On The Wrong Footaging

Finally got a chance to shoot some test footage, after making the decision to use the environment manipulation idea.  The reasoning for this largely being that it would be considerably easier to find a location and control the shooting of a wall over a road.

Unfortunately the test footage isn't particularly useful, as there is far too much camera shake present.  Looks like I'll need to find a way to keep the movement smooth.

Despite these short-comings, I've begun to put together a few animation test for the kinds of effects to be used in the film:

Progression Pants.

On the day I set aside to get outside and shoot some real test footage, it ends up raining.

Therefore the real shooting didn't happen, so instead here's some dodgy indoor footage.

The kitchen and cage footage were moderately successful, the wall footage not so, as I accidentally cropped it to a point where the camera was just rotating.  Unfortunately to actually get the entire wall in shot required me to stand in a part of the room where there was no space to walk.  The ridiculously narrow field of view on these cameras is somewhat limiting.

Setting up the coordinate system within MatchMover is a total pain, and it's proving to be quicker and more reliable to rotate the whole thing by hand in Maya.  Decent visual feedback helps a tonne.

Here's Walter with his opinion on Matchmoving:

Concepted.

So far, so conceptualised two ideas, so here they are:

The first concept very much speaks for itself.  It's a chasm in the middle of the road.  The second image is based off of the idea of manipulating the environment, either with of without an actor taking the role of the manipulator.

The chasm concept would not involve dynamics, solely the chasm existing as a feature of the on the environment.

However the manipulator concept would feature a large amount on animation, albeit on smaller objects.

I've yet to weigh up the pros and cons of both of these ideas, and could quite possibly end up combining them if seems feasible given the time constraints.

With regards to experimentation, I have so far discovered that poorly lit and out of focus footage is next to useless, and that averagely lit, yet in focus footage is usable, but far from perfect.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to film some footage outside when it's light this week.