compositing into miniatures (stop motion setup)

[Greg Tran]

Hi, I'm wondering if people have insight into compositing into miniatures.

I have a mechanized dolly/rotate system for my canon 5d and i'd like to composite models / stop-motion figures which are at different scales.

 

Here's the situation: i have a figure which is about 6 inches tall, but one of the scenes he is in, I'm flying over buildings which are at least 4 stories tall - i want him to look pretty small in the shot. I don't want to have to build the building 4 feet high or build a smaller version of the figure - instead i'd like to keep the building around 1-2 feet and just shoot him separately and composite him in at the correct scale. These would be moving shots, so is it possible to achieve this effect? I imagine it would involve some scalar calculations so the camera movement would match up for both shots.

 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

[Mei Lewis]

Could you post a sketch of what you're tying to achieve?

[Oliver Hadlow Martin]

I have no experience shooting miniatures but can you just green screen the figure and composite him on the background plate you filmed separately? Depending on what you want you could do all the camera effects in post. Just make the light match is what I would say.

 

I should imagine to shoot miniatures you need to use a lot of light to get a decent t-stop so as not to make them look "miniatures" if you get me?

[James Steven Beverly]

Composting isn't the hard part. Getting it to look right is the hard part. Getting the lighting on the model to match the real world background can be a real bitch.Then there's motion blur, matching the speed of what a full sized object would be with the overcranked miniature. Now from what I read, you're gonna use model buildings but they are the wrong scale much smaller than they should be. That shouldn't be a problem. All you need to do is is used forced perspective, increase your DOF set the camera way back and zoom in to compress the image, set the model buildings in the foreground set the miniature you in the background so it looks right. I would build the set on it's side stacked vertically, set the camera at 90 deg. and roll it then drop your miniature and re-time the footage to overcrank it to taste. Add motion blur and see what you got, then fix it.

 

Here, read these:

http://www.videomaker.com/video/watch/tutorials/702/how-to-convert-frame-rates

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14523

http://allbetsareoff.com/tutorials/quick-tip-adding-motion-blur-into-your-video/

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?191340-Frame-Blending-Motion-Blur

http://tabstart.com/directory/activities/build-miniature-film-set-59

http://movieminiatures.blogspot.com.au/

[James Steven Beverly]

Damn it. I screwed up, what I meant to say is use a wide angle lens, set close to the foreground buildings and your miniature of yourself set back to DE-COMPRESS the image and make your miniature self look much smaller. THAT should look right. Sorry for the brain lock. Also there was a formula / equation somewhere on this forum that gave you the frame rate you need to shoot at for a falling miniature object to make it visually match the rate at which the actual object would fall in order to make it look realistic but hell if I can find it so if anyone remembers it, Please let me know.

Edited April 18, 2013 by James Steven Beverly

[Adrian Sierkowski]

All the formulas, as well as forced perspective, are covered in the ASC Manual, 9th edition, if memory serves.

 

And speaking of; totally off topic, but I've just had dinner and a good bottle of wine, it pains me that so few "dps," these days actually know what that book is </rant>