Motion Control on sets

Mark Allen · January 11, 2005

I was just wondering if anyone has had experience with motion control on sets.

My main questions are:

1. How long does it take to set it up per shot? compared to what might be normal for the same shoot?

2. How much does it usually end up costing including whatever required operators are included?

thanks!

Elhanan Matos · January 11, 2005

1. A very long time.

2. A lot of money.

The time it takes to do a shot all depends on how complicated the shot is, and how experienced the moco op is. I've only been around 2 moco rigs, one was over at Studio G in Burbank, they shoot alot of CSI's moco effects there, and we were doing some high speed tests with CSI Miami and Vegas, the moco shot took a few hours to set up, about three hours if I remember correctly, it might have been longer, it was a very complicated shot, which included setting off a mouse trap, rotating the mouse trap a full 180, lifting the camera up and tilting it, and all that had to take place in about one second, we were planning on shooting 1,000 fps. I believe we payed the moco operator about $500 and we never shot a thing. We ended up running out of time and not shooting with the moco rig. The second moco rig I have been around was up at Industrial Light and Magic on the set of Star Wars Episode 3, I was there mainly to check out the modifications they made to their F950s, but that moco rig was absolutely amazing, it was HUGE!!!

Phil Rhodes · January 11, 2005

Hi,

So, what -did- they do to their F950s?

Phil

Bob Hayes · January 12, 2005

I shot some Moco work for CSI over at Studio G. Most of it is large over size items that you move the camera around. Table top work is pretty exacting and always takes longer then expected. We can bang out a shot and hour to two hours. The camera mount stays where it is and we just move the set pieces to it. The Moco part is really the easy stuff. Because the focus is preset repeating takes is easy and you see exactly what it looks like. The tough part is lighting the set pieces so they look natural and making the prop perform like it is supposed to in the script.

Mark Allen · January 12, 2005

The idea would be inserting CG elements later - so the props in this case would be actors moving in a scene. not huge swinging camera motions, but natural motion that I would simply want recroded so I could hand the data over to my CG artist AND repeat for clean plates (without actors).

Are you thinking this might take an extra hour? I figure it takes about 10 to 20 minutes to set up a shot depending on many things normally... with the motion capture, I am wondering if it take a lot longer, sounds like 1 hour total?

Any idea what that package is renting for? (just if you know off hand)

thanks.

Elhanan Matos · January 12, 2005

I shot some Moco work for CSI over at Studio G. Most of it is large over size items that you move the camera around. Table top work is pretty exacting and always takes longer then expected. We can bang out a shot and hour to two hours. The camera mount stays where it is and we just move the set pieces to it. The Moco part is really the easy stuff. Because the focus is preset repeating takes is easy and you see exactly what it looks like. The tough part is lighting the set pieces so they look natural and making the prop perform like it is supposed to in the script.

Thats where we held our tests. Was it for Miami or Vegas?

Frank DiBugnara · January 12, 2005

I did a series of spots using MOCO. Here's a few thoughts:

1) I would allow no less than double the amount of time for motion control shots. It is amazing how much time you eat up.

2) Know exactly what you want. There has never been a time when I felt so happy that I was completely prepared with no room for improv on the set. Also be prepared to communicate everything in "number of frames" and not "seconds". Most of the MOCO software requires you to enter that you want the length of the move to be "72 frames" and not "3 seconds". And, of course, that changes when you overcrank the camera. So there's a few conversions to do on the set.

3) Maybe have some kind of laptop on the set with a way to import video from the tap (film, I'm assuming). I ran several shots at 75 fps. The MOCO unit ended up moving very quickly. It was great to turn to the vidassist and see a slow motion render that simulated the overcranking and showed us exactly how the camera motion, film speed, and action of the actors all played together.

I had a great experience with the guys from spydercam (www.spydercam.com) They did the MOCO effects for the Spiderman movies. They were very easy to work with and had reliable and versatile gear.

Good Luck