Things You'll Need:
- 24p video camera
- scale model
- laser range finder (optional)
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Step 1
Get Yourself a Scale Model.
It's important that the model is to scale because you're going to use it to do some measurements. In our example we're going to pretend we have a 1/12 scale model that is 1 foot in length. That means our full sized tank is 12' long from ass to barrel. You can also make up the scale if you want, but you're not necessarily going to match up to the size of the real thing. -
Step 2
Do some measuring.
We want to shoot the tank so that the plate matches a shot from a two story building looking down on the street. On the day of the plate shoot you'll want to take some measurements. One is the height of the camera from the ground, and the other is the tilt angle of the camera. This gives you the angle and one side of a right angle triangle.
You can also use a laser range finder that matches the angle of the camera to measure another side of the triangle if you can't get the tilt angle. -
Step 3
Do some figuring.
Now you need to set your camera up based on a smaller triangle, scaled down to match the size of the model. This is where the trig part comes in. The angle stays the same, and the side is 1/12 the height of the camera during the plate shoot. If the camera was 24' feet of the ground, the camera height of the miniature shoot should be 2'.
Using trig we we can calculate the miniature's distance from the camera. In this case we want the formula tangent=opposite/adjacent. Pull out your calculatron and fill in the blanks. The tangent of the angle we know, multiplied by the scale height of the camera, gives us the distance of the miniature from a point on the ground underneath the camera.
