space/astronaut scene

matthew · January 15, 2005

Hi - I'm a cameraman/director with significant 35mm experience filming african wildlife. I've also got a reasonable knowledge of film lighting.

I've a problem in that I've got to create several studio scenes of modern astronauts in space orbit. These shots are basically of three types and I assume would be created though the use of blue screen work - with which I have not familiarity. The shots would have to look very realistic so at this stage of the procedings budget is not an issue - there for a feature.

- shots of astronauts in shuttle at shuttle launch (int)

- shots of astronauts in shuttle orbit looking out at Earth/Moon (int/ext)

- shots of astronauts undertaking space walk in Earth orbit (ext)

If any reader of this post has had experience in creating similar scenes then I'd love to hear from him/her. Any information/suggestions on ways of making this possible, realistic and authentic would be very gratefully received. As I have no experience in blue screen work can anyone suggest basic sources of information/articles on these techniques so that I can fully research and get a handle on the topic. I'm particularly interested in creating zero gravity effects - how to film my astronauts as if they were in space. In addition how digital effects might be used to supplement the studio/lighting set ups to create believeablity and authenticity. I can answer wildlife questions now or later! sincerely, Matt - serenget@dircon.co.uk

oscar jimenez · January 15, 2005

Matthew. I just sent you an E mail.

Cheers

Oscar

Adam Frisch FSF · January 15, 2005

Trying to simulate weightlessness is one fo the most tricky things to do in gravity. Most of it is done by flying people on cables and undercranking or having people stand on teeter-totters.

Apollo 13 was mostly shot using teeter-totters, i.e. a crane the actors can stand on so that they can bob up and down. They also went up in Nasa's "Vomit Comet" for some key scenes to get real weightlessness, but that's probably out of your budget range.

From Earth To The Moon had astronauts suspended in wires and underkranked as they hopped

on the moon. It looked very convincing.

Also, when shooting blue screen you can tailor the position of the screen and talent to fit with the illusion you want to sell. For intance - if you want someone to cartwheel/spin/rotate through a set, place the blue screen on the ground and film the talent from above suspended in a single wire near the camera. It can later be erased or roto'ed in post. Stuff like that.

I'm sure others here have much more specific suggestions.

Good luck.

Phil Rhodes · January 15, 2005

Hi,

Shoot underwater, in a big tank.

Phil

K Borowski · January 15, 2005

Lol. Don't forget that there's no sound in space, like so many other directors have done :rolleyes: In fact, 2001 is the only movie I recall seeing that gets this tidbit of information right. When they did 2010, suddenly sound was back in space. Unless one of your astronauts needs to throw up realistically in a zero-gravity environment, I don't think you'll need real zero-gravity ;-) If you're using a crane, aka "teetter totter" try not to have all of the astronauts bobbing up and down at the same time, which looks fake. If you want to try and simulate it better, there are occasionally broadcasts from the ISS on C-Span, or if you can find it, NASA's own TV channel, so you can see what real zero-g looks like. Also, with any female/long-haired astronauts, make sure that their hair is pulled back, unless you have the money to somehow simulate hair ballooning out under the effects of zero-g. Of course, if you're only doing shots of astronauts in spacesuits, this shouldn't be too much trouble. Zero-g works the same inside and outside though, so even for shots involving astronauts doing EVAs, seeing interior spacestation video should be helpful for you. One difference between inside and outside of the station, they use compressed nitrogen to propel themselves around outside, and there is little or no bobbing since there is no air in the vacuum. So without touching something or using something for propulsion, astronauts cannot turn around or move towards or away from something. This is often forgotten at least once in space movies. I've never shot any zero-g, but my father always complains about filmmakers getting these things wrong (he works for NASA). I hope this helps. . .

~Karl

K Borowski · January 15, 2005

Hi,

Shoot underwater, in a big tank.

Phil

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Shooting underwater is a plausible way of simulating zero-g with the proper balast, and is used for astronaut training. However, there are no BUBBLES in space, so one must be very very careful if taking this approach or else it will look like it is shot underwater.

January 16, 2005

I'd seriously check out the June 1985 American Cinematographer that discusses Gayne Resner and Hector Figueroa's work on a US mini series called SPACE. There's a whole sequence that takes place with Harry Hamlin on the moon and it was done entirely in camera on the dirt cheap. Oh what the heck- here's the Nora Lee article :) :

Hector Figueroa:

"The moon set had to have one light source. How could we get a single source bright enough to light an entire set? We wound up directing light through a tube or a snood that was white foamcore on the inside and then through an intensifier (146 paper). I had the lab print the shot a little blue to it that cold look. I used 24 maxibrutes with some mirrors and a mixture of tungsten and blue to give it an edge. The set was 160ft by 90ft and when you looked at it with the light meter the reading was the same 15 ft from the light source to the back wall. Lighting on the moon is different from Earth. You think a frontlight/backlight situation as having a certain look. On the moon it is reversed. There is no atmosphere, no reflection and very little depth. Things that are hundreds of feet away look close up. The sun is huge and Dick Gordon, former astronaut and our technical advisor, told me it looks like it is so close you could reach up and touch it and burn your hand on it."

Because the helmets reflected more than 180 degrees, the set had to be draped in black on every side and on the ceiling. There could be no extra lights and seemingly no place for the camera. "We used three remote controlled cameras on the moonscape. One camera was actually on the rover. My operator was in the rover dressed as an astronaut. He used a little Elaine 16mm camera and he could make it zoom, focus, pan and titl very unobtrusively. Another camera was on the Louma crane and it was remote. The last camera was on the side and it was dressed out to look like a NASA camera". Figgueroa laughed, "Each camera would photograph the other cameras and it looked very natural".

Gayne Reschner:

I worried about the space walk, all through the shooting, before we ever got to it. There was no time for me to do any tests because the stage wasn't ready until before we shot. Besides, we were shooting all the time anyway, since I couldn't be there,, I had a cameraman do a test which I developed. From the test, it was obvious that the biggest problem was the wires that the astronaut had to hang from. The second biggest worry was the fact that they wore totally round helmets that had gold visors which reflected everything in the studio. Lights were another thing. I studied alot of space walk footage, particularly spacewalk stills, and in most of them you will see the reflection of the sun in the helmet - abright kick in the helmet. I figured that's fine, but there can only be one, not two or three. Obviously we do not have a binary system. Almost any place I put a light it would relfect in the helmet unless it was directly behind."

Reschner had an impressive list of worries. He thought of a dozen different ways to solve them. "Before we shot, I had a cut-off of the spacecraft prepared, because I figured that if you saw the spacecraft reflected in the helmet, that would be perfectly natural. I decided I could put put a little fill in my picture by projecting light on the imageof the capsule. It turned out that I never used it because I couldn't get the shot that it would work in. The spacecraft was always behind the astronaut. Though I never actually used it, I think it was a good idea. I had another cut-out of the Earth that I intended to use, too."

Re-creating a spacewalk is difficult because in sace the sun is the source light. There is no atmosphere to diffuse the light. There is no such thing as ambient light. Ther eare no multiple shadows. There are nothing but lighting problems for the cinematographer. "We were intending to shoot the astronaut in slow-motion which means I would need quite a bit of light. I ordered a 1200 HMI and tried that out. It had some problems. It didn't flood enough - I had to cover the entire space walk with just one light - and I couldn't patch in another light or get it back far enough. Because the helmet is round, all the images reflected in it are very small. The image coming from the HMI did not look natural. It was a tiny dot and it looked too small for the sun.

"To try to get the size right, I had an enormous wooden cut-out built with a ten-foot circle in it and we covered the centre of it with tracing paper. We put maxibrutes behind it - I forget how many, but we had them everywhere there was space for them - probably 9 or 10 - and hit them into the tracing paper. When that was reflected into the helmet, it looked very much like the sun and it spread out enough that I could cover the entire set with one light. The key to lighting was an added backlight for the reverse angle of the astronaut, as though it was reflecting from Earth."

The wires were the final major problem. "I was getting a little desperate about that by the day of shooting. Originally, they were transparent and that didn't work. Then I had them painted a dull black and that didn't work. I was trying everything I could think of. Finally, I put a polaroid filter on - a polar screen- and they disappeared."

The filter solved one problem and created another. "The polar screen took a stop and a half away from me. Another fortunate thing happened to me, though. Harry Hamlin, who was doing the walk, happened to be very good at simulating a slow motion effect - a floating effect. He was so good at it that we decided not to shoot it in slow motion and that gave me back my stop and half. He simulated that whole thing". The most pleasing shot in the space walk sequence is Hamlin floating with the Earth behind him. rather than adding the Earth optically, it was rear-projected by Bill Hansard's team.

Another sequence show's Hamlin's face in close-up. he lifts his gold visor and on the clear vision underneath, we see reflected stars. "That was a shot that [director] Lee Phillips and I talked about, and everybody tried to talk us out of it, they said it just couldn't be done", continued Reschner. "That is just a way of encouraging us. I had them find a star plate for the rear projection. Hamlin was photographed against the star plate. Now, very close into him - about three feet from his face- was a canvas star backing. It was one that you could project the light in the back of it and it has little holes in it. For the camera, I cut a hole in the backing and stuck the lens through.

"I found that with the curve of the helmet the stars looked too tiny. So I took a pencil and started punching bigger stars in the canvas. Pretty soon everybody was punching holes in the canvas. I got it the way I wanted it and Lee looked at i tand he said that the reflected stars were fine, but they were all the same color. My gaffer always carries a string of those tiny white Christmas tree lights. So we hung those around the backing and then dimmed them a little to change the color slightly. Finally, it started looking very good and we shot it."

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Now before you ask "what's a Maxibrute?" Or declare "those light levels are ridiculous!" as well as ask "Who is Harry Hamlin?" This WAS 1984 written for a 1985 article at a time when the HMI was still very much seen as a new kid you'd be foolish to trust, and cinematographers shooting this kind of stuff required huge numbers of footcandles for their 100 ASA ratings, so Maxibrutes weren't uncommon. You could do all this today with smaller, less power hungry lights on your 500T and achieve the same effects of this hugely creative lighting strategy.

And, um, someone else can cover the whereabouts of Harry Hamlin... ;)

January 16, 2005

Shooting underwater is a plausible way of simulating zero-g with the proper balast, and is used for astronaut training. However, there are no BUBBLES in space, so one must be very very careful if taking this approach or else it will look like it is shot underwater.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

rotoscoping, rotoscoping, rotoscoping...

http://www.director-file.com/cunningham/524.html

-k

matthew · January 17, 2005

To all contributors...

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to this post - all replies have been found helpful!

Still looking for a basic SFx reference book - any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Matt.

January 17, 2005

To all contributors...

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to this post - all replies have been found helpful!

Still looking for a basic SFx reference book - any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Matt.

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