Hi, I have a greenscreen and I want to have Spiderman walking up a wall (Showing his whole body) for a fanfilm I'm making. Since I have a MiniDV camcorder and I know greenscreen doesn't work too well on it, does anyone know how I can acheive this effect otherwise? (Without using masks on Spiderman, keyframing him in?)

hover,

That's really your only choice. As long as you light it well, you should be fine.

Another choice, would be to model and construct him in a program like Maya or 3DSMax...

Depending on what you are going to composite in, you may or may not be set as far as keyframing goes. If you use After Effects, and you have the production bundle (v.6 and higher) it is bundled WITH keylight keyer...

I have done several tests just DRAPING green fabric, with ruffles and everything, and keylight has never let me down. Now, granted, make sure everything is tight, and lighting is awesome... But Keylight is awesome, so you will be more than fine...

-cheers

^Unfortunately I have no 3D program whatsoever and the keylight keyer I do not have either... so I will resort to using a greenscreen. It seems to work fine if I put him in the distance, not too close to the camera. Thanks for the info, though!

Do you have photoshop? If you did, then you could take the video, and put a artifical greenscreen in using the lasso tool. I've done that for my films and it works wonderful. You have no problems with lighting or shadows. Of course, it would take a bunch of time to do it if it is a long effect. But patience can get you far.

Hmm... I might try something like that. Usually my patience runs short, which is why I want to find the easiest, quickest way to do things.

you could jsut have your actor crawl on a fake wall on the ground and film it sideways...

Yeah but then you can see the grass off to the side. (On the top of the screen)

That photoshop thingy is the best suggestion.

Or, go the set building way.

Build a building sideways, and then to compensate for the grass, get a HUGS plank of wood and lightly cover it with tar, then place it vertically. Ta Da!

Is there something that looks like brick wall but.... isnt? Because the side of the wall thing would work and I would like to get my hand on that brick wall or get a technique to make it. A green screen would work... just get good lighting and light the background well and stand the subject far enough away from the lighted matte so you can light him differently. But I dont know how you would do the climbing thing without having that wall.... bah.

There is paneling made to look like like brick, but I'll be damned if I know where to get it. A lumber store (prolly not lowes or the depot) could order it for you. It will come in 4' x 8' sheets. If you can't get that, paint plywood to look like a concrete building and run with that.

Put your guy on your wall stage laying horizontal and have him 'climb' across it. Behind that, put your greenscreen. Then in post, composite in some more buildings and the sky and such.

If you build it carefully, you can even build a ground level, vertical version of your wall stage to show spidey (tm,(r),(c)) getting onto the wall from the ground.

You can also shoot the same segment of wall with different angles and composite different backgrounds under it to make the one stage look like many different parts of the building.

Build yourself a window frame that you can place on the wall. Just make a square frame made from 2x2 with blue paper across the inside so you can composite in the window later. Make a planter box with plastic flowers hot glued to the bottom to make some horizontal flowers. A couple of little details like this can go a long way.

I'm gonna say the old way.

Build a bricky side-of-wall on the ground somewhere, then buy some of that fake plastic grass and put it on a piece of plywood and prop it up on its side, then have the talent crawl.

It's worth a shot.

It might be interesting to do that from the bottom and put a greenscreen in front of the actor.... than you can try adding in sky or something. It will probably look more realistic if you use a few angles and with creativity you can go for some good shots.