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Posted by nobody special on 01/22/06 03:36
Well, nobody's going to make a super-convincing virtual set with an
obsolete MX20, and it's a good learning experience for your kids to
learn about how the perspective and relative position of the BG was not
tied to the camera position. But it doesn't mean they shouldn't try to
experiment. When I was younger, chroma and luma-keyed plastic spaceship
models I 'flew' over DVE starfields entertained me for hours on end.
Nowadays we'd usually do all that in a 3-d animation program, but there
are times keys still get the job done.
In my shop the client one time wanted a new news set and had zero
budget for it, so we put a desk in front of the CK wall, and in a paint
program I whipped up a bank of monitors and "glass" partitions behind
the desk that looked pretty good. Now, to do this right, you need a
heavy-duty computer and something like the ORAD virtual set system,
with encoding pan heads and real-time 3-d set generation... all that
stuff costs LOTS.
I explained about how we couldn't do zooms or meaningful pans, but
that we could run through the script once with the single camera and
backing set up for a wide shot, then I could blow up and blur the BG,
plus zoom in the camera, lock it down again, and record a second take
with the new angle of view and change in persective, and simple cuts
would "sell" the virtual set pretty well. This worked for what the
client needed, and it could work for a student production, if they have
time for multiple takes and editing. Considering the time they would
otherwise spend travelling to locations, it's still a good deal, and
worth trying. The MX-20 may not be up to the task, but Premiere, FCP,
Vegas or Avid can handle it.
I would guess that seven out of ten current TV national spots in any
hour of viewing use keying and compositing to some extent. It's not
always apparent: lots of times it's only subtle improvements or
extensions to an existing set. But you see a LOT of spots for things
like insurance, cars, and hair care products and the like, where people
or products are in exotic technical-looking settings: all these things
are composited keys. AWhen you Watch "exterior" scenes on "ER", a lot
of that is comped in during post, surprisingly little of the standing
exterior sets actually exist.
So I say encourage those kids to really push whatever they have to work
with, even if it may be 'substandard' - because the underlying concepts
are often still valid, and when they get access to better tools and
techniques, they will have some kind of experiential base to refer to,
making their learning come much faster.
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