How do you shoot a TV spot for a product that isn’t finished yet? A look at a new in-camera way to create old-style process shots for commercials.
A typical situation in the TV spot world: shoot a spot to generate interest about a product which is not finished at the time of production, but will be broadcast at such time that it does. We were faced with creating a spot for the ‘Purple People Bridge Climb,’ which is basically a series of stairs and catwalks the paying public can climb to get to an incredible vista point on top of a bridge over the Ohio River in Cincinnati. At our first meeting with director/producer Greg Newberry, we realized the project was being constructed and lots of steel and welders were at work, but not enough of the final platform would be anywhere near finished enough to send a crew and cast up some 200 feet in the air.
One suggestion was to shoot the cast against greenscreen and let the post house finish everything, but we would still need background plates, and I’d have to match the lighting on stage and angles, plus the greenscreen would limit us so much in our camera moves. The director really wanted a 360 degree circling dolly shot of the actor who, for example, just having reached the top of the bridge throws his arms up in triumph. I was floored trying to figure out how to achieve this on stage with a greenscreen.
I remember reading in American Cinematographer about how Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC utilized digital projections for driving backgrounds on the series, 24. This allowed the director and the actors to see what was in the scene, plus it allowed for natural reflections of the backgrounds onto the foreground surfaces. A bit of an update to the old studio process work done years ago with Mitchell background projectors.
I talked this through with Greg, and he agreed to give it a try.
First off, I needed to figure how to shoot a background plate from atop a bridge that appeared to circle or orbit the actor.
At home, I took a little miniDV camera, and I shot an orbit around my birdbath. Then I stood right next to the birdbath and shot a 360 degree pan. The results: they basically looked identical. Anything far to the distance looked exactly the same, and items fairly close to camera gave it away, but since this was suppose to be on the top of the bridge with nothing really closer to lens than say 1,000 feet (except the actor) a simple 360 degree pan would work.
Next, Greg and I shot the background plates on top of an 80-foot Condor, which was parked on the bridge at the correct spot. This shooting platform was raised through and between the bridges’ upper trusses and lens height was above all the steel. I used my Arriflex 35-3 with both an 18mm and 25mm Cooke prime to capture these images, and we did a series of different revolution speeds. I decided to use 5205 instead of 5245 because I needed a slightly less contrasty stock due to the added contrast that is created when the image is projected through a rear projection screen.
This scene was to be shot at sunset, and we wanted the extra warm saturation of evening color. I used a Tobacco #1 and a Polarizer.
This was processed and a digi-beta was struck.
A few days later on the sound stage, we set up a large Panasonic digital projector, and the crew rigged an 8 x 10’ rear screen. First off, we tried to work through the projector’s matrix to get an image that was in the tungsten realm. This simply didn’t happen. My gaffer, Mark Ovington, tried to take color temp reading off of the projected color bars and then off a white card projected through the system; he got some very weird readings. We ended up simply mounting a standard 85 correction filter onto the projector’s lens. We then shot a series of Polaroids (I now use a digital still camera with a portable printer) and the results were great.
To get the actor to spin to lens, as if the actor was stationary and the camera did a 360 dolly move around him, we had the actor stand on a large heavy-duty motorized turntable. The background plates were imported to Final Cut Pro on a MAC on set which the post house provided. Their operator then took the chosen plate and created an endless loop through the FCP program and could fire it up at will. We ran several dry takes with the projection running of the pan, and we tried various speeds of RPM with the variable motor on the turntable. When Greg was satisfied, we ran the shot.
To make everything visibly seamless, we did various lighting and grip techniques. Mark, the gaffer, lit the fellow with a hard 5K to simulate the setting sun with a bit of CTO. For the added soft blue of the natural skylight, he rigged a 12×12’ bluescreen and flew it into the air above the camera. A few open-face 2K Mighty Moles were bounced into this to reflect back realistic North light. Chris Athy, our key grip, rigged the 5K key light onto a western dolly and then mounted that onto skateboard wheels onto curved dolly track; this was to simulate the moving sunlight as the scene rotated 360 degrees. Of course, we couldn’t rotate the key the entire 360 without blasting the projection screen and polluting the image, so he ran the track almost 180 degree, and you would be very hard pressed to see this short rotation! We also ran a Mole fan to blow the actors hair and wardrobe to finish the effect.
Looking through the camera, I was really blown away with how it all came together. It was so nice to achieve an image in camera the old fashion way (with only some slight modern conveniences, like a digital projector).
Additionally, we also did a series of shots of faces, hands, and body parts in action against the various projected backgrounds. To achieve a series of shots of feet walking up metal stairs very high in the air, the key grip rigged some metal stair treads from the actual site onto speed-rail on stage. I had shot some water plates of sunlight highlights reflecting across the surface of the river. We couldn’t get the rear projection screen at the correct angle to do these shots, so we simply hoisted the screen up in the air and let the projection simply bleed onto the white painted studio floor. There it was, and it worked great!
A couple of years ago, I had shot a series of tests on various high-end digital DLP projectors. I tried various frame rates, focal lengths, and camera moves to see what it would take to get any negative effects that might ruin a shot. Utilizing this knowledge for this shoot, we shot everything at 24fps and with the 500 speed 5218. I slightly overexposed everything about ½ stop. In effort to speed up production, I tried to use zooms, but with the addition of the 85 color correction filter on the projector, I could only use the Cooke 18-100 T3 or primes. I could have gone with daylight HMIs, but we wanted the simple 5K tungsten to simulate the sun. We used a Moviecam Compact, and we could have shot sync sound since the digital projector was so quiet.
The digital projectors do not require a phase situation like shooting a CRT monitor. On my tests, I have shot up to 40fps without any strobe problems.
For the material that is to be projected onto the screen, we shot 35mm as well. The day we shot these background plates was completely cloudless. I went ahead and shot a few cloud plates at home on my miniDV camera while the 35mm plates were at the lab; I had hoped this might fill in the gaps for some of the close-ups. I was really amazed at how bad the miniDV looked when projected compared to the 35mm to digi-beta.
This was a fun shoot and a way to achieve very nice composite images in camera.
DP Jeff Barklage, S.O.C. began in the biz at age 16 and worked his way up to loader, assistant, then switched to electrician, best boy and then gaffer before moving back into the camera department as DP. He shot Artworks and The Naked Man, among other feature films, and shot various television spots. He received numerous awards for his work including Emmys, Tellys, Addys, and a Bronze from the Houston International Film Fest.
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