Plates in vfx

#1

Hey! I am a newbie to the world of visual effects and came across an interview on the web about some professional vfx artists that talked about plates.
Now what exactly are plates? What can they be used for?

Appreciate your response

#2

In film term, plates are generaly the live action footage you apply your vfx too.

#3

You may also encounter the term “clean plate” which is basically live footages with certain unwanted objects removed: wires, markers, even un-needed people and more. After obtaining a clean plate, then you put in the VFX elements as needed. A recent example would be District-9 where they removed actors with mo-cap suits and replaced them with CG aliens.

#4

Yeah, it’s just a term for the actual film footage that’s being used.

#5

More than film footage in general, at least in my experience, “the plate” is always the background plate or for full greenscreen shoots the characters plate.
Footage in general could include fx material or scorpio/mocon reshoots which normally get called contributions, elements and whatnot.

Kinda funny, with no two shops agreeing about certain titles and terms, shooting material is the only one where arbitrary conventions seem to kinda stand :slight_smile:

#6

Probably comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_plate

#7

Unless the VFX artists in question were talking about eating at their desks of course, as in “we are so busy we usually just bring our plates to our desk to eat…” In which case they are just talking about regular plates.

#8

Might actually come from old school matte painting work too, since some of it was done on glass plates for overlay and rephotography operations.
Still funny how work on set seldom has discrepancies between units and various people, while in digital some terms have wildly different meanings from place to place.

#9

Alright thanks guys, appreciate the help. It’s not easy getting all the terms when you’re trying to dive in :slight_smile:

#10

I’d say there is not a 100 percent standard definition of what a “plate” is but in my life as a compositor it seems to be like this: a plate can be anything that was shot on location with the film camera.
Usually this is just the background plate. In cases of greenscreens this can be foreground and background plates or sometimes a clean plate with something being left out (clean plate of the greenscreen or the bg with no rigs/wires). “Plate” seems to be also used for reference pictures (grey/mirror balls) that were shot with the film camera although the term is usually(!) not used for reference pictures taken by on set supervisors with some digital camera or a pano cam, etc.

It might also be used for intermediate elements created by the compositor that are based on the original plates. For instance painted clean plates, rig removals etc.

It is not used for cg renderings.

These are no golden rules but just my experience from the different places I worked at.

-k

#11

we sometimes also refer to plates as actual plates, but that meaning is only in effect in or around the kitchen area and mostly around the hours of 12 noon to roughly 2 pm.

confusing industry, tell me about it…:beer:

#12

So, I guess the final conclusion is that a “plate” is imagery produced from a camera that is used during compositing? The “plate” term seems to come from older terminology when the technology was young, similar to today’s usage of the term “leading” in typography.

#13

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