http://www.iconographstudios.com/recruit/index.html
If you hit the Gallery you’ll see the first 2 images are stills from the short. They are VERY grainy on PURPOSE - don’t think that’s how your footage will look. It can actually be very clean - I turned the gain up to get it kind of chunky while shooting.
http://www.iconographstudios.com/percentage/gallery.html
Again, if you click on the Gallery you’ll see the stills - of which there are 10 I think. Again, it’s a little grainy on purpose - I’m not a fan of video, and I don’t want my video to LOOK like video. Too clean and everything sharp, so I did everything I could to be shooting as close to wide open for each lens as possible, and have “grain” so there was movement and an organic element to the footage. This is all personal preference - everyone likes their footage to look a certain way, this is just mine.
No barrely distortion to speak of, but there WAS a loss of light to deal with. Outside it’s not a big deal, but using lights for interiors… You’ll need some bigger lights than 250ws…
Keying, it turns out, is like any other footage - especially HDV. You’ll be doing masking/roto work along with the key to make sure you don’t key out any elements you wanna keep (The Plague of Man short - their uniforms have green in them, some of their skin shadows have green tints, etc. - you can lose those details in the key).
A very nice guy from R&H made a tut for me and posted it here either in the Compositing or After Effects Forum - if you do a search for out of focus greenscreen keying you might find it. If I have a minute later today I’ll find it and post the link here.
Do not underlight/underexpose your shots - give good contrast in your lighting just like with film, but don’t let the shadows go completely black. Pound some light in there and make it darker in post. You’ll have more latitude and options with what you wanna do if you have more image information to work with.
Write everything you do down, if it’s possible. There will be no information saved as far as the focal length and such - write down what length lens you used for each shot you want to integrate elements into, and write down the general distance if possible which will also help. If you want to get even more specific, do camera tests with each lens and figureout what angle of view you are REALLY getting and you can plug that into your 3D software for the camera for a more accurate render and a better comp later as you won’t have wide angle footage with a 3D element that was obviously rendered with a longer lens - get it?
We used the RedRock setup and hand-holding that thing was a nightmare (on a JVC HD110, the total length was 3 feet or more depending on what lens was used - your Z1 would be much easier to hand-hold) so it stayed on tripod either locked down or on the dolly for movement.
On the Plague of Man short:
Part of what I’m going to do as a last element to add is 'm going to take regular footage of a wall with multiple markers and motion track the hand-held camera movement. Once I’ve added the 3D elements and composited all elements I’m going to give it hand-held camera shake before rendering out and putting it back in the timeline.
I hope this helps - lemme know if you need any further clarification, or have any questions about obstacles we ran into and overcame.
Happy shooting and good luck!
-Lew 