How To Shoot Car Composites

- For traditional green screen methodology, shoot background plates after FG

- Follow all best practices for process screen and tracking markers

- Shoot BG plates using at least a 4 camera array (one pointing upwards for reflections) at the height of your FG camera setup. See file below for reference

- The above will cover only the front-facing or back facing angles - if you need to have consistent traffic or background flow for editorial needs, you'll need 9 cameras!

- Be sure shutters are synchronized such that stitching these cameras together is do-able

- Do not expect smaller pro-sumer camera bodies to work well as array cameras - rolling shutters are deal breakers

- Ideally you can shoot with a Russian Arm with a stabilized head to remove road noise

- If not, be sure to operate the vehicle at low speed and low tire PSI to dampen road vibrations. Be cautious of driving too slowly if clearly recognizable elments in the background are moving (like pedestrians).

- Interactive lighting for your FG plates is an imperative. Nothing worse than VFX re-lighting a car interior / characters for final-level composites

- More advanced level: Photoscan the interior of the car for use as tracking geo and as a hedge for some level in int. re-lighing

- Go easy on tracking marks on the process screen - especially when they show through talents' hair or DOF'fy edge detail

- Photoscan the camera array and take measurements to properly reconstruct in 3d space. Camera tracks will not be done on the BG footage array, so the camera placements relative to one another are imperative.

- If you only have a shot or two, theoretically you could go very basic and match your BG plate to your FG plate, 1:1. Go a little wider with the BG plate for safety.

- Measure the height of the camera (from ground level!) in the FG plate, such that you can set your BG plate cameras at similar heights.

- If this all seems more than you can swing, you can also check out drivingplates.com

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