Hatch

Have been really busy with the BBC the last month working with Milky Tea on the production of a CBeebies’ pilot. We shot the pilot over two days in a converted barn down in Hemel Hempstead. It was a fab couple of days and I will post a bit later once we have got going on the project. In the meantime, here are a few shots from the shoot. It was a completely green screen shoot and was shot on DV Cam. Bit of a shame really as i was trying to convince the Beeb to shoot on HD progressive …. but the budget didn’t allow the extra cost for the pilot. Dave the camera man did a class job of filming and DOP’ing. Again, at a later date I will give a detailed breakdown of the shoot and how he lit the event.

Finally got round to playing with PFTrack for an hour thisevening with a short clip of a NYC subway someone shared for public domain use on mograph.net for the purpose of tracking. Just wanted to run through the workflow so I wasn’t daunted when I tried to do something of worth with it. The solve’s a bit shaky and the huge drop in the camera plus the lack of a decent floor made it tricky to sort the perspective out on my first go. Going to shoot some of my own footage next week I think and try again properly but I can definitely see the huge potential with this. The manual looks good and some of the stuff it can do is scary.

(Couldn’t figure out the vimeo embed, link below)

Tracking Test 1 NYC

Today i’ve started work on a demo pitch this time involving matching moving. Match moving is very different than the planar tracking mention in my last post. All the data from the current tracking (PF Track) will be exported in 3DSM and Maya for further CGI treatment. Unlike the planar tracking, match-moving operates on point tracking system, the software can then interpret the lens on the camera, depth of field and match the exact movement of the camera. Once the data has been moved over into the next part of the pipeline, CGI and motion work can continue to be composited and built then sent back to FCP for some final finishing. An important point to note on any tracking projects is to determine before hand what tracker your going to use, all tracking software has pro’s and cons, so consider where the data is going to be use, are you tracking or match moving, are you prepping for CGI or compositing, be aware of natural markers and use them to your advantage i.e tree’s, parked cars, brightly coloured posters. All these elements will help with a solid track saving hours of manual tracking