New experimental shot at Verdant Works 17/5/23

New experimental shot at Verdant Works                                                                                                 17/5/23

Figure 1: New Verdant Works wall test

This is the latest version of the shot at the Verdant Works with footage incorporated into the wall in the shot, but this time, I've included a very slow, handheld moving pan on the camera to add the needed visual engagement.   This shot was done very quickly since Verdant Works is very close to the college, so I could quickly walk over.  I tried a number of methods with this shot including a simple pan from left to right, and a handheld tracking shot.  I did about 20 takes of the shot before I got enough footage that I was happy with.  It was a bit difficult with traffic and walkers occasionally getting in the way, but absolutely no one was bothered.  I ironed out the roughness in the handheld motion with the help of the warp stabilizer in After Effects.

When it came time to add a camera tracker on the shot, I had a bit of a problem in that it could get the tracking dots up relatively well, but I got an error message that said "No depth from a tripod pan solve", meaning that the lens wasn't quite wide or deep enough to get enough information for three-dimensional trackers.  If I were to try this again, I'd try filming the shot from a bit further away or use a camera with a wider lens.  Thankfully, I still managed to get a null that helped me keep the footage where it needed to be.  After this, the footage was added relatively quickly with the requisite glow effects added as well as a posterize time effect to make the footage more abstract.  I also had to add a rotobrush effect again to keep it from covering the windows on the wall as well as cut the footage off where the wall stopped.  The end result has given me a relatively smooth and cool-looking shot.  Whilst it would have been nice if the modified footage panned at the same speed as my footage, it still looks convincing enough to be added into the shot.  If I were to try this shot again, I'll try it with a deeper camera lens and try out some dolly track so that the shot can be relatively smooth.

Shots to redo:

• Camperdown trees (needs more trees with more depth in order to make the shot more visually dynamic)
• Timelapse shot of Cox's Stack