P3D Re: "Feeling like you're there" movies

[Minutiae02 <Minutiae02@xxxxxxx>]

Marvin Linger wrote:

>>it feels like you're actually in
>>the airplane or car and your body wants to sway with the motion.  Is there
>>a name for this effect?  

Maybe just "immersive", like VR.

>>Are any special condtions required to achieve it if you do the photography 
>>yourself?

I would say some sort of stabilization to get rid of the fine bumps, and of
course a wide angle lens to simulate your field of view and to exaggerate the
motion.  In the movie "Brainstorm", they used a custom-made huge wide lens
nicknamed "lotta glass" for the POV scenes.  Also, try keeping the moving
objects (road, etc.), large in the frame.  I worked on a strange movie called
"Lost Highway" that had an opening title sequence that was simply a low angle
view of a highway at night lit by headlights.  We hung a Steadicam off of the
front of a large truck with a low front platform and filmed at 4 frames per
second with a wide lens, around 14 or 18mm I think (it's been a while), while
driving around 35 miles an hour.  It took 14 minutes to get the shot and in
dailies it totally sucked us in.  Very immersive.

>If you've ever seen the third "Star Wars" movie, which features the flying
>sleds zooming through a forest, you may have noticed there were some
>forward-looking shots like you described. If I recall correctly, those shots
>were made by people walking forward slowly while carrying stabilized cameras,
>then the motion was artificially speeded up.

I believe that they actually had an elaborate cable system, where the operator
rode in a harness hanging by pulley from a cable several hundred feet long,
higher on the starting end.  He had a hand-held camera and was basically 'let
go'.  I'm guessing that the camera was undercranked, running around 12 fps or
less to exaggerate motion.

Scott R


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