CDM 348 Single Camera Technique
Recreating Movie Scenes
Recreating ET
In this unit we were tasked with carrying out a single camera shoot in the form of recreating a scene from a film or TV show. We chose a scene from ET as it had to use green screen and we thought that it would be a good challenge to try. The scene is directed by Steven Spielberg and is about the main character, Elliot on a bike and ET in the basket, they are riding through the woods when there's a cliff so ET uses his powers to make them fly over the rest of the woods. The way the Steven Spielberg has directing this shot is magical. What makes this scene magical is the music along with the silhouette of the bike flying against the moon.
Shot List
The next task was individually break the scene down into a shot lost. Click on the ink below to see the shot list.
As a team we then set about planning to recreate a scene.
Original Scene
We decided to shot at two different locations, ing the studio at boom and at Goblin Combe. We carried out a recce for Goblin Combe and a risk assessment for both locations. Click on the links below to see them.
Risk Assessment
Goblin Combe
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xGoDS-KmgdvTjlvMNZcmILOCu7tjFBSLnT1LexjXeO0/edit?usp=sharing
Studio
https://docs.google.com/document/d/146vshbMFfpbbbWiwuDortr6q0O6r0P--ZFG8YeG0J5Q/edit?usp=sharing
Recce
Here is the rest of the production paperwork for the shoot
Cast and Crew Call Sheet
Shooting Script
Kit List
Goblin Combe
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1us-7wGg3c9tYgTCcdjl74sweBsZLhPaxNuVFuQa6E8A/edit?usp=sharing
Studio https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vX6DLdbhSOkLUf4tmTGBadnHCy7JCL6ywU0LbFqln80/edit?usp=sharing
Having individually written a complete shot list we then, as a team, put together a shooting script. A shooting script is basically a shot list in the order it is to be filmed. This helps us then plan the actual production. We decided to film at Goblin Combe and in the studio for some greenscreen and close ups. And carried out a recce of the locations.
Behind The Scenes
With the shoot Boom we had lots of prep that we had to do for our scene. The first thing we had to do was begin the make up process on my face to make me look like ET. We had also practised this look the day before and the second day we shot Tilly had figured out what had to be improved for the look. It took about an hour to finish. Whilst I was getting my make-up done Zac and Charlie started on making the basket for ET to sit in on the front of the bike. The previous week we had gotten new monitors so there were many left over cardboard boxes that we could use. They started by cutting two in half and then duck taping the bottoms of them together. There were then two compartments, one for the pillow to sit in and then one for the excess of the cloth we used to go in. Zac then got a piece of paper and some face paints to create ET's eyes.
He got one of the blues and created two circles on a piece of white paper and cut them into eye like shapes. Then he celotaped them onto the pillow and celotaped around the pillow to create a neck like shape. Finally we figured out a way to to attach the 'basket' to Simons bike with out it falling. After getting all of our props ready we set up the green screen and began filming.
For the outside shoot at Goblin Combe we had gotten the bus down and met Zac outside the entrance to the woods as he knew where to go. When we had got there we realised we had forgotten the smoke machine so kindly Charlie got on a bus back to Boom to get it. We walked for about 15 minutes until we found a good spot for us to film. Zac had brought a foldable table for us to put our equipment on. When Charlie arrived we got to filming. After filming all the shots with out smoke we set up the machiene and had it going for a few minutes so created the right amount of smoke we needed.
During the editing we had relied we didnt have a shot of a cliff so I went to the seafront in Clevedon and walked around for about an hour getting various videos and photos of differnt cliffs around Clevedon.
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Charlie painted on a peice of glass some trees in black to create the look of the trees in front of the moon in the final scene. He then brought it in and we found a good picture of a moon and put the glass infront of the moniter to create the effect we needed.
Lighting + Camera Set Up
For lighting we had to be very precise with the greenscreen as if we didn't get rid of every crease and shadow it would show in later when editing and would be annoying and take a long amount of time to fix. For every different shot we would set up the greenscreen lighting in a different way to perfect it. For each green screen we would need to place a light on either side and make sure that all areas are lit equally. We would then place our subject in front of the screen and adjust the lighting so the shadowing would not show. We would have to occasionally use some aperture lights as extra as we only had two panel lights but that would sometimes not be enough to get rid of all the shadowing. For one scene we needed a blue tint so we had set up the lighting like in the other shots but put the aperture light to a blue tone and had somebody hold it to where we needed to get the perfect tint. When doing out outside part of the shoot we did not use any additional lighting and just used the natural light as we thought it was unnecessary to use.
With the camera most of the shots were hand held and did not require a stand as it was a moving shot. All the outside shots were hand held as carrying a camera stand when most of the shots were moving was just extra equipment.
Editing
One of the first seps of editing was to make sure all the scenes were cut down and placed in the right order with the actual ET scene we were recreating in the corner to make it as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, some of the clips we had to either slow down or speed up as they didn't match up with there marks. This then. resulted in unnatural motion and low frame-rates. We should have paid more attention to the exact timing in each clip but we have learnt from this and hope to not do this again.
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After making all the clips the right length and matched u with the scene we picked, I moved onto keying out all the green from the green screenshots, which is called doing a 'garbage mask'. A garbage mask is creating a mask that cuts out everything in the frame apart from the green. It needs to be as tight as possible around the subject without clipping the subject when it moves. In a lot of the shots this wasn't too difficult as the subject din move much around the frame. Although, in the short where Elliot is weaving up into the sky, the subject and the camera movement was o much to do a simple 'garbage mask' so that meant every single frame had to be masked individually. One of the bike shots were difficult to mask amazingly as the bike went over the edge of the green screen at one point, so we had to artefact on the edge of the bike plate. When the background was evenly lit in the medium close-ups, all we had to do was select a colour to key out, and it was gone. Other times it was a bit harder to key out the green perfectly as some noise was left in the image, this could have been due to bad lighting in some shots. Some of the time, some creases were visible that were from the green screen. To stop this from happening I set the ultra key effect to 'aggressive' which removed some smaller details, but this was OK as it was not very noticeable and with it for the reduced noise level. Other settings I toyed with to reduce background noise were 'tolerance, highlight and pedestal'. There made it, so I could achieve a fairly clean composite.
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The next step was to animate the bike within the shots to have the same speed and direction as the bike in ET. I only used keyframes at the beginning and end of the shot as well as whenever the bike majorly changed direction. I also had to use speed acceleration and deceleration to make the movements more natural looking. I also animated the background with some slow horizontal and vertical scrolling to match the shots in ET. To fill in for the green screen background I went into Pinterest to find similar looking images to the backgrounds of the scenes in ET.
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Finally, I colour graded, this was partially to intend to help the different shots look more cloudy and dusk like when the scenes take place. It also helped with matching to the originals.
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Final Video of Single Shoot Recreation: ET
Evaluation
I am really pleased with the final product and t came out very well. If i was going to do this again I would make sure all the kit gets to the location. That would be part of planning and assigning one person to be responsible for the kit. I would also make sure that during a recce there was a good phone signal at the location and if there wasn't have a plan to communicate where necessary. I felt we need to work on timings as in some of the shots they were shorter than the actual clip so we had to slow them in the edit to make them fit, this didn't give the desired effect that we wished for. One thing that went really well is I learnt how to light and film against a green screen, I feel as though with the green screen work we did very well in the final outcome, it wasn't perfect but will become better with more practise. It was very hard to get every crease and shadow out so it wasn't perfect but it was as well as we could get it. Another thing that we need to work on is making sure that we have our shots the right way around as we filmed one shot the wrong way around but in the editing process we had to turn it the other way around. It has made me realise that when directing it is very important to pay attention to detail. Since the last project I feel as though I have become more confident in the use of camera and lighting and I'm sure i will become more confident over time. I a also very aware that the planning of a production is so very important. In this project the editing was a lot more straight forward compared to the advert because we just had to match the shot to the original.