A Historical Look at Forced Perspective in Film

This is a update of sorts to a post that I had written a year ago on the historical use of forced perspective in films and how the effect is achieved.  The old post had a dead link to a video on the process but fortunately someone else has posted it to Youtube.

Here is now a full length video about the process.  Enjoy!
(via  TylerHaslett)

Weekend Rewind: July 10th, 2010

 

Here are a few things you may have missed last week: 

A Historical and Modern Look at Forced Perspective http://lostinschlock.blogspot.com/2010/07/historical-and-modern-look-at-forced.html

Learn How to Build a Web Audience
http://lostinschlock.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-build-web-audience.html

How to Make Blood Sponges
http://lostinschlock.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-make-blood-sponges.html

Lost in Schlock is now on Facebook

Weekend Recap

Here are some tutorials and links you may have missed:

• Chris Sharpe Discusses How to Make a Web Show
• Concept artist Peter McKinstry showcases his designs for Doctor Who
• Learn how to create a comnpound fracture make up effect via Indy Mogul
• Check out a forced perspective shot that Fred Olen Ray created for Nuclear Hurricane
• Build connecting film set wall panels
• VFX Inspiration: Chrono Trigger short film

Forced Perspective VFX: Nuclear Hurricane

Filmmaker Fred Olen Ray has been very generous in letting me share these with you two pics of a scene, shot using the forced perspective method, from his latest film, Nuclear Hurricane. 

The first pic below shows a shot which utilized forced perspective and a foreground model placed inside a matte box which has miniatures built inside of it.  Think of it as a miniature studio set which is being combined in camera with the background.

The reactor in the middle is a salad bowl that Fred Olen Ray picked up from a Walmart.  Actor Jack Scala stands a distance away in front of the the camera as part of the background to achieve the ultimate illusion that he is standing inside a nuclear reactor room.

Here is what the final shot looks like:

Pretty damn cool, right?

Many thanks to Fred Olen Ray for sharing this with us. To find out more about Fred Olen Ray be sure to check out his official site at http://www.retromedia.org/ or join his official Facebook page to keep up to date with his films and current related news.

MINIATURE CAR TUTORIAL

Here is a cool way if intergrating a miniature car into a scene using a plate shot and a bit of forced perspective. The tutorial is by far one of the best that I have found on the net and well worth the read.

HOW TO BUILD TREES FOR MODELS AND SCENERY

I'm starting a bit of a thread here but since I am in the middle of model research for a web series I thought that along the way I would share some of the more informative and cooler links that I have discovered. Today the topic at the moment is building artificial trees.

Down below are a handful of vids that I thought would be handy for anyone interested. This is actually a skill one should acquire if you are interested in creating models for your next movie/internet project.

A STEALTH JET FOR LESS THAN $25 BUCKS

Continuing the subject on the use of models and forced perspective, filmmaker Fred Olen Ray shows yet another brilliant trick that he used for the film ACTIVE STEALTH via the Retromedia Forums. Seriously, check out his site, it's as groovy as owning a copy of CINEMAGIC magazine.

From the messageboard:

Here are two frame grabs from ACTIVE STEALTH that show the small store-bought stealth model kit in action. I had the neighbor kid build the model fro $10 and it turned out pretty nice, but it was VERY small -- maybe 12 inches long... You can see Daniel Bladwin running up to it in one shot and the we actually had the balls to try to put a live person in the cockpit! The guy was sitting on the top of a ladder and we lined up the cockpit window with him and he put on his helmet, etc. It was really very well executed. I never would have figured it to work, but it DID!

Total cost maybe $25.

More Forced Perspective how-to can be found here.

MODEL COOLNESS

Filmmaker Fred Olen Ray constantly amazes me at some of the forced perspective shots that he has used in his films. His methods prove that, whenever possible, always try to do in camera tricks as opposed to doing a shot in digital post with CGI. It saves both time and money, something you need both of to continue on to your next project.

Here is yet another brilliant example of his from his site Retromedia. Swing by the site and buy some of his DVDs when you get a chance.

Snipped from Retromedia Forums

Poking around today I found this frame enlargement of a foreground miniature we did on COUNTER MEASURES...

Back in the Royal Oaks days we were always threatening a missile strike from a submarine, but never got any farther than a stock shot... I decided I'd break the cycle and have our actors actually see the missile... and it's starting to rise into firing position!

Not authentic probably, but fairly impressive. It's built in a box with a square cut-out so our actors can be seen looking down. The yellow rail in front of them is part of the real set that we painted to match. Everything else is a model.

MORE FORCED PERSPECTIVE VFX TRICKS

Over at Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia Forums he posted some pics of how some of the forced perspective shots are done for the film GROUND ZERO: DEADLY SHIFT. To get a better reference check out this post and then take a look at the pics below on how you to can achieve the same illusion on your next movie.
Publish Post

MECHANIZER TEST FOOTAGE

I certainly not to detract any attention away from John Polonia's passing, but I do want to share this clip that fellow Polonia actor Jon McBride posted online. It's test footage for a film that for one reason or another never got made.

What is truly amazing about these few seconds of test footage is that the whole thing is done with a toy tank and the magic of forced perspective. No cgi, no set extensions, not even a matte job. This is all done in camera. Brilliant!

BRAINS OVER BUDGET

Here is yet more proof that you can pull off some amazing visual effects with a minimal computer use. (via Fred "the man" Olen Ray's Retromedia Forums)

(via Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia Forums) Here are a few shots I've posted over time that were done for pennies... the one of the small girl in the dome is from SIDESHOW and was shot on set exactly as you see it. NO post production trickery involved. Just a combination of the dome and the girl sitting on a box way far back from the set. Cost? $0 The Castle on the hill from GIRL FROM BIKINI was done with an aquarium ornament from Petco and a simple matte in After Effects. Cost? $14 In after thought I think I should have put a slight fog diffusion between the plates to give the model that far-away look... oh well, next time. The ruined columns are from HARLOTS OF THE CARIBBEAN, foreground miniature shot on location just as you see it. Cost? I think it was $11.

Even more forced perspective and no budget goodness...

(via Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia Forums)For our movie, POLAR OPPOSITES (international title DEADLY SHIFT) we had to resort to our usual on-set trickery to make up for the lack of a budget, so... here are some frame grabs of a few of the foreground miniature shots we did, mostly to add large amounts of rumble to our "live action" art department destruction.

The ceiling piece is a miniature that we suspended in front of the camera and tried to line up properly using a few c stands... it's about three feet long... on the floor area are several pieces of piled up stuff on a table to block the floor. There IS a certain amount of real stuff back in the room where the actors are and we tried to just make it look like a lot more than there is.

A flashlight was shined down through the ceiling hole to highlight the beams and wires.

The street scene is nothing more than a banged up toy car with a miniature telephone pole laid across it. It's so close to the lens it's almost touching it.

The building exterior was a very quickly done bit with broken pieces of real asphalt on a table and a handful of (too) tiny toy cars... we later went out and bought bigger toy cars.

These don't bear too close of an inspection, but they're only on screen for a few seconds each and I think they worked pretty well and cost very little to create.

Thought you might enjoy seeing a disaster on a budget.