NETZERO Shoot at CCI
In a recent commercial for Net Zero, an Internet provider, production company Patriot Pictures and Riot used Camera Control Inc with their Milo long arm and Slimline Fries camera to shoot a series of pre-visualised moves of a Net Zero customer enjoying his Hyper Fast Internet experience. The concept called for a guy sitting at a desk flying along the Internet Superhighway. The entire background was to be computer generated with just the talent and table being real.
MILO with Long-arm On Set
The client had approved the pre-vis and so the moves on set had to match this very closely as to camera angle and pacing. The pre-vis artist was on set with Maya™ downloading move files directly onto the Flair computer. For each move a line up move was generated in Maya showing exactly where the real table was in Maya ‘space’. The Milo camera was placed in exactly the same orientation relative to the table and when that was done, the offsets between the Flair “world” and the Maya “world” could be determined by Flair and then applied to the actual camera move. In this way each move was rapidly imported and lined up. Once that was done any minor changes were made for framing and pacing and the move would be ready to go.
Two of the moves were slightly more complex. The first one involved going directly over the head of the talent with a specific camera roll as the camera went over the top. Operator Simon Wakely explains “anyone who has programmed this kind of move knows how hard it can be, and in fact this shot took a lot of time in CG to get it right, I didn’t want to spend lot of time in Flair tweaking it. In order to import the move accurately the Maya move was applied to a 3 Node Camera and that camera exported to Flair so that as well as having a Camera Location and a Target Location there was also an “Up” location that defines the roll on the camera. Needless to say this worked out really well and no time was wasted adjusting the roll which normally would have consumed some time to get it just right.” Each shot also involved a lighting effect pass, these were created by spinning mirrors which reflected light across the subject and gave the appearance of motion.
The second complex move involved a “boomerang” shot. The shot was of the talent flying past the camera as it tracks him going by. The client wanted to start 70 feet in front of the talent and end up 70 feet behind him. Not having enough track nor a large enough stage plus it would have required a HUGE green screen, the shot was cleverly designed in Maya by having the camera fly toward the talent, then turn the talent on a turntable and then have the camera pull away. Once worked out Maya provided the moves for the Milo motion control camera and a move for the motion control turntable. These files were then imported into the Flair software to shoot directly. CCI's MILO on set CCI's MILO on Set
