Footage shot, test composite made

Got the footage all shot yesterday after a good hour and a half of setup. As expected, it took quite a bit longer than I had planned, and I ran into more than a few hiccups here and there. First issue was the lighting. I have two light kits, but I was using the outside light from the garage door as a third source. As the day went on, the earth apparently turned and the light was encroaching on the screen. So throughout the afternoon, I had to lower and lower the door while upping the exposure to compensate. It worked out well in the end, and we got all the shots we needed though.




As for the content, I had originally planned on using a multi-camera setup to record the front, and either side about 30º off center. But I didn't have enough horizontal green screen space to do so. Luckily, I can just simulate the change in direction in Premiere. It will look similar to the flat characters in Parappa The Rapper; the first big mainstream music game available for PlayStation.

Anyway, I had been working on one of the 3D stages, and wanted to test the footage out, so I threw together a quick little keyed composite. Its still a bit crude and missing most of the graphics (as well as needing tweaking on camera angles and looping problems with the render clip), but I wanted to make sure the footage all worked so I wouldn't need to re-shoot anything. I uploaded that short clip to youtube:

Youtube doesn't seem to make good sense of the widescreen render, but it will work for the final medium on DVD.

For comparison, here is a video taken straight from the actual game that I am trying to pay homage to.