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Shooting minatures


JHerrera

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I'm new to this forum so first off, hello, secondly, im shooting a minature shot of a city at night (with fog rolling in) so the details of the city are pretty vague and the models don't rock but the image will have fog and darkness so it'll hoepfully look fine. My question is, how can I make it look better using the capabilites that the AG-DVX100A has such as slow shutter and such and how should I light the minatures. Should I avoid camera movements or will that give away that its a model? As you can tell Im a newbie and help is appreciated.

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The most important thing when shooting miniatures is having a lot of depth of field - in your case, shooting consumer DV will help with that, but you really want to make sure you can shoot at a deep f-stop. Camera movement is fine as long as it resembles a helicopter move over a "real" city -- don't do something not possible in a real-sized city. Dollying through a miniature city sideways can sometimes look like you've created a dolly move in real life that lasts ten blocks with the camera hovering at a five story height, which is not really possible in real life except as a sideways view from a helicopter.

 

Smoke will help create atmospheric haze if it is even. I worry about rolling fog looking miniaturized enough to match the scale. You can also use filters like UltraCons to increase the haziness of the image.

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Hi,

 

If it was me I'd do two passes, locked off if need be, with and without fog. Ensure the fog is extremely even and do additional holdout passes so as to be able to isolate various buildings and suchlike, then trnasition from the non-fog to the fog using an animated matte. That's just how I'd do it, though.

 

Phil

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Smoke will help create atmospheric haze if it is even. I worry about rolling fog looking miniaturized enough to match the scale.  You can also use filters like UltraCons to increase the haziness of the image.

 

 

The great Paul Wilson once told me that he uses filtration to haze up the foreground and also shoot with longer lenses, aperture completely pinhole. You look at most of his work and you can see that the camera always seems to be half a mile away from the subject, and anything seemingly closer up is achieved by simulating a telephoto. Derek Meddings and Wilson really perfected the A and B camera miniature trick with the "wide shot" on A camera and inserts every so often of the "long lens" B camera.

 

Steal from the best!

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I've been told placing the lens on the nodal point is smarter than letting the lens sweep broadly during pans and tilts.

 

I just shot models last week, for me long lenses and decreased dof looked good but I was shooting rooms not city blocks. Also I lit it natuarally, picked the time of day, angle of the sun, etc...

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