G'day,

I'm a Doctor Who fan, so well aware of recording an object, locking off a camera, removing that object, then resuming recording, to for instance make the TARDIS appear or disappear, etc etc...

But more recently in ads particularly I've seen a similar effect achieved whilst panning... Or - as in this example - the camera is panning, and the person is repeatedly changed:

myki Top Up - YouTube

At some points, it does appear as though there's been a break in recording/camera movement.. but in general it's quite smooth...

When I first saw this technique a few years ago I assumed they were using blue screen, but now I'm not sure... Do they simply, for the walking scene near the start for instance - record each person walking along, whilst moving the camera on a dolly at the same speed each time... then line the shots up in the edit suite... Or - ??

Cheers and thanks


Travis

In that example I suspect they probably did just shoot multiple times and line it up afterwards. Seems like that'd be just as easy as adding the jumpiness afterwards in some of the shots.
If they shot on a 4k camera (or even a 2k) and finish at 1080 they'd give themselves enough wiggle room in the framing to not run out of picture.

In other situations people often use repeat move motion control cameras to cut elements in or out while panning. Or I think 3d tracking/match move software gets used more and more, with objects and elements to be added shot in-situ and then turned into 3d objects to insert in the scene.

Thanks for the reply, Murray.

So the "cheap" option would be, film with an ultra high resolution camera, thus giving room to zoom in on the frame to line each shot up as required... I'd guess that's how the Vic Gov Transport Dept would go about it - on the cheap. :)

But then if they are doing it properly... more schmick, they'd use electronically controlled camera rigs set to follow the same pattern each time to record the subject? Do we thank the Matrix for this?


cheers

Motion control rigs have been around since Star Wars, or even earlier!

It's relatively inexpensive these days to be able to do repeatable pan-and-tilt moco shots, as encoded heads have become quite a bit cheaper. Varizoom and Kessler both have models. I owned one some years ago that replaced the wheels on a geared head and had moco capabilities--did quite a few shots including this one (http://moviesyouwannawatch.blogspot.com/2009/06/fired-up-part-410.html) from a feature called "Fired Up" (see 2:04--same two actors appear in two different places).

Once you start needing to move the camera, you add an encoded dolly which is quite a bit more gear-intensive, although with a small camera you can get away with a slider such as the Kessler system. Full moco rigs that can move the camera in all axes are amazing to watch in action but the programming time can be very time-consuming.

One of the coolest rigs is Marmalade, which is designed to move extremely fast for high-speed photography. Marmalade This clip has some amazing shots, and you can see the rig in action after 2:50. Mesmerizing!

Amazing stuff. It's interesting how many shots in that there are that people would just have assumed were CG though. And a little sad perhaps.

Thanks for the reply, Murray.

So the "cheap" option would be, film with an ultra high resolution camera, thus giving room to zoom in on the frame to line each shot up as required... I'd guess that's how the Vic Gov Transport Dept would go about it - on the cheap. :)

But then if they are doing it properly... more schmick, they'd use electronically controlled camera rigs set to follow the same pattern each time to record the subject? Do we thank the Matrix for this?


I don't think the Matrix used a great deal of motion control, from memory. Their thing was multi camera interpolation (the early version of the technique you can see in this clip)
Smoke City - Underwater Love - YouTube

The beauty of some of the more recent motion control systems is they can be operated more or less normally (for a big camera on a dolly track anyway) and the repeat that movement exactly every time.
That was the trick used in this old Kylie clip
Kylie Minogue Come Into My World - YouTube

There was likely people following her around with portable green screens as she walked each time, and you can see that spacially the "Kylies" seem a bit off sometimes when they're all together (plus all the planning of extras etc). But the camera moves in a pretty 'human' sort of dolly'd way because the first time they did it that's what happened