davidmattingly
02-26-2009, 02:56 PM
Hi all-
For this weeks assignment you must create a concept sketch for your "City of the Future". You must also shoot your own plate of Manhattan. You have the opportunity to shoot with the entire class tomorrow (Friday) at 5:00. If you do not avail yourself of that opportunity, you must check out a camera and do the shoot yourself--no second party plates will be allowed!
We will meet tomorrow in front of the second floor office at 5:00, and all go to Hoboken at the same time via the Path train. From there, we will go out on the pier near first street on the Hudson river for the first set up, and any who want to can do their take from there. Then we will go to a famous look out at Stevens Tech where we will shoot from another angle. After that you are all invited to be my guests for dinner at Benny Tudino's in Hoboken, and afterward back to my home/studio to see where I work, and for dessert.
If it is raining hard, we will not do the shoot tomorrow, and you will need to contact me to find out what my backup plan is. I am hoping that the worst of the rain will be over, and we will perhaps have some dramatic clouds over Manhattan to enhance your shots.
Your shot MUST have a camera move in it. The point of this assignment is to track the various elements into a moving shot, so if there is no camera movement, you don't have anything to track. Make sure your shot is done on a tripod, and make it a stately pan over your subject--no whip pans please. Aim to have the shot around 20 seconds long. It can be longer than that if you have all kinds of great painting to show off, but no shorter. Also, shoot from a tripod. Your move needs to be what is called a nodal pan, or one where your camera does not move in the "Z" space, so place the camera on a tripod, and pan over your subject. A nodal pan is a little more complicated than this, but for our purposes, the camera on a tripod will be fine. No hand held shots allowed.
If there is any problem, you can call me on my cell phone at 551-208-4174. Please be on time, as I want to start shooting around 5:45, when the light will be most beautiful over the city.
Once you have your plate, you need to make a temporary plate to paint over. As I demoed in class, take one frame from the start of your pan, copy it out of quicktime (with the movie at full resolution), and place it in a photoshop file. Make the photoshop file much larger than what you actually need, as you will be pasting in other sections of the take. Now go to the middle of your take, and copy our a frame, and paste it into your photoshop file, lining it us as best you can. Now take a final frame from the take, and paste it in also. If you are missing any areas, and have taken a very expansive shot, you may need to do some fill in. The clips may not line up perfectly--there may be lens distortion, or your tripod may not be perfectly level--don't worry about it being perfect, just get everything into your photoshop file to paint over.
Just in case everyone is not completely confused already, when you get your plate, it will be in DVC Pro HD format (if you shot in HD on the Panasonic camera). When you copy the frames out of your Quicktime file, they will be squished since the DVC pro format shoots in a 1.5 pixel format. To get them to the correct aspect ratio, you will need to stretch each frame by exactly 150%. Either that, or export your file into another format with square pixels, and use that to create your temp file. Saving to another format will blow up the size of the file, but it will avoid having to stretch each frame by 150%.
Make a separate layer for painting, and paint over this your temp layout. Don't worry about all of the compositing we will do in later classes--your goal this week is to get a great concept sketch done. I am only asking for one, so make your sketch something wonderful. Start out with shapes, and try and get a nice silhouette to work with. Once you have that, you can command click into the layers palette on the layer, and have the silhouette be a selection for you to paint into. I am looking for something exciting and creative in your concept, so do some research, and spend your time giving me a true vision of the future.
NO PHOTOGRAPHS OF ANY SORT AT THIS POINT! I promise I will fail any student who uses photographs as part of their concept. Just paint! You can use the custom brush techniques I showed you, but no photographs at all.
The required elements as as follows:
1. You will need 5 elements to track into the final plate, like buildings, megastructures, whatever will be in New York in the far future.
2. One element must change color over time, like a billboard.
3. One element must float over the city, like a giant floating megastructure, or air cars, or space ships. You might like to look at Robert McCall's work for some floating structure inspiration.
4. You must replace some of the buildings with futuristic structures. This can be one of your 5 elements, but I want some of the work integrated into the existing city.
5. For you After Effects experts, you can replace the sky, but this is a tricky thing to do correctly. Work mainly on your city elements, and do this only if you have extra time.
Also, you don't have to pan straight across your subject. You can also start low and pan up, or laterally, if you want. Here is a layout from last semester when we shot on Times Square. Notice that the verticals curve as you pan up because of lens distortion. The students had to paint all of their structures curving to match this plate. (Actually the painted it straight up and down and the distorted it into shape). This is more difficult, but it can be done.
http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww79/MattePaintingSVA/LayoutTimesSquare-1.jpg
See you all tomorrow night!
David Mattingly
For this weeks assignment you must create a concept sketch for your "City of the Future". You must also shoot your own plate of Manhattan. You have the opportunity to shoot with the entire class tomorrow (Friday) at 5:00. If you do not avail yourself of that opportunity, you must check out a camera and do the shoot yourself--no second party plates will be allowed!
We will meet tomorrow in front of the second floor office at 5:00, and all go to Hoboken at the same time via the Path train. From there, we will go out on the pier near first street on the Hudson river for the first set up, and any who want to can do their take from there. Then we will go to a famous look out at Stevens Tech where we will shoot from another angle. After that you are all invited to be my guests for dinner at Benny Tudino's in Hoboken, and afterward back to my home/studio to see where I work, and for dessert.
If it is raining hard, we will not do the shoot tomorrow, and you will need to contact me to find out what my backup plan is. I am hoping that the worst of the rain will be over, and we will perhaps have some dramatic clouds over Manhattan to enhance your shots.
Your shot MUST have a camera move in it. The point of this assignment is to track the various elements into a moving shot, so if there is no camera movement, you don't have anything to track. Make sure your shot is done on a tripod, and make it a stately pan over your subject--no whip pans please. Aim to have the shot around 20 seconds long. It can be longer than that if you have all kinds of great painting to show off, but no shorter. Also, shoot from a tripod. Your move needs to be what is called a nodal pan, or one where your camera does not move in the "Z" space, so place the camera on a tripod, and pan over your subject. A nodal pan is a little more complicated than this, but for our purposes, the camera on a tripod will be fine. No hand held shots allowed.
If there is any problem, you can call me on my cell phone at 551-208-4174. Please be on time, as I want to start shooting around 5:45, when the light will be most beautiful over the city.
Once you have your plate, you need to make a temporary plate to paint over. As I demoed in class, take one frame from the start of your pan, copy it out of quicktime (with the movie at full resolution), and place it in a photoshop file. Make the photoshop file much larger than what you actually need, as you will be pasting in other sections of the take. Now go to the middle of your take, and copy our a frame, and paste it into your photoshop file, lining it us as best you can. Now take a final frame from the take, and paste it in also. If you are missing any areas, and have taken a very expansive shot, you may need to do some fill in. The clips may not line up perfectly--there may be lens distortion, or your tripod may not be perfectly level--don't worry about it being perfect, just get everything into your photoshop file to paint over.
Just in case everyone is not completely confused already, when you get your plate, it will be in DVC Pro HD format (if you shot in HD on the Panasonic camera). When you copy the frames out of your Quicktime file, they will be squished since the DVC pro format shoots in a 1.5 pixel format. To get them to the correct aspect ratio, you will need to stretch each frame by exactly 150%. Either that, or export your file into another format with square pixels, and use that to create your temp file. Saving to another format will blow up the size of the file, but it will avoid having to stretch each frame by 150%.
Make a separate layer for painting, and paint over this your temp layout. Don't worry about all of the compositing we will do in later classes--your goal this week is to get a great concept sketch done. I am only asking for one, so make your sketch something wonderful. Start out with shapes, and try and get a nice silhouette to work with. Once you have that, you can command click into the layers palette on the layer, and have the silhouette be a selection for you to paint into. I am looking for something exciting and creative in your concept, so do some research, and spend your time giving me a true vision of the future.
NO PHOTOGRAPHS OF ANY SORT AT THIS POINT! I promise I will fail any student who uses photographs as part of their concept. Just paint! You can use the custom brush techniques I showed you, but no photographs at all.
The required elements as as follows:
1. You will need 5 elements to track into the final plate, like buildings, megastructures, whatever will be in New York in the far future.
2. One element must change color over time, like a billboard.
3. One element must float over the city, like a giant floating megastructure, or air cars, or space ships. You might like to look at Robert McCall's work for some floating structure inspiration.
4. You must replace some of the buildings with futuristic structures. This can be one of your 5 elements, but I want some of the work integrated into the existing city.
5. For you After Effects experts, you can replace the sky, but this is a tricky thing to do correctly. Work mainly on your city elements, and do this only if you have extra time.
Also, you don't have to pan straight across your subject. You can also start low and pan up, or laterally, if you want. Here is a layout from last semester when we shot on Times Square. Notice that the verticals curve as you pan up because of lens distortion. The students had to paint all of their structures curving to match this plate. (Actually the painted it straight up and down and the distorted it into shape). This is more difficult, but it can be done.
http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww79/MattePaintingSVA/LayoutTimesSquare-1.jpg
See you all tomorrow night!
David Mattingly