Camera Movement Test

Looking ahead to creating our project, we feel that learning to move the camera in the 3D software will be crucial in achieving smooth, professional and realistic shots. Aspects of camera movement is present in almost all modern day feature cinema, and if our project is to compete with other productions, then utilising camera movement will be a necessity. Not only does creating camera create a professional, realistic aesthetic, but it also provides a sense of immersion and allows the audience to feel involvement in the scene, and therefore more engaged. Experimenting with the keyframe function in Cinema 4d after placing cameras allowed me to create this simple animation, demonstrating my ability to create camera movement.


UPDATE SINCE LEARNING CAMERA MOVEMENT

Using the above test as guidance, in our film's cut we implemented camera movement using the same method of keyframing. As can be seen in our rough cuts, we have used a variety of types of movement, such as tilts, pans, zooms and handheld effects. We often added this movement in after noticing that the shots appeared too static, therefore not seamlessly flowing into one another. An example of this is in our opening shot is long in duration, and consists of a steady zoom. Rather than zooming the camera in however, the camera moves in its entirety towards the Earth and astronaut, creating an immersive effect. We decided to try this after finding that our establishing shot was unexciting when that long in duration without any camera movement.




When creating camera movements, we learnt that there are many factors that need to be considered in order to create a smooth image. For example, the speed of the camera movement needs to correspond to the frame in order to create a smooth image. We can see why this is necessary by looking at the test render above. Rendered in 24fps, we can see that there is lagging and glitching between each frame. This is because after misjudging the speed at which the camera should be moving (as this cannot be properly tested until a rendered outcome is seen), I slowed down the movement in post. The low frame rate meaning that not enough information was captured to slow it down to this extent. This taught us always to render in a considerably higher frame rate when expecting to change the speed of a shot in post.