Time-Lapse (landscape w/ subject)

[Marc Levy]

Greetings all. An upcoming project requires the following - maybe you can help:

 

A dark-skinned black man watches a time-lapse sunrise in a green field. This scene plays in two shots:

 

- time-lapse sunrise (his POV)

- his face looking at the sunrise

 

This will be shot on 500T, either 7279 or 7229 (most likely rated at 500 ASA). The time-lapse sunrise is pretty straight forward, but I'm not sure how to approach the shot of the man. I see two options, then:

 

1) shoot the face time-lapse also, with available light (the sunrise) providing the changing light on his face. I was thinking of keeping a slight, unchanging soft edge-light (artificial) on him throughout the shot. As I won't have two cameras, I will need to shoot these on two different sunrises. Would the lighting effects of the second sunrise match the first?

 

2) or, shoot the face at 24FPS while attempting to create the effect of the changing light of a sunrise.

 

Option 1) is my preference, as cutting from time-lapse to 24FPS may look strange, especially as the enitre background (grass and hills) behind the man's face would change also.

 

Advice is appreciated.

 

Marc Levy

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Problem is, he'll never stay still enough, and you'll end up with that static-person-in-middle-of-crowd type shot they do - when the static person is kind of...vibrating slightly.

 

That might be OK, depending on the circumstances. For ideal results, I'd shoot both angles timelapse without the guy, then shoot the guy bluescreen, match the lighting, and drop him in. Your comp would have to be absolutely undetectable, but it's certainly possible.

 

Phil

[Marc Levy]

Thanks, Phil. I was thinking that would be an option. Any ideas on faking the light of a real-time sunrise?

[Stuart Brereton]

Hi,

 

Why not shoot your actor real-time at sunrise, but flag the sun off his face. You could then use a moving source, say, a 2k with Full CTO as your artificial Sun.

 

Doing it this way would mean that you have sunlight on the landscape behind him, but your artificial Sunrise could happen as fast as you want.

 

I think as long as the audience can see the light moving on his face, you'll sell the gag. It's obviously not a 'real' situation anyway.

 

Stuart