The initial idea I had was one of very contemporary Sci-Fi cinema, along the lines and concepts of the film Minority Report and iRobot. One aspect of modern culture that I see as pervasive and a trend that is likely to become more and more ubiquitous in coming years is advertising. Capitalism, but more specifically consumerism, seem to be the driving force that is taking over modern society and it is something that I can only see accelerating into the future.
This clip from the Stephen Spielberg film Minority Report is an influence on what I see for this first shot.
This is what forms the basis of my first shot. Originally my thoughts were to keep the footage as raw as possible, working on the idea of a slice of real life as opposed to a carefully scripted and rehearser, filmic camera move. I felt that this would give the shot more credibility. An example of this would be perhaps the way a lot of the VFX was done in the film Cloverfield. Cloverfield contained a lot of hand held footage and combined with modern VFX techniques gave a very unique and realistic look.
Cloverfield trailer; handheld VFX are very convincing.
My thoughts on how to achieve this kind of look had up until now been based on the motion tracking technique, where by the footage is tracked and elements inserted. However upon further inspection of these kinds of shots I realised that a lot of the action has been shot on green screen and composited after the fact.
In early tests with motion capture I found it increasingly more difficult to get accurate camera solves, or, accurate tracks in low light situations and more recently jerky footage. This is now making me reassess how I will complete my shots.
The following sequence of shots comes from my own investigation into locations here in Bristol that would best suite the mood of this shot. Bristol has some great locations and the first place I checked out was Nelson street. Nelson Street, now known for its graffiti, is a great location due to its ungodly, Orwellesque, Brutilist type architecture. This sits in perfectly with the grittiness I was trying to accomplish for a sort of dystopian view of the future.
These 4 sequences are all from the same street. Looking at this footage I am pretty much sold as to this being my final location for this shot due to it's unique topology. However these location tests have proved very difficult to track accurately. I am beginning to see a lot of limitations with Autodesk's Matchmover 2012 in what it can track accurately. For now I am moving into Nuke X to try and make more accurate tracks with Nukes inbuilt camera tracker. Should this fail I will have to reassess the type of shot and movement of the camera and perhaps consider a track and dolley or maybe some kind of steadycam to help with the Solve.
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