Beer pong trick

[Alex Mercer]

ok I want to do a beer pong trick. If you dongt know what beer pong is you can go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_pong.

 

Anyway I want to show a player pick up ten ping pong balls and throw them all at once then I want to show all of the balls land in the ten cups. I was just wanting to know if anyone has any ideas about how I can shoot this. any help would be awesome.

 

Thanks,

Alex

[David Cox]

Where this would get complicated is that, since this is a drinking game, the treatment that would look the most ?real life? would be a hand held camera ? perhaps a camera on a cell phone as if shot by a witness. That would then give rise to the issue of having multiple passes all line up. If this were required, I would very carefully consider the angle and shoot a ?master? hand held plate that had all ten balls being thrown as closely as possible to the 10 cups that actually already have balls in them (assuming the angle allows you to see them after they have landed in the cup). Then I would remove the balls from the cups digitally until then have landed and remove them shortly after they have left the throwers hand. This would give a hand held plate where the balls are thrown, then they disappear, then they ?pop on? in the cups. Then I would lock off the camera at an average angle to the hand held shot, and shoot 10 plates of balls being thrown into each cup. Roto those and track onto the master plate (they would most likely be blurred until they impact the cups anyway) and you?ve created a believable VFX shot that is not compromised by having the camera locked off.

 

You could also generate the flying balls with 3D animation, but if you can use the real thing it will be cheaper and probably more believable as each ball would land in the cups differently.

 

David Cox

Baraka Post Production Ltd

www.baraka.co.uk

[Michael Collier]

Are you reshooting beerfest? sounds like a classic digital shot. Either that or train your actor long in advance and be prepared for several flubbed takes. Thats if you want it all to happen in a wide shot.

 

You can also just show a med shot of him throwing the balls with corresponding CUs of the ping pong landing in the beer. Lots of shots like that can make for great pacing in edit.

[Alex Mercer]

does it sound like beerfest? Its just a film about the best beer pong player at his university then goes to a competition and wins.

 

I was thinking of having the camera facing the actor and show him throw the ten balls then show a shot from above the ten cups and rig up something that wouuld drop ten balls at once. I think that would work but would it be realistic? Any other ideas?

[Will Earl]

Are you hoping to do this shot yourself? Or do you have a VFX/Animation/Compositing minded person who is going to be working on this shot?

 

I'd say this is a fairly simple CG shot, depending on how comfortable you are working in 3D. It would require the actor to mine throwing the balls, and then getting an animator to animate the balls bouncing into the cups.

You could also rig something up on set to provide the ball-cup interaction. See Forest Gump for CG ping pong balls in motion.

 

I started to write up instructions on how to do this with movement in the camera and how to do the ball-cup interaction, however while all this seems very simple to me, the process of actually doing this is rather involved, and is a bit much for me to write down. If you want more specific information please ask.

 

And I also like David's idea, so if it's possible for you to do it mainly in camera then try to do it that way.

[Alex Mercer]

I dont know anything about 3D or animation. This is pretty much a no budget film. Ill buy the ten ping pong balls. Any ideas for rigging this?

[Amarjeet Singh Sadal]

I dont know anything about 3D or animation. This is pretty much a no budget film. Ill buy the ten ping pong balls. Any ideas for rigging this?

 

no way u gonna acheive this without using vfx. riggin ping pong balls and doing it would make matters complex and spoil the whole schedule.

 

3d is the way to go. also modelling ping pong balls aint that difficult :)

if camera is moving. it twice as difficult since you would need trackpoints and would have to track it. i believe u would be shooting minidv. if yes, then forget moving shot. go for a static shot. that way u only have to worry about composite.