The dramatic downward shot on the Hunter with the fan blades flashing past in the foreground presented its own challenges. We considered attempting it in-camera, but this would have necessitated putting a hole in our ceiling or removing the fan and repositioning it between the camera and talent; the former was not advisable for the house’s value and the latter was just too labor intensive for just the two of us. So it was another job for After Effects. We shot Noah’s plate with the HVX200 fitted with a 20mm lens hanging off the end of our fully extended jib arm at a stark 90 degree angle. Even with the wide lens, the camera was bumped right against the ceiling. Later the ceiling fan was shot from underneath against a sheet of green screen, knowing that we were not going to retain any surface detail of the blades. This key was extracted with Keylight, but the footage was less than ideal so we were unable to retain any motion blur. This issue was addressed by duplicating the fan layer twice, bumping each successive layer back one frame, and then adding a directional blur and lowering each layer’s opacity. This is one shot that passes unnoticed as a visual effect (my favorite kind!).
