Compositing Tutorial Part 2

Here’s part 2 of my compositing tutorial series. It’s still about tweaking the camera move of our turntable shot. This time, I’ll demonstrate some expressions to retime one camera move based on the angle of another one so the projection’s distortion is minimized. You can grab the comps and footage on my tutorial page.

Using these techniques, you can integrate matchmoved footage into modified camera moves. This may be necessary because there were problems with the camera move on set (bumpy, wrong pacing, …), the director changes his mind or the intended camera move wouldn’t have been possible in real life.

I have employed this technique on the EXPO project. The scene can also be found at the end of the tutorial video. The actor was shot on a turntable and the camera move went like this:

  • pull camera away from actor
  • rotate actor by 90 degrees
  • dolly in

Of course this makes for a really crappy camera move if you add a CG environment since it’ll look nothing like what a real camera crane operator would perform. The final shot was designed in 3D so the plate that was shot had to be integrated somehow. I had to cut out a piece of the original plate, luckily for us the actor was sitting still. After a bit of additional 2D stabilization (the matchmove wasn’t that exact apparently) the plate matched perfectly.

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