8 Dragon Plate Car

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Well I was DPing a 2nd unit action chase in Chicago this past week and they needed a boatload of background plates for Jeff Cutter's green screen work in ATL. So we custom built this handsome 2007 Crown Vic outfitted with 8 Dragons and 8X 21mm Master Primes on 2 Alpha stabilized heads. Filled the car with 14 black batteries the head techs and 8 monitors and they just followed our unit around. All cameras were able to roll and playback using RedLink which worked awesomely. They hit some ice one night trying to stop crossing the Clark Street/Wacker bridge and the crossing arms ripped off one of the touchscreen but otherwise it worked....

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

Better not crash that car

Did you use a router with all the REDLinks ?

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Yes we used a router for each 4 camera array....

There was talk of adding 8 HD transmitters and also 8 rain spinners.... But that would have really meant towing a small putt-putt genny to power everything since the temp was 23 degrees.

 

[Phil Holland]

Slick ride. I want to see footage from an In & Out drive through with this rig

 

[PatrickFaith]

Can you talk to going 21mm vs 15mm. I've been doing my vr setup with 21mm but camera/angle count is killing me. I sometimes also do a plate with 8mm, but then I'm not fine enough. I was thinking of doing more with 15mm.

 

[Andy_Johnson]

I'm too poor to even look at this photo :wink5:

 

[Louis Maddalena]

We were thinking of building something like this (with cheaper glass) for some of our automotive work since we seem to be moving towards 3D cars on real roads for some of the technology videos.

How did it work out?

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

We used the 21mm after not getting 20% overlap for stitching with a 24,25, or 27mm prime. 15mm has way too much distortion for our VFX team.

 

[Peter Strietmann]

The Crown Vic is badass. Police special?

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

All I know is they bought that Vc for $2800

 

[PatrickFaith]

We used the 21mm after not getting 20% overlap for stitching with a 24,25, or 27mm prime. 15mm has way too much distortion for our VFX team.

Thanks so much for the confirm, that's exactly why I was using a 21mm ... but then I started second guessing myself since I don't have a lot of experience doing large plates with red.

 

[Jeffery Anderson]

was there any tricks to shoot at night, with all that movement and a rolling shutter?

You picked Master Primes, so that you can shoot WFO?

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

You picked Master Primes, so that you can shoot WFO?

Surely to avoid distortion as much as possible...having to be wide to cover FOV...at least you try to avoid distortion issue in the part which overlap one slice with the other...

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

We chose Master Primes for their sharpness. Lots of motion blur on the cameras facing more sideways. We shot at T2 1/3 Lots of room there.
No rolling shutter issues...