Camera Through Floorboard Test Shot

The camera through floorboard shot, I’ve had a lot of difficulty with, particularly whilst going down in the upstairs bedroom because there is nothing for the camera to move behind. As a result there is a harsh line where the edge of the shot is during the transition which doesn’t look effective at all. This is what the transition looks like at the moment, I will need to find a way to soften the edge of the shot, or possibly move the camera behind some clothes or toys when filming next time.

Sherlock Floorboard Shot

http://vimeo.com/37406179

In this episode of Sherlock there is one scene that involves a continuous shot where the camera goes through the floorboards. This is very similar to the effect that I am hoping to achieve and it also looks really nice because you can see the inner floorboard as the camera moves up and through. I felt that the light in the ceiling looked really nice, however this won’t be possible in my kitchen, although I can try to replicate the dark lighting as this will almost masks the cut through the ceiling.

This is the first scene since the beginning of the year that I’ve noticed this effect being used and I do think that it looks really nice and is super effective. The only downside is how difficult it will be. I will need to locate some equipment that will allow me to control the speed at which the camera moves down and then hopefully I will be able to follow the tutorial that I watched and alter the perspective as I wipe through the floorboard.

Camera Through Floorboard Effect

After messing around with the steadicam and my camera for about half an hour, I finally admitted that creating the camera through floorboards effect was going to be a lot more difficult than I had hoped for. I tried lowering the camera behind toys and various other items and toys, trying to hide the transition as the camera appears to enter the floorboards. However I couldn’t get the lighting right and it resulted in a shot that looked really odd or clearly not entering the floorboards.

I got onto YouTube to see if I could find any tutorials for the effect. Most seemed to want to show me how to film as if the camera was looking through a wall or floor rather than moving through. I found one tutorial that showed me an effect that was created on the editing software, however this effect did seem to rely on the setting being fairly large, showing a lot of ceiling, floor and also was done using a static shot.

The video was quite interesting to watch, and I thought the end result was really effective, but I doubt it would work as well for my scene as the space I will be filming in may be quite small. I will have to find out whether or not Final Cut Pro has any sort of similar feature, as I haven’t previously done anything like this in a project so far.