Bricks in Motion
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Hey,
I was wondering how to make a moving shot. What I want is to have the camera follow the guy as he walks along a long set, while people run back and forth on the screen. Any ideas on how to work this?
Eddie
you need to make some sort of a dolly to move the camera on. I know Fancypants has a tutorial how to do this.(I'd give you the link but Youtube isn't working for me for some reason.)
What kind of moving shot is it? For a panning shot, I literally built a cart using LEGO tracks, and stuck the camera on a large (6x20?) plate, connected it to a string, and cranked it little by little along the track. For a turning shot, I put the camera's cage on a 2x2 rotational piece.
Also, having a ruler handy is a very good idea.
Use it to work out how much the minifigure/camera needs to move each frame.
It's a straight moving shot . Left to right, following the character as he walks. How would you do that?
A dolly. Or, as Fancypants does, move your tripod a little every frame.
If you use a dolly, just move the rig a little each frame, while doing your walk cycle. It helps if you have a ruler, at it helps keep the movements of your dolly consistent.
How do you keep them consistent with a ruler? I mean, how do you measure and where?
The way i did it for my first dolly shot was to figure how many frames I wanted the shot to be (ended up being about 90) and figuring out where the camera would start and where it would finish (ended up being about 30 studs down the baseplate) so I knew I had to move the camera about a third of a stud every frame. I just had my camera mounted on a separate baseplate which I slid along next to the main baseplate that had the set on it. So in this case my "ruler" was a LEGO ruler.
An example: in "The Freerunner" i have a shot where i simple have the Cam in a fixed place, have the minifig "run" on 1 spot and move the background set to get the suggestion of actual motion. However I had too much light on the background-background (bookshelf), so you might want to keep that in mind...
And you can't have the feet of your subject in the frame because then you see he isn't actually moving...
Each frame was 1 stud movement Same as my normal running cycle.
Last edited by boardron (March 30, 2011 (12:17pm))
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