SHOOTING IN 4K WITH THE RED EPIC

We, here at GreenScreen Animals, are getting ready for our next green screen shoot for our library acquisition. It has been 5 years since the first shoot and we have upgraded the quality significantly since then. For this shoot, we will include the following animals: an African Elephant, a male lion, a Grizzly Bear, Grey Wolf and a Timber Wolf. We will be using the Red Epic as our camera. Recording these animals in 4K will assure the longevity of the footage as well as the ability to zoom in and reframe the composition for a more custom size. This marriage of images is easier with greater digital detail. And with today’s High Definition presentations and tomorrow’s UltraHDTV displays, quality in compositing cannot be compromised.

Using the “pan and scan” process, we can select parts of the original filmed composition that seem to be the focus of what we want. Unnecessary visual information is cropped out or resized with little loss of quality. It can also change a shot in which the camera was originally stationary to one in which it is frequently moving, or change a single continuous shot into one with frequent cuts. A shot which can be panned to show something new, or is one where something enters the shot from off-camera, changing the timing of these appearances to the audience. We can also reverse the process, creating an image that includes visual information that extends above and below the original. This is called “open matte” and may still be pan-and-scanned, but gives the compositor the freedom to “zoom out” or “uncrop” the image to include not only the full width of the wide-format image, but additional visual content at the top and/or bottom of the screen called reframing.

This also takes full advantage of resizing, while others are transferred open matte (a full widescreen image extended with added image above and below). We can also keep the camera angle as tight as a pan shot, but move the location of characters, objects, or the camera when creating composites, so that the subjects fit in the frame. The malleability and flexibility of the digital medium includes more depth of field, which makes it easier in split situations when mixing real people with virtual beings, animals and sets created by computer via the blue and green screen process using After Effects.

At GreenScreen Animals we are in the unique position to offer the widest variety of options when it comes to combining elements of man and nature with our huge inventory that continues to increase as the technology evolves.