okay this is a little bit of a crazy and ambitious idea but if
you're watching this video it kind of worked out
so
you're crazy
in any war there are calms between storms there will be days when we lose faith
days when our allies turn against us but the day will never come that we forsake this planet
and its people so you've possibly seen photos where a frame of a movie scene is held up right
at the location where the movie was shot and it perfectly lines up with that scene well i
was wondering if this translates also into the video world and luckily being located in chicago
a bunch of movies were shot some of my favorite ones we kind of tried it out now and it kind
of serendipitously came together with a motion control system and in this video we're just going
to explore how we tried it out what worked for us what didn't the mistakes we made the challenges we
ran into so that you don't make them if you want to try it out and i really like this idea because
it's a technical but yet also very creative and a magically coming together kind of challenge
that doesn't make sense but we already have a take off that where i say way better so let's go on
all right now we are here at one of the locations where they shot the dark knight in fact at this
location here was the first on-screen appearance of heath ledger as the joker
why so serious the dark knight is one of my favorite movies definitely my favorite
superhero movie so let's talk about what you need to keep in mind as you arrive at your location and
start setting up your shot it's basically four basic things you need to keep in mind
all right now we're at calder's flamingo here downtown chicago still uh there's a scene
from ferris bueller's day off and it's this art construction here by calder cal i think that's
what his name is and the tricky thing is here if you see the lines on the on the images you
try to figure out what angle when you when you approach this you try to first figure out what
angle they shot from and especially if you a lot of lines and architecture and symmetry in it
it helps but it's also tricky because you need to be even more precise as you line up the shot so
you go basically around and they go down on your knees and like okay i think that must be the angle
with all the lines lining up perfectly where they shot it from and then you position
your frame in it and and position your camera so it's a little tricky a little bit experimentation
but it's it's definitely working out hopefully there's something something a little off but
i think the camera needs to go a little a little lower but like it's close
next you want to select the right focal length and have it match the actual shot so that the
compression of the image is the same or similar it's a little bit trickier when you have an image
or the movie was shot with on anamorphic lenses because the the lines in the background the bokeh
and the image is a little bit differently set up than spherical lenses
next is the depth of field and when i initially set it out
to shoot and sketched out this this kind of setup in my head was i was thinking that we should pick
a very similar depth of field as the scene was shot in but because you have to position the
frame very close to your lens you actually want to pick a very narrow aperture high aperture number
with a wide depth of field so that both the frame and front
as well as the background of the scene are fairly sharp and the lines line up nicely
and lastly you want to pick also relatively the same time of day as the shot was filmed
all right maybe we almost filmed a crash here but that's certainly a little bit out of your
control but if you can try to figure out maybe the same lighting conditions as the scene was shot at
we may need to wait for like some cloud coverage at some point
all right right now we're here on la salle bridge which is in the heart of chicago
and also the location where transformers i think age of darkness was shot
and on this bridge here right here right here optimus prime defeated uh are they
called autobots what they call autobots but the bad ones the autobots are the good ones
decepticons decepticons you just okay decepticon so on this bridge optimus prime beat the crap out
of a decepticon and really nailed it but given you are working in an outside environment with
so many factors outside of your control like on this bridges cars passing by
all the time everything is shaking and hey we're in the windy city so you want to print these these
photos that when you're using them on cardboard some sort of foam board so that it's stable
and brandon our engineer here uh built like a little contraption with a clamp and a 15
millimeter rod so that it can be mounted on the on the arc too and so it looks kind of nice
and and kind of a little bit like of a shitty rig but it's working out for us so here's figure
out the setup so that you can mount your photos easily and they don't flap around in the wind
but that would be cool yeah i think i should be in the shot
i think it's cool what makes this idea really stand out is the aspect of motion so as once you
lined up your shot perfectly you want to select and save that framing as your second keyframe
and then find the right first keyframe so you move your motion control system and try to bring in
some interesting motion try to set the scene right try to bring in some different angles so so that
it basically all comes together and then boom you just hit both motion controllers if you have to
at your disposal like we do right now at the same time and then it all comes magically together
one thing we figured out during the shoot is actually that you want to actually illuminate
and put a light on your on your image on your frame because uh usually it's brighter outside and
um and the images are usually a little bit darker also what we figured out is bring charged lamps
and lights otherwise you need to do it on the go well you can take this obviously also to the next
level by instead of having a printed frame use an ipad where you have the actual scene playing
and then move in the timing is i mean this timing is already tricky i can only imagine how much
more trickier it is when you have action motion pictures if you do that definitely let me know
and hit send me that image as like a dm or if you try this also let me know i would love to see your
work and as always if you enjoyed this video smash that like button if you haven't done so already
join the notification crew and subscribe by hitting that bell as well and as always thanks so
much for watching have a good morning have a good night whenever and wherever you are around this
beautiful planet including all these movie locations you may be around the corner
somewhere i don't know go check it out the world is your playground
okay that's it the scene to pick the right similar kind of day of time time of day jesus
thought it was easy all steady and and follows the motions that we want it to move in