth. Fibre-optic starcloths can be exceptionally realistic - you might then drop in some drifting cloud or something to finalise the realisim of it.

 

Phil

[David Mullen ASC]

If you are shooting up from a low-angle with some people in the foreground and they are against black, you can probably create a piece of starfield artwork (black posterboard with pin pricks for stars, backlit with a piece of tracing paper behind the board) that doesn't have stars in the areas where the people are and just double-expose the two pieces of footage in post. But if the person is moving their arm or hand and pointing and thus passing over a background of stars, it has to be a key (either luminence or chroma) in post for a composite... unless you enjoy frame-by-frame rotoscoping out any stars that would leak through his arm.

 

I've done a couple of films where I created a starfield painting myself for a POV shot of the stars (nothing moving in front of the art). I airbrushed a horizon glow near the bottom of the black posterboard, and then in that haze, I paint silhouettes of trees, whatnot, in black, and then I poke tiny holes with a needle (I use the end of a drawing compass), then cover the back of the painting with tracing paper, then backlight and frontlight the painting (you can do it outdoors with the sun backlighting the art). Just underexpose realistically enough.

 

The main issue is creating stars that are realistically small enough, but not so small that they can't be seen on TV. This has always been a problem for science fiction movies. For example when they created the starfields for "2001" and "Close Encounters", they had to make sure that they were tiny but showed up both in the 70mm prints and the 35mm prints. TV shows with space backgrounds also shoot tests to determine what a good average size is for stars.

[Keagan Schopfer]

Thanks for the info guys!

 

One question though: If I were to give up having people and stars in the same shot, would there be any noticable difference between shooting a star board as you described, and importing a 35mm Still Photo in post? I could pan across the photo to give the illusion of camera movement... How terrible looking is it in general to do this with still photos? Could I get away with it for just one cut?

 

 

Keagan

[Guest dpforum1968]

Gee whiz I got yelled at by the forum when I made a comment similar to this...

 

"And hey, don't use the word "filming" if you're not shooting film!"

 

Oh well, Phil has special privledges :-)

 

RDCB

[Guest fstop]

I'm a little late here, but I prefer shooting in front of the real sky/black velvet and adding the stars on afterwards ala Superman. Keep it SIMPLE.

 

I HATE those velvet backjings with Xmas tree lights that frequently pop up on TV and film for incamera starscapes- as soon as they go out of focus they look just like what they are!

[David Mullen ASC]

I had that discussion with Richard Edlund, who tried to talk Lucas out of shooting the cockpit scenes in "Star Wars" with rear projection, partially because the low depth of field would mean that the out-of-focus stars would look like baseballs (plus be elliptical in anamorphic.) You can see this in the original "Battlestar Galatica" which did use rear-projection. Most of the time, having the background fall out of focus makes the shot look more realistic than a composite shot where there is too much depth of field, but stars are one of those things that look odd when they are out-of-focus because they get bigger.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Thing is, if they're realistically dim, they won't be visible when they're more than a tiny amount soft. On the other hand, if they're that dim, they're probably going to be invisible anyway. Argh.

 

Dim the stars out as you rack focus?

 

Phil

[Guest fstop]

I had that discussion with Richard Edlund, who tried to talk Lucas out of shooting the cockpit scenes in "Star Wars" with rear projection, partially because the low depth of field would mean that the out-of-focus stars would look like baseballs (plus be elliptical in anamorphic.) You can see this in the original "Battlestar Galatica" which did use rear-projection.  Most of the time, having the background fall out of focus makes the shot look more realistic than a composite shot where there is too much depth of field, but stars are one of those things that look odd when they are out-of-focus because they get bigger.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Stuart Gordon's SPACE TRUCKERS has THE WORST example of fairylight stars in rack focus EVER. I am alomst sure it was intentional (shame all the CG effects look highly professional then :( ).

 

Also, Derek Vanlint or no Derek Vanlint: that spinning, sequined turntable star backing from the climax of Alien has to be up there with world's worst too.