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Low Cost Motion Control Rental in London

JPSendall

JPSendall

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Does anybody have good suggestions for a low cost motion control rental in London for a one day shoot in January 2013? Looking for full axis, focus and dolly movement.

Cheers
 
I would contact assaff at mrmoco.com
Or Stephen Scammell at take 2 films.
Say hallo from me and tell them I promised you a discount :)
 
Thanks for the replies Ajay and Bjorn. I'll look into those site/companies. Thanks Bjorn for the intro to a possible discount.

Ajay, I'm shooting a human head that I am doing a camera pass on but the body will be CG. It will look like a stone statue but the statue will speak. Green screen background with markers to resolve 3D geometry data. I am wondering if I can get away with just a dolly move (without repeating of course) as the person standing for the statue will have a rigid rig to keep their head in exactly the same place each time. Since their face has to be stone I'm thinking that it has to be a mixture of make up and CG in the face as only lips, eyes and jaw move. Not sure about this yet and I am researching at the moment.

Can I get way with doing a shot like this without motion control and just pulling the 3D geometry data do you think? The shot will be something a little like this

https://vimeo.com/54873222
 
Cliff, you referring to the Ulti-Head which is the Modula on a track?
 
With moco it's down to planning , expectation & the operator. The recommendations so far are all quite xpensive.

Give Justin at http://www.portablemotioncontrol.com a call. He will supply & operate EXACTLY what you need for the shot, he has been around a long time & knows what he is doing.
 
Yes.
Do the following:
Get a round track and a dolly. Then let your person stand fixated in place, preferably in the center of rotation with tracking dots on the face. do not pan or tilt while moving along the track shooting towards the center. Then remove the person and shoot another clean pass. i.e background only (fixated pan and tilt) move slowly for the clean pass about 1/4 speed of your original take.

If possible, this is if you want to be super proper, ILM style.... Shoot a matte white ball in in place of the face to get a CG light reference. then move the camera into the position of the head and make a slow pan with a wide angle i.e shoot a slow pan covering the whole studio infront of the actor. This would be your reflection pass... make sure this is not overexposing when aiming for your lights etc. HDRx comes handy here...

For tracking points in the face use tippex make small dots with 3 cm apart. make the dots max 2mm in diameter. For better reference you can also shoot a closeup of the face with high f stop to get it all sharp. Take note on what focal lengths is used both for the reference takes and the master shots.

Then you just upload the two clips to our FTP and our CG guys will create the stone / statue face in CG and 3D track it in place and remove the original head for a small fee. No moco needed for such shot.
 
Thanks Stephen. Added to my phone list.

Bjorn, there's a few problems there. First in the demo video I posted a link to, imagine that the statue is immense and somebody is walking below it looking up. So I imagined a track with some camera head movement to favour the statue. Since this is fantasy the movement in the sky is similar to some of those time-lapse shots we see at night where the stars arc across the sky. Also I'm thinking that I might include a moving moon as the only source of light. So hard shadows. I was thinking of dollying a light across the scene. I would measure and take down data of subject to light distance and the amount the light moved to match the CG creation. So this is getting quite complex now. Ok look at what these guts are doing in capturing facial data in motion. Looks good to me.

http://www.di3d.com/products/4d_content/

So this is now what I'm thinking of doing. Get the actor to say all the dialogue (about twenty lines) Capture it with methods like the one in the link and then just texturise the CG face and body to look like stone and light it with CG moonlight. Ok that's one way.

Second way is as you describe but I need more than a fixed track as this will be a series of shots. If I shot a pass of the actor but DID pan a bit isn't there enough data from tracking points to resolve camera position and camera angles as well?

My main worries about the talking head are these.

1. If some of the face moves when talking and the head and face is a mixture of CG and make up then where CG and real face meet might be difficult to match in texture and colour etc.
2. Cost, of course. I'm going for the most effective and low cost if I can but we have time on our side as the deadline is six months away.
3. Similar to point one, getting lips and jaw movement without disturbing the rest of the face so that it looks like stone without the flesh kind of movement around the moving parts of the face, if that makes sense. I would worry about this even if I used the capture method in the link (which by the way doesn't use tracking points)

I'm beginning to think that making the shot completely CG will be easier than combining real and CG.
 
Forgot to say that environement reflections are not so important as we will use reference photos and we never see the rest of the environment in the scene, only the angles looking up at the statue.
 
JPSendall said:
Thanks Stephen. Added to my phone list.

Bjorn, there's a few problems there. First in the demo video I posted a link to, imagine that the statue is immense and somebody is walking below it looking up. So I imagined a track with some camera head movement to favour the statue. Since this is fantasy the movement in the sky is similar to some of those time-lapse shots we see at night where the stars arc across the sky. Also I'm thinking that I might include a moving moon as the only source of light. So hard shadows. I was thinking of dollying a light across the scene. I would measure and take down data of subject to light distance and the amount the light moved to match the CG creation. So this is getting quite complex now. Ok look at what these guts are doing in capturing facial data in motion. Looks good to me.

http://www.di3d.com/products/4d_content/

So this is now what I'm thinking of doing. Get the actor to say all the dialogue (about twenty lines) Capture it with methods like the one in the link and then just texturise the CG face and body to look like stone and light it with CG moonlight. Ok that's one way.

Second way is as you describe but I need more than a fixed track as this will be a series of shots. If I shot a pass of the actor but DID pan a bit isn't there enough data from tracking points to resolve camera position and camera angles as well?

My main worries about the talking head are these.

1. If some of the face moves when talking and the head and face is a mixture of CG and make up then where CG and real face meet might be difficult to match in texture and colour etc.
2. Cost, of course. I'm going for the most effective and low cost if I can but we have time on our side as the deadline is six months away.
3. Similar to point one, getting lips and jaw movement without disturbing the rest of the face so that it looks like stone without the flesh kind of movement around the moving parts of the face, if that makes sense. I would worry about this even if I used the capture method in the link (which by the way doesn't use tracking points)

I'm beginning to think that making the shot completely CG will be easier than combining real and CG.
Click to expand...

You're best to hire and work with a consultant. It's small change and well invested. Guys like Bjorn seem very supportive and might
have a few names for you.
 
Thanks for the comment David. Really at the mo this is just research stages. There was some noise we would have to shoot in January but that got shelved thank goodness. Also budget is pretty low so I have to do as much as I can before I start to farm stuff out.
 
Yes we done many of these. "soft body 3d tracks from two sync cameras or one camera with mirror. Here is one example:

The actual film: http://www.syndicate.se/Files/Images/RWE hamster/HAMSTER 768x576 hq264.mov
Split screen with dotted actor / behind the scenes: http://www.syndicate.se/Files/Images/RWE hamster/splitscreen small new2.mov
Web page about the project: http://www.syndicate.se/Default.aspx?Id=151

Just so I understand you correctly.
The shots you are asking for is scenes with a giant statue that talks, Im I correct about this? I think I missunderstood you before, I thought you wanted a normal sized person made of stone...

So if you want it large,then yes you would have needed moco to shoot a real guy scaled.

So if a huge statue is what you want then my suggestion would be this:

You shoot plates. without the statue. Maybe put up some sticks with tracking dots where he's feet is supposed to be. Put some small boards on the stick facing the kamera and have som tracking dots on these boards. also if possible spread out some ping pong balls on the ground to create a "3D dot field". This might be over due as there is normally things to track on in a scene.
Then shoot with moving camera, any moves is possible however zoom's in shots are no good. fixed lenses is preferred as it's good to know the focal lengths. Also it's good to keep some tracking reference in shot att al times. i.e a tilt up in a clear blue sky might cause a bit of difficulty... if there is some defined clouds there it might work perfectly how ever. So you might want to use some long sticks set in the ground that has the height of your statue.

Also for light reference put the camera on stick where you had the sticks and "paint the world around" basically make slow pan tilt moves to film the statues surrounding. This plate will be our light map.

Then for the facial expressions. look at the hamster ref. We used our inhouse proprietary soft body tracker. It needs to see the same dot set from two cameras with a bit of offset. you could use one camera and a mirror to create this. But as you are a red shooter the right thing to do is to get two camera bodies, and two identical lenses. Put the cameras about a meter and a half away from they actors face and about 50 cm appart, preferably 90 degree tilted. to get a standing 9:16. Make sure you stop down to keep his face and all tracking dots sharp. put dots on his face with about 2cm apart in a nice pattern that is symmetrical to his face and that covers his moments. i.e put dots on the edge of his lips, cheeks, around eyes forehead etc. basically a somewhat symmetrical pattern covering all moving/soft parts of his face.

Rehearse well before shooting and make sure he does not sway his head to much while talking. it's a capture for face expressions and small head movements are easily removed but they contaminate the facial track a bit.

Then if wanted we can use our proprietary kinekt setup to scan a person/actor. That would be the base for modeling your statue in CG. The finishing of the statue would be done in Zbrush.


So basically, plates shot with freely moving camera, CG statue with animation driven from motion capture from your actors real facial expressions, is that what you are looking for? If so then I think we can help you and you would not need a moco.
 
Thanks Bjorn. Once we are basically story boarded or having done a previs we will give you a shout to see what you can do. Thanks for all the help and I think you're right. Might not need moco at all.
 
Great.
Yes, when you are done with the boards. Feel free to send them over and we can help you with some quick animatics. And then we make you a good quote for the job, if nothing else you can have it for reference.
 
this is what I love about this forum. Thanks everyone.
 
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