How cool is this?

StewartR

StewartR

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Stewart
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The other day I met with one of my customers who was hiring a lens, but it wasn't the kind of thing he usually hires, so I asked him what he was doing. And the answer was pretty amazing.

I probably can't divulge too many details, but he's been commissioned to shoot a big panorama of a foreign city which will be printed to use as the backdrop for a film set. The film is a new instalment of a very well known franchise, which I thought was pretty cool in itself, but then he told me that the print is going to be .... 336 x 48 feet.

A few quick calculations suggest that the print will need about 200 gigapixels. I don't know (and I don't think he yet knows) how many of them he intends to produce with the camera and how many will be interpolated. But with a 5D Mk II/III, a 400mm f/5.6 L and a GigaPan machine he certainly has the potential to produce an image with many many gigapixels.

I asked him if he needed an assistant / gear technician but sadly not. Oh well. Looks like I'll have to wait for the film to come out.
 
That certainly trumps hiring an 80-200 lens from you so that I can photograph the Puffins in Skomer next week...
 
That's.... really odd. Using an image-based backdrop on-set is pretty much, well, never done, and I'm really at a loss to understand why they're using that option as it's like opening Pandora's Box for the lighting crew.
 
In addition to that, a printed backdrop has no parallax, which will cause issues if it's not a locked off shot (and I'm assuming it isn't a locked off shot, as the width of the print suggests a pan).

I'm really curious to know which shoot this is now :P
 
Guys, I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing about film sets. So I can't comment on whether what they're doing is sensible, or why they're doing what they're doing. I'm just relaying what I'm told. But I will make a point of asking my customer when I next see him. My understanding is that he does a lot of backdrops for film sets, just normally not this size, so perhaps there's some method in the madness.

Bilko - I don't know whether it would be appropriatefor me to name the film, so without approval from my customer I won't. But you're certainly thinking along the right sort of lines in terms of the genre.
 
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I've worked in the film industry for many years, which is why I'm scratching my head over this. I'm really curious to know why a director would choose such a difficult workflow, because surely there must be a reason for it.
 
StewartR said:
Guys, I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing about film sets. So I can't comment on whether what they're doing is sensible, or why they're doing what they're doing. I'm just relaying what I'm told. But I will make a point of asking my customer when I next see him. My understanding is that he does a lot of backdrops for film sets, just normally not this size, so perhaps there's some method in the madness.

Bilko - I don't know whether it would be appropriatefor me to name the film, so without approval from my customer I won't. But you're certainly thinking along the right sort of lines in terms of the genre.
Click to expand...

Could be a new "Bourne" film then!!!
 
No that's no problem Stewart. I certainly wouldn't expect you to say. The Idea of a Bond film or Bourne film springs to mind for some reason.

Sounds like a monumental task
 
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