Category:

Guide

Duration: 2:37

84,793 views

1,428

The NEW Filmora11 UPDATE is HERE! ✨ Download and Try Filmora 11 now: https://filmora.wondershare.com/Try Filmora: http://bit.ly/2RrJE2n Learn Forced Perspective Camera Techniques to make UNREAL illusions. Hollywood makes use of this trick to make movie characters seem larger than life. Believe it or not this is ALL done without any editing. Yup It’s all in-camera using a filming technique called Forced Perspective. So on this video, I’m gonna teach you how to create this illusion, before even putting down your camera!

To show how forced perspective works, let’s look at an optical illusion called the Ames Room. This room is a trapezoid where the side, bottom, and top walls are slanted and the right corner is much closer to the viewer than the left corner. This creates the effect where a subject in the far left seems the same distance and smaller than the subject standing in the far right even though they are far apart. Luckily You can use your camera instead of an Ames Room to create Force Perspective.

Here’s “How To Create Forced Perspective”:
Ok so the first thing you wanna consider is the space you’re gonna use. You need enough space so you can play around with the placement of your characters, giving you more ways to create the illusion.
Next, position characters or objects within your shot along the z-axis, which runs from the perspective of the camera outwards. The subject you want to appear larger should be closer to the camera and the subject meant to be smaller should be farther from the camera. Check out how we staged ourselves here to create the illusion of a giant living teddy bear *6 Camera Hacks Broll.
Now for the gear: a camera with a wide-angle lens is best. Although tourists are known for taking forced perspectives with their phones, a wide angle lens will give you the largest depth of field, giving you the most possible size variations. Our lens has a focal length of 11-16mm, but any lens with focal length smaller than 35mm is considered wide-angle.
When focusing your shot, aim for somewhere in between your subjects. They should all be in focus when you zoom in to check on them. The wide focus will help everything seem closer together. You’ll get best results using the highest aperture you have, so be sure to increase your camera’s f-stop.
But by using the highest aperture, you’ll lose a lot of light. So you gotta make sure your lighting conditions are good. The simplest way to get even lighting is filming outside on an overcast day.

Thanks so much for watching! Hope these tips help you create some epic forced perspectives. This technique can be a lot of fun to film, but it’s also educational in understanding how the perception of scale can influence your shots. Please subscribe if you haven't already, we’re uploading Filmmaking tutorials every week. See you next time!