Epic shoot with projections

[Adam Moffat]

I have a client that wants to shoot some stuff where lasers and graphics are projected on to people cars etc... I'm planning on shoot this at 23.98. Has anybody ever done this. The company that does the lasers and projections said they have had issues with stuff not coming out right. The example that they used a tv crew tried to film something so I would imagine it would have been 29.97. They said that the laser projects or refreshes at 30,000 per second, not sure what that means.

Thanks,


Adam

 

[CK Olsen]

I've only dealt with laser projection a couple of times, but for our projects (also shot at 23.98), the frame rate was less critical than the shutterspeed... meaning that longer exposures gave us better results. Pre-Production testing was extremely helpful in making that determination....
-ck

 

[Eren Ozkural]

I'd personally be more concerned with having a stray reflected laser hitting the sensor and frying it. Got a possible shoot with lasers coming up as well, does anyone have any advice on what we could do to protect the camera besides the obvious? Would heavy ND's/pola's or other filters work as a sufficient barrier against stray, indirect lasers?

 

[Keith Putnam]

They said that the laser projects or refreshes at 30,000 per second, not sure what that means.

If the lasers refresh at 30,000Hz and your camera is recording at 48Hz (24fps @180 deg. shutter) you'll get 625 laser refreshes per frame, but you might still have flicker problems depending on how the phase of the laser refresh is offset from the phase of the sensor refreshing. You should be able to compensate for this with fine control over the Epic's "shutter angle" (exposure time). In an ideal world you'd be able to sync the Epic's shutter and the laser refresh with a genlock generator, but I don't know if the laser projector can be genlocked (it may be worth asking).

 

[albert rudnicki]

I've done shows with up to 20 projections and live action.
You have to test it, and test it again before the show.
Talk to technicians and see if all the projections you're testing are on, often they're not.
Shutter, as other suggest is your #1 tool, also make sure to get fast lenses.
Shooting HDR may be an option as you'll never get good exposure on foreground and projection at the same time.

 

[Colin Sheldon]

This was just projection, no lasers, shot with Red One MX at 23.98 -

http://vimeo.com/33167496

 

[George Salisbury]

Here's another one, just projection. Red One with the original M sensor. 23.98

http://vimeo.com/15154519

 

[Clint Lealos]

This was just projection, no lasers, shot with Red One MX at 23.98 -

http://vimeo.com/33167496

Wow! That was really cool. How many projectors were there? How were they oriented to cover the entire car, but nothing else? Very very cool stuff. Thanks for sharing.

EDIT: just realized I'm totally jacking this thread... sorry.

 

[Colin Sheldon]

Wow! That was really cool. How many projectors were there? How were they oriented to cover the entire car, but nothing else? Very very cool stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

There were 3 projectors on the car, and 1 on the background. There was one front of the car, 1 rear of the car and 1 side of the car. Each one was aligned perfectly and matted to make sure there wasn't any overlap.