[Ed the Pirate]

Hello everyone, I'm new here and this is my first post so here it goes.
I'm working on my final for my Intro to Vfx class at the Art Institute of Las Vegas. What I want to do is shoot a friend of mine walking across a green screen, then I'm going to stabilize the footage in AE, key it, then export the frames of her walk cycle to photoshop, throw some filters on it to make it look hand drawn, print out each frame, rotoscope it by hand on a lightbox, then scan it back in and comp it in AE so that the actress starts out hand drawn and when she passes by a large object that obscures her she becomes real on the other side.

My question is, where in the world can I find a green screen long enough to catch several walk cycles at a time? Our blue room at school would only be long enough for maybe 5 or 6 steps at most. I've thought about shooting her against the sky, but in order to do that I would have to probably be at the top of a parking garage, shooting from a low angle. I also thought about rearranging the whole living room to set up a large green screen, but my girlfriend might not appreciate that too much. I also thought about building a portable green screen and having it track her as she walks, but it would be almost impossible to get all of her with it, so i'll be rotoscoping masks on feet if I do that.

Is there anything I am missing? any tricks for shooting green screen elements over a distance of about 30 or 40 feet on the quick and cheap?

Also, I'm not sure how i'm going to go about framerates at this point. I think I want to animate on 2s but i'm not sure how that will be effected if the comp is running at 30fps. That's just going to take some experimentation on my part though.

Thanks in advance guys!

[Midgardsormr]

Does your school have portable greenscreen kits you can check out? Two of them side-by-side would probably give you enough length to get several walk cycles.

You might also ask around to see if any of the instructors or other students happen to have their own kit that you could make use of. I don't know what the culture is like there, but here at AI Colorado, most everyone is pretty helpful, and I have been able to wheedle the use of two peoples' screens. Of course, it helps if lots of people owe you favors.

Have you seen the Attila the Hun breakdown? http://www.vimeo.com/4623658 Notice that when the running actor is looped, the footage is only covering one walk cycle, so you might not need quite as much length as you think, depending on how regular your talent's stride is.

[Ed the Pirate]

Hello Midgardsormr,
Thanks for the reply. I was considering looping the walk cycle. But I figured it would be really difficult to match both start and end positions exactly. That Atilla the Hun breakdown proves that it can be done hehe. I plan on using several different techniques as well as different angles and different framing, so that technique may not be so difficult if I frame the actress from the waist up. I think I'll be able to manage it. Thanks again for the advice.

[Midgardsormr]

Glad I could help.

[kowshiksarma]

if you have a portable green screen long enough to cover her, both lengthwise and widthwise. ask two of your friends to hold it and ask them to move along as she walks. you might have to rotoscope her legs if necessary and of course the guys who hold them. but a rough mask would do the trick.

[tharrell]

Might be worth asking if anyone you know has access to a treadmill.

If you're going for cycles, I can't think of anything that will make the job easier than that. No parallax to worry about, either.

--T

[Dotcommer]

Yup, I'd say old junker treadmill. Paint it entirely green. Bam. Infinite walking area.