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Houses and exteriors: from sketches to final sets: Other Street Sets (2)

The Fence with Posters (1)


		For this shot I used forced perspective - Big puppet in front of the street fence with "Reward" posters. I've worked-out the camera movement way back while making the early animatic. What's easy in 3D environment, could be tricky in the real life. I've been aware of that from the start, but animatic concept was usable in this case. I've translated the camera path into the real world and it worked just fine.



Above: Final posterart as printed and used on the set


The Fence with Posters (2)




		For this shot I've worked things out in the animatic, too. The only issue was to fit the path of the camera movement to the set in order to achieve similar effect. I had to tilt the set , because my "motion control" device doesn't do steep ascents. Animating the flying poster was pretty tricky and I wasn't able to duplicate the animatic precisely. I suppose it's good enough. I made these "magazine covers" for other purposes, but I've found that the fence looks too boring if covered only with the same kind of "Reward" posters. So I used some second-grade, print leftovers to fullfill the fence with "old" posters, in a way that "Reward" ones would look freshly applied, on top layer.


The Farewell Street

I've constructed this set almost entirely from buildings left from Soldat's production, just as planned. The tricky part was to accomodate the big Paddy Wagon prop to traverse at least some distance away from the camera before it can be replaced with small version. Changes in focus and depth of field were unavoidable due to radical difference in distance of two models from the camera. Finally, I shot the small model going away first, because it was easier to cut-out the street, than to build it. Even putting the cut-out section back would distrupt the whole set, enough to be noticeable on screen.


I did mock-up test years before actually shoting it (above). When I finally came to shoot this one, it was the girl puppet that had to to be shot first, than the small van, and only after that I could cut the floor out and put the big Paddy Wagon in place.