What a fun concept: Create the illusion a car is driving, by painting the city moving on the wall behind – one frame at a time!

Cameraman Dan Kutner writes about using Dragon Stop Motion software to shoot the Acrua spot “Wall Art”.

Dan -

For the Camera / On Set Post / VTR / & Fake-MoCo department, this shoot came together very quickly. I saw the first boards on the tech scout on a Thursday, hired two assistants on Friday, downloaded Dragon Stop Motion over the weekend and took first frames on Monday. The learning curve was extraordinarily fast.

Dan Kutner at mission control.

The fact that we pulled it off with very few hiccups on Camera’s part, speaks directly to the outstanding Dragon software.

Our “A” Camera was the Canon Mark III 1ds. More often than not it was Dolly mounted, and the dolly move had been carefully animated out in a throw back to old school Motion Control. “B,” “C,” “D,” and “E” cameras were the Canon Mark III 1D bodies, with a Canon 5D, Mark II 1D, and a 20D for BTS shots rounding out the kit.

The Dragon Station

As the job went on, the demands on Camera grew. At one point we were running 7 camera bodies, some on tripods that had to be pulled out and then realigned for every frame, and 3 Dragon Stations on two different stages. Cameras had to be covered in-between every take, lest any of the THICK paint fumes hanging in the stage air make their way to the sensors. We did a lot of running.

It’s an exciting piece of filmmaking and I’m very happy to have been a part of it. It’s not often that you get paid to try something so brazen, which was on most people’s minds despite the exhaustion and constant paint inhalation.

Total data captured: 85 gigs. 10 Shoot Days. 7 Bodies. 16 Lenses. 3 Dragon Stations (one Quadcore G5 and two MacBook Pros).

Here is a link to the spot.

Here is a link to the making of clip.