Research
Alec had advised us to look into how Focal Length can affect the feel and look of the camera, so I went ahead and got to researching. I found this helpful image that showed the same camera position but with different focal lengths, and how this essentially zoomed in the frame.
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/focal-length-camera-lenses-explained/
I thought this was a really informative video, I went and took notes of the steps he explained so that I could go and recreate and explore these techniques myself. I think by incorporating some of these techniques could help push the narrative and flow of my group’s short film. I think trying to make use of the pivot point for the camera a habit could really help with improving my Blender/3D skills.
This was a very quick but very useful way to try create a handheld camera feel. I think using the auto-keying function and auto-smoothing this out in the graph editor could save time trying tog to achieve this effect manually keying, and this type of shot could add some immersion and connect the audience to our characters.
Exploration
FOCAL LENGTH
The first thing I experimented with was how changing the focal length effected the zoom, just like in the diagram at the start of this blog. I set up a quick Blender scene and set up my camera. I decided to turn on Depth of field for this experiments, and changed the F-stop value to 0.2. I also added some quick lighting so I could see my render and tried adjusting the shadows a bit, I definitely tweaked them too hard without realising so you can see the weird effect this had as I zoom into the house.
It was actually really interesting seeing how one adjustment can affect the camera view that much, putting this in practice really cemented this for me. I changed nothing throughout this except the Focal Length and got such different framing from the camera, I will be taking note of these particular focal lengths and sharing these with my group so they can decide what looks best for that particular shot.
Then I added in my Blocked out character model to play with adjusting the focal length and changing the position on the camera, to check the distortion and the different effects this could have for the audience with our framing.
CAMERA MOVEMENT
Using the tutorial I went about recreating the techniques to think about using them in my short film. For these, I tried using the layout of windows that was in the video, and I found that I actually liked this layout better than what I had been using.
Here I managed to set up the Empty to act as a pivot point for the camera. I found this technique quite useful and allowed me to have a really nice zoom effect when I used depth of field. To zoom I just scaled the empty and keyframed this change on the timeline.
This time I went and rotated the empty to create a turntable effect.
The Dolly Zoom was created by setting my camera to a low focal length and zooming it out and keying the focal length of the camera and scale of the empty. Then I made new keys with the increased focal length and zoomed the camera in by scaling the empty, making sure to scale these by the same factor, and it created this really nice warped affect.
Then I recreated the camera shake effect, by using the noise modifier on the graph editor. I adjusted this until it gave me a subtle shake effect on one of my axis.
I wanted to apply the following camera, so I quickly keyed in some basic linear movement on my blocked model. I also went ahead and set up three point lighting using the tri light add on, and parented these to my model so that they kept it lit even as it moved. Then I just used the same pivot poitn camera set up, placed the empty into my model and applied the copy location constraint. I then did this with an offset, by moving the empty to another position I was able to frame the character using the composition guideline overlays and it moved the same as before. I think this could be quite useful to capture movement quickly without worrying about animating the camera too extensively.
I used the Dampened track to follow along with my character movement, but with this feature you don’t need to set up an empty to pivot on and you can use the character/object instead. It also allows you to swap between objects as you animated, by keying in the influence and working as a hierarchy and I managed this with a quick animated ball roll. I actually really like the effect this has, its very cool to see.
The final technique I tried out was creating a handheld camera. The approach I used for this was to use the Auto-keying function and the walk navigation (with gravity), to essentially record all the movements I make and capture the frames I want just like you would for a real life handheld shot. I really like these types of shots as they give personality to the film and it makes the audience feel like they are in the world itself. I did have a couple moments where Blender crashed when I was attempting this, but I still think my short film could benefit from this type of camera movement, I would jsut need to plan for any crashes in advance for time management and ensuring to save as I go along the process.
I am very happy that I went and did some more research on how to push my camera knowledge in Blender as I feel a lot more comfortable trying to include different shot types, movements and techniques in my short film and I will inform my teammates how to do these effects as well when it comes to it.