Greenscreen Filming

Once the storyboards and previsualisation had been complete, the next step was to actually record the footage that will be tracked and composited into the 3D scene. Because none of the shots were static, the camera had to be placed on a track so that the camera could dolly left, right forwards and backwards depending on the shot. It took a few tries to get the movement of both the dolly and the pan right with little jarring movements.

The images below show us shooting the shot of the guy sitting in the dark alley under the spot light this shot was by far the easiest to capture as there isn't much movement from the actor at all and only a simple right dolly with a slight pan to the left to keep the actor in frame.

The shot in the image below was probably the most difficult one to shoot as the curvature of the bridge in the 3D scene wasn't able to be replicated. However to try and replicate the rise of the bridge, two wooden boards were placed on top of each other that the actor then walked across. This piece of footage will be quite tricky when compositing this into the 3D scene as the bridge has a smooth arch where as these wooden boards just really replicate some steps instead.

The camera movements in this scene were pretty much the same to what they were in the first scene so the movement itself was easy to get right due to the practice from the other shot. However, this scene has the actor walking across the greenscreen room which did add a little challenge to recording as the camera had to keep up with the actor.

Then the final scene that was shot was the shot of the character walking on top of the wall. This shot was also relatively easy to shoot as the only movements was panning the camera forwards. The main challenged was getting the speed of the camera movement right so that it wasn't too fast or too slow.

The biggest issue with this scene was that there wasn't really anything to use as the wall, so we used poufs for the actor to walk on. However, seeing that only two were available to use, this meant that the shot couldn't be as long as originally intended as the actor couldn't walk up the wall on the far end and walk across due to not having enough room. It also resulted in an alternate version being recorded where instead of walking towards the camera, the actor instead walks away from the camera and up onto the wall which is where the shot will end after he climbs up onto the wall instead of having him walk along the wall.