Endless forest

[Wakish]

I don't know if it's even possible, but I would really like some help with this. I have many Adobe softwares and know how to use them

My friend has some $2000 nice Nikon DSLR, and we live in Florida. I really hate the trees here, but there's a small park that has some of the nicest trees I've ever seen. With the right lighting it could be a setting for Game of Thrones or some other medieval video. My only problem with it is the density of the trees.

http://www.upwithtrees.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/trees-566.jpg
Picture this ^^^^^ but not nearly as extreme. It's a nice park with probably 1000+ trees

I was wondering if there's a way to make it look like the forest goes on and on so you don't see a break in the trees. I tried filming at night, but moving heavy lighting equipment there was too much work, and it gave the wrong effect. I also tried chroma keying and other color/lighting effects in After Effects with no luck

[Jackson Wong]

Sounds like you've got the freedom of a narrative video, and displacement may be your friend here. Shooting the same patch of trees from different angles can all look like the same forest. If you have any running scenes, you may have actors run in a circle around a smooth panning camera. These are both ways to maximize your background.

Perhaps your options include getting stock video of a more fitting forest, and letting that establish your setting, then you shoot where your favorite trees are.

 

What kind of scenes are you working on? How closely do the actors need to interact with this endless forest?

-Jackson

[Wakish]

I just need shots of a man walking through the forest. The re-using patches of trees from different angles thing was already discussed, but there doesn't seem to be a single angle that does this shot justice. Without leaving Florida or changing the setting, this park is like my only option. It's not that small of a park, but at the very best angle I found, which is like football field's length or a little more, I still see the sun coming from behind the tree line, and even a little of the road or houses.

My friend is the one experienced with cameras and advanced settings, I'm the video editor, but neither of us know techniques to solve this problem. We haven't tried changing the settings on the camera yet to blur the video past a certain distance, that might workk though.

[Laguna Hiker]

http://postimg.org/image/f43q7k32b/88d565e1/

 

Here's a Q&D example of what I think you're talking about. I did it in a few seconds in Photoshop–two copies of the pic on separate layers, and simply scaled the top layer down.

 

You'll need to lock your camera down, and shoot your actor pretty close to it. Get a second or two of the scene with no one init before the actor steps in to his mark. Frame grab the empty shot, scale it down, and superimpose it. The shot should sell, so long as the actor doesn't step into the portion of the fram with the frame grab superimposed.

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