Multiple instances of an actor in same shot, with moving camera

[wildpozzer]

What we're trying to achieve - someone's past is chasing him, in the form of several ghostlike instances of himself which run after him.

We'd like to film our actor several times and overlay each instance faintly, but would this be possible with a moving (poss handheld) shot? I expect we'd need some way to ensure the camera moves exactly the same way each time so the shots work together.

Any thoughts?

[edDV]

Normally done with chroma key. Alternate for transparent "ghost" is to shoot actor in front of black.

[guns1inger]

Alignment of multiple hand-held shots is going to be very difficult and will probably take some manual adjustment in post. Normally this would be done with a motion control camera to ensure all the passes are identical, and the hand-held motion would be added as part of the post production processing. At the very least, use a dolly for filming to make matching the passes much easier, and add the shake afterward.

[Steve Stepoway]

You are going to want to shoot your "ghost" images in front of a green or blue or black screen, then key them over your "real" footage. You could align multiple hand-held shots, but that would be very time consuming. As guns1inger said, it would be easy with motion control. But if you had access to a motion control rig, you would already know how to do it. So do it the way edDV said. Be careful to match camera angles pretty well, and it should look fairly convincing.

Steve

[guns1inger]

Take a still camera to the location shot and get lots of stills from the same positions as your film camera.