Low Budget Visual Effects on Set Equipment
Image credits: Pixabay
If someone had told you a few years back that you could shoot an entire sci-fi movie on a tight budget using VFX and a lot of special effects, you would have probably been skeptical. But a number of equipments are now available with independent film makers and directors who have to deal with the idea of making an entire feature film on a shoe-string budget.
These essential but budget-friendly equipments have revolutionized the film industry and have provided a level playing field to production companies of different sizes and spending capacity. Today, in terms of the narrative and immersive technology used, you may not be able to tell the difference between a film made on a gigantic budget of $100 million and another made on $100,000.
The following devices are some of the game changers in the field of movie making.
HDR photography
HDR photography or high dynamic range photography is a technology that allows you to take multiple images of the same subject with different exposure values (EV) and you can then superimpose one on top of the other to create a hyper-realistic image that looks different from what normal cameras can shoot. You can also weave multiple shots of a subject together. HDR photographs provide an amount of detail which was previously thought off as impossible. It gives exact details on luminosity of an object as well as the light reflected under a particular EV.
HDR is now available in video shooting as well. Although it is still in infancy, one can be hopeful that progress will be made quickly. Technologies are in the testing stage and they would allow a person to overexpose and underexposure an image while getting a shot of the same object and then they can be merged to create a visual creative that looks different from what you have seen so far.
Cheap greenscreen
The price of greenscreens has come done gradually and nowadays you can make a greenscreen yourself for under $50. Greenscreens, when done correctly with chroma keying, can meld two different images or shots. Green is a color that requires less lighting and it is different from the skin tones of human beings. So, the greenscreen background can be replaced by a background of your choice without making the person in front to “dematerialize” or lose color.
Chrome balls
Chrome balls are shiny balls used as reflectors on-set that allow you to capture images and get an accurate lighting reference so that when you use a 3D app to compost your images, you will have a good idea of the type of lighting present on the set at the time of shooting. You will be able to recreate the exact environment from the set in your CGI video and it is an inexpensive image-based lighting available for movie sets.
Image Credits: Pixabay
Motion tracking markers
Tracking markers or motion tracking markers are small reference points that are used while filming a shot, especially when using a moving camera to capture shots before a greenscreen. In the post-production stage, when the foreground and background images are composted, it becomes necessary to make the foreground and background images move at exactly the same time. That gives the impression that they were shot at the same time.