How Would You Do It? Smash My Coffee Table

[Chance White]

Alright this may be an ongoing series.

I'm going to propose a scene and I want to hear input, suggestions, creative ways of pulling it off... under the limitation of almost no monetary funds to throw at it.

So... Riddle me this, oh great minds of the DVXuser community...

I need a character to fall 'through' the ceiling and land on a coffee table. The coffee table of course smashes in brilliant 60p HVX200 slow mo. The character comes to rest in the wreckage of said coffee table. I'd like to have slow mo shots from above, as well as other coverage. We have access to multiple HVX200's (well, 2 at the most I think).

Presumably we're going to be building a breakaway coffee table...

My main questions are:

1) How do we safely 'drop' the actor onto the coffee table?
OR
2) How do we composite the character for the OH falling shot without it looking assy?
(Yes I said assy... and this is if we only have access to budget green screen, as in a green curtain on a wall in a room)
3) If we composite for the OH shot described above, how do we drop the actor on the coffee table from a shorter distance insuring it substantially breaks apart etc?

Any and all participation is greatly appreciated!

[hoarp001]

Make the coffee table out of balsa wood and foam etc etc. Get a stuntman (or failming that, any dumbnut who likes jackass will do) and get him to sign some kind of disclaimer, this could go very wrong.

You would be better off shooting this in a studio, somewhere where you can install a false ceiling and have a scaffold tower to drop yoru actor off. Build a scaffold gantry over the room and table table and then get your stuntman (not actor) to throw himself through it.

[Chance White]

Thanks for the response!

But now to complicate things further, the character happens to be the main character. Finding a stuntman lookalike on no budget seems tough...

Oh and BTW, nice equipment.

[Capt Quirk]

With no budget, you're going to have to settle for assy... bummer dude. I would go with a waited dummy, then cut, and replace the dummy with your actor. This is purely for safety, since you likely can't afford a wire harness to insure this goes off without injuring him.

[Chance White]

I just hate to resign myself to having to not show it, just hear it off screen, etc... as I just feel like people will know we couldn't do it because we had no budget... any other ideas?

[clang]

The other thing to keep in mind is that if he falls through the ceiling and lands on the table, we can't see both happening unless you do some pretty amazing camera move - it's far more likely that you'd show him coming through the ceiling then cut to him falling onto the table.

So the sneaky zero budget method is to first film him coming through the ceiling (and falling onto off-camera mattresses, and then separately film him falling onto the table from a very low height (perhaps even just falling backwards onto it, depending on the shot you need) or even just him lying there in the wreckage - if done right, the viewer's brain fills in the gaps.

[Chance White]

Clang, sounds like a possible angle of attack on this...

How would you go about the low angle shot of him falling 'through' the ceiling?

BTW, he actually, uh, sort of falls out of a portal from the ceiling, so he doesn't need to smash through or anything...

Greatly appreciate all the contributions!

[jls4]

I think Clang has the right mindset, but you can also get you some Chroma Key Green and paint the mattress. This way he falls down, breaks the "foam" coffee table but his fall isn't that bad since he landed on a mattress (better make that 2 mattresses). Then Edit another shot with him falling a small height, maybe 2 feet and breaking the table again, this time with dust and such.

On the edit as his body begins to hti the mattress, before the "bounce" cut to the close up of him smashing through the table.

As long as you have After Effects CS3 you can use Keylight to remove the green painted mattresses. All you need is a "cleam matte" of what the room would look like if the mattresses weren't there. It may be slightly tricky to line up, but I think it could work.

Green - is your friend. As an indie once you can control it, you can do things you never thought you could do before.

[Chance White]

JLS4,

Excellent suggestion, my main concern with this approach was the nailing the landing, the physics looking off due to the mattresses, but with close up cuts it should work. I'm also concerned with fining an area to set this up and duplicate lighting... we'd need some kind of warehouse with a large ceiling to film the composite, ideally, and then matching the lighting with the actual location, but that part shouldn't be tooo tricky.

Thanks.

[J.R. Hudson]

Given your budget ...

I'd use a dummy and shoot it wide exposing for the light whereas all you see is the figure of the dummy. and not total detail.

The audience will get the jist.

I'd also shoot it witout slow motion; that shi* is predicatable and played out isn't it ?