The Green Screen Potential: Behind the Scenes of Sin City and The Matrix

If you've been following our posts on the making of Condition:Human, then you've witnessed some of the awesome possibilities that green screen provides to film makers. Green screen, or chroma-key green fabric, is the best way to merge layers of footage and graphics onto a single, video timeline. Add in some 3D scenery, advanced CGI, and photorealistic texturing, and you've got yourself a pretty fine looking film.

Green screening offers huge potential for low-budget film makers as it allows for virtual worlds to be created around their actors at minimal cost. Set design, prop building, locations fees, lighting, and crew are just a few of the overhanging expenses that can be minimized, if not completely eradicated from the budget. However, that's not to say that monstrous, expensive films avoid green screen - quite the opposite, in fact.

So what kinds of things happen on multimillion dollar film sets?

To answer this question, I want to provide some insight into two of my favorite blockbuster movies, and how green screen was used to create the types of settings and shots that were needed to achieve the director's vision.

1) Sin City
Quite literally, the entire stock of raw footage for Sin City was shot using green screen. Every shot was set up and filmed with a much greater vision in mind. The true magic of Sin City, in addition to the storyline, was performed by the post-production editors. Hours and hours of painstaking 3D scene building, layering, and editing were required to achieve a stunning result.
In the end, the visuals in the film took the graphic novel to new heights while managing to retain Miller's original look and feel. Let's have a look at some actual raw footage:

If you can't remember what the edited scene looked like, check it out here.

Sometimes you just have to see how basic the raw footage is before you can actually understand how good some of the video editors and CGI experts are that work on these types of films. If you want to see just how much green screening went on in the making of Sin City check out this nine minute clip of various unprocessed footage. It's definitely worth seeing.


2) The Matrix
Realizing the complex concept behind The Matrix still stands as one of the most ingenious film making efforts ever. The Matrix unveiled new visual styles that set a new high for CGI-based film makers around the world.

There's far too many scenes worthy enough to discuss in the movie, but some of the most mind-blowing have got to be the time-haltering, panoramic pans. To achieve this look, a huge chroma-key green set was designed, and then outfitted with both still and video cameras. How many cameras? I don't know... I lost count. OK, fine, there are precisely 120 DSLRs, and two motion picture cameras.

Once the cameras were placed in accordance to the desired shot they were hidden behind another green wall to make things easier for the editors. The final footage is actually a time-lapse merge of still photos taken in sequential order by the array of cameras you see above. Here's a shot of the scene during a take:
Everything in the set was made custom by the designers for The Matrix. Because the panoramic pans were used many times throughout the film, the set was designed to be modifiable so that it could be reshaped in accordance to the footage required. The style became loosely known as bullet-time photography, as the scenes required dynamic camera movement around slow-motion events that approached 12,000 frames per second.



Here's a look at how the unprocessed camera footage appears when placed on a video timeline:


This technique requires a lot of time and precision, but in the end, it allows for a compelling and quite revolutionary end product.

So there's a glimpse into how green screen, and chroma-key green sets are used to produce a final product. Green screening is best used when your required work demands footage that is either out of budget, and/or out of this world. Used wisely and creatively, the potential for green screen usage is virtually unlimited - as long as we're able to keep pumping out sweet ideas.

7 Basic rules about Making a Documentary Film... That I hadn't considered!!

1. The more organized and meticulously planned your documentary production is, the more time you’ll have to play, be free and discover genuine spontaneity and cinema verité beauty.

2. Research is essential, but pre-interviews with your subject can kill good interviews.

3.Short, simple questions in interviews are much better than long, rambling ones (which tend to be more about you, than your subject). The best question of all time is “why?”

4. Don’t ask your interviewees to “repeat the question in their answer.” Besides stressing them out and making them do your job for you, it leads to boring answers. When they give you one word, un-editable answers, just act stupid and ask them what they’re talking about, as if you forgot. Repetition is fine.

5. When editing dialog in documentaries, edit sound first, then picture. Sound is the secret weapon of most documentary scenes–if you build a sonically believable sequence (whether dialog, music, or insects chirping), it will work.

6. If you are debating whether to leave a scene in or out of your film, 99% of the time it should go out. Editing documentaries is less about collecting and putting together… it’s about omitting and throwing away.

7. Be grateful if you are able to get meaningful distribution for your film, and remember than distributing documentaries is a thankless, difficult chore in a nearly impossible market with a terrible, horrible history of financial success. You don’t have to love your distributor or agree with all of their suggestions; you do have to respect them, and be willing to let go.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders – presentational speaker PPP

Studied vis com at lca

Applied for jobs sept/dec 3^rd year

Didn’t get what he wanted because of the recession

Animation – vfx, green screen and paper

Figuring out how to get clients so contacted Leeds film festival, made own animations to get himself out there.

Met creative director of mtv, who set him up at a place called addiction, had interview got positive feed back, had more meetings and interviews. Meetings get tedious

Kept in contact with creative director of mtv who since left and started his own company.

First initial step from undergraduate, look at smaller festivals and competitions.

Creative Agencies come up with ideas

Production houses set up ideas, passion pictures etc do the hard labour piecing it togeterher storyboards etc

They go to post houses that edit

Got made redundant, a friend offered him an opportunity in San Fran, so went out there for a couple months

MAKE SURE YOU GET CONTRACTS FOR WORK

Be clever about your work, use clients styles if your aiming to work with them.

Travels around the country for work, looks and speaks with companies

Uses illustration for cards, magazines, videos, hotel rooms, window

Collaborate with other freelances, networking!

Always render as tiff sequences NOT on quicktime

Gets contacted mainly by networking

Study clients and don’t pester them.

FOR INSPIRATION ALWAYS REFER TO....

IRA GLASS ON STORY TELLING

COP3 Dissertation Intro & Proposal

Lecture 25^th April 2013

Richard Mills

… missed first 20 mins of lecture

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

6a1 - Demonstrate an independent critical understanding of the aesthetic, cultural, historical, technological, social, political or other contexts relevant to individual subject

…

Synthesis

All component parts of the project engaging in one complex, dynamic process

Informed engagement – not just taking photos, but taking photos for a specific reason.

The realization of theory in, and through practice

Artistic products aswell as writing

Asking to develop a PRAXIS  - when theory is turned into action, and making is differenced from research – theory and practice come together

COP3 is a synthesized research project from the very beginning

COP3 PROPOSAL FORM

Kickstarts the module

·      Makes you consider all aspects of your oriject in detail

·      Allows you to receive focused feedback before summer

·      Allows staff to cinsider the viability of your research

·      Download from the COP2 section of your course eStudio

·      Complete the form and submit to Drop-box on eStudio

Think about a subject that’s going to interest me for 9 months!!!!!

Try to define a subject

Be as specific as you possibly can

Think about it, then be more specific again.

This is not a Dissertation title

This is not set in stone

It could be a series of related questions, lines of enquir or objectives.

NEXT 4 QUESTIONS – REALLY IMPORTANT – WILL MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR SUBJECT IN 4 ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAYS

LOOKING AT FACTORS:

Research FOR creative practice

Research BEHIND creative practice

What research needs to be undertaken into the general and specific contexts of your practice?

What factors sit behind your chosen subject?

How have historical, cultural, social, technological, economic, political and other factors influenced it?

Who are the key figures within my chosen subject?

Are there any dominant or prevailing attitudes that inform my subject?

Is my subject culturally specific? If so, how?

What approaches will you take and what processes, methods, materials and tools are to be involved in research into your practice?

How will you approach your chosen subject?

What sort of questions will you ask? Why?

Different questions will get different answers

Methodology

Method – a way of proceeding about something in a systematic or logical mannar

Methodology – the science of method, employed in a particular activity (about stating a case)

A logical and predefined and systematic strategy by which to undertake a research project, including methods of evaluation, schedules and stated intentions.

Have an intention to find out something

Research conducted ‘through’ practice

‘Thinking through doing’

Reflective practice

What effect do changing the materials that you use have on the end result?

What factors could disrupt your creative practice

What is the relationship of techniques that you use to other techniques in the sector?

What preparation or investigations do you need to undertake for your creative practice to take place?

How will you go about investigating my chosen subject?

Do you have to research into methods of research?

Do you need to research into materials?

How do you improve your research skills?

What research do you need to undertake regarding who your creativity is for?

Who is our research project for?

What professional contexts could your research be aimed at?

What specific organisitions could use your research and how?

How would your tone of voice (visual or written) change if you targeted your research at a different audience?

Does your work challenge existing knowledge in the field?

The hermeneutic circle

A process of interpretation

Interpretation is a process designed to clarify an experience and assign meaning to it

This is aided by the hermeneutic circle which involves looking at different perspectives on eveents and relating individual components.

First grasp… inspection of detail… global inspection... Deeper understanding

Final advice

Think about your subject carefully

Take ownership of the project

Make it personally and professionally relevant

Treat the proposal form seriously

Start the research process now

And HAVE FUN

Susan Everett

Primarily a writeer that’s also directed 4 films

Writes screen plays for feature films

Write short stories and a novelist

Recently working on a super natural killer which Rankin is involved in

Just finished work on 2x 90 min tv film called justice truth – started out as a potential series for trial and retribution

Right now locked away being a novelist

Used to teach on a screen writing MA, last year and year before did a module called writing beyond the page, how to do stand up and how to write monologues

Still interested in the same things as a kid

Wanted to do art and English

Went to art college – in terms of being an artist it was the best year ever, at the same time as Damian Hirst

Was most interested in illustration with film on the side, and combinded both interest in art work and stories.

First couple of years really disliked her own work felt it was all crap, but suggests as long as you can take something even small from it and realize what your good at

ENTER COMPETITIONS

Didn’t win a competition but got shortlisted and people started recognizing her work. Easier to get an agent!

Got into desiging illustrations for cards etc.

Tried to research and learn her field.

Joined the Leeds community film project

Was acting at the time, and wanted to improve the scripts so tried to re-write it. Started writing scripts didn’t have a clue what she was doing but entered a competition and received a call from the producer of the competition and got asked to come to London.

Find what it is that keeps you going because people will kill your project

Glimmers of hope that reminds yourself of what your good at

Got to get used to things not happening!

Work at your strengths and push them!!!!

If you want to be taken seriously as a script writer, format properly! – need to know what your audience is.

1.     front page needs to be formatted properly

2.     can tell if you  can write after the first page

3.     can tell if your good after 10 pages

4.     put page numbers on

5.     usually between 90-120 pages

6.     10 pages represents 10 minutes, 100 pages = 100 minutes

Research, find out stuff!!! You have to dig underneath the surface to really find out information you want to write about.

Worked with the director or The Full Monty & 127 Hours. The director went to the location where the real person spoke with the director of what happened to him, to see the video recordings to really understand what happened.

Fascination by adoption

She was adopted

Was always telling herself different stories of what her life could have been like

Script editor is the writers sounding board, should have more knowledge then the writer. Tries to protect the write from the system. A writer needs to have someone who they can trust to help with the script and not re write it, unless it needs to be re-written.

Recommends reading scripts to help writing scripts

Dailyscript.com – feature scripts

Bbc writers room have lots of tv scripts

Research idea development, character development like an onion – when you peal the skin away you get deeper and deeper and find out more

May forget the story but a good character wont be forgotten.

Susan has her reoccurring themes. Quite dark, murders, people die, Asperger’s, super heroes, horses, obsessive characters.

If someones already invented characters and stories, you have to find what you love and hate about the characters . Even if the story has been written, then throw your personality in it.

Jonathan Ross on Alfred Hitchcock: His British Roots

Jonathan Ross

By the age of 28, Hitchcock was firmly in the driving seat as a director

It was as if Hitchcock used the British film industury as his own personal film school. The 10 silent films he made over the next 10 years allowed him to develop and refine his technique, the technique he would eventually take to Hollywood.

In Hitchcock’s hands the camera gained a new life, it’s movement and it’s ever changing perspective bought a whole new way of seeing things to his films. He exposes audiences to the full potential of the new mediam

To Hitch cinema was always so much more then just a way to record theatre.

Matthew Sweet – Film expert

Hitchcock absorbed a lot of influences from European cinema, particularly Russian and German cinema, he went to Berlin and he immersed himself in those expressionist techniques.

Nathalie Morris – Film expert

He lived, breathed and slept cinema. He thought cinematically. He was very keen to always insert all these incredible Hitchcock touches into his films, these very clever visual tricks.

Hitchcock

“The language of the camera, is the same as the language of the writer”

Jonathan Ross

He called it pure cinema, unleashing the cameras full potential to tell the story and manipulate the audiences emotions.

Things about Hitchcocks work, style and talent.

Number of sequences and camera movements and how inventive he was.

One of the most entertaining film makers ever

The subjectivity -  amazing at subjective camera work, and his idea of pure cinema, was essentially you show someone something, they watch it, you see their reaction.

His the best director to learn from in terms of how to make films. He is a master class in the grammar of film making.