Yesterday, we had our first shoot for our spot.

We were able to get a few variations of the story for more flexibility. After shooting our previs, it became evident that the background in some of the shots was too empty. As a result, we set up a green screen behind our actor, which will allow us to do a set extension for those shots.

We shot HDRIs for each lighting setup that had CG. We used both a 360 camera and fisheye lens on a mirrorless camera. I’ve already merged the bracketed exposures from the 360 camera with a seemingly decent result.

I will be working on stitching the fisheye images. I am familiar with the general process, but I haven’t done it before, so it will require some experimentation. We also are attempting another experiment with the fisheye lens. We have a shot where CG ingredients will fly past camera with some speed ramping. It was difficult to get a background plate with the correct camera movement, as it relies heavily on the animation of the CG. We had the idea to shoot a stationary plate with the fisheye lens, giving us a 180 degree field of view to play around with and animate a camera move in post.

We also took care to take down measurements and information about our lighting setups. This includes the focal length, aperture, and other settings on the camera. I made sure we were shooting raw with the lowest possible compression ratio, which will be especially important for shots that require keying. Once the edit is refined, I will convert the shots to ACEScg for compositing.