Camera Concepts

Overview

Think about the camera - where and what is it...?

Player view

In my earlier cinematics, the camera was always a fairly exact representation of the player's view of the game.

This is easy to achieve - you just make a screen recording whilst playing the game and use that with no post-processing in your published videos. You also don't need to worry about console messages or other in-game UI elements, because you're showing normal in-game footage.

An example is shown below:

While this approach is very quick and easy, your video will look a lot like all the other videos that are out there on youtube.

Observation drones

In my more recent cinematics I've been treating the camera as if it were some sort of hovering observation drone.

To achieve this effect I've used a few extra post-processing tricks such as:

• Scanlines– adds a CCTV monitor feel to the video
• TV Static – gives the impression that it's a video transmission that's affected by interference
• Spatial Expansion – the camera gently floats, tilts and zooms

An example is show below:

This approach gives a much more cinematic gritty realism to your videos, but it requires more effort to produce.

CCTV cameras

I've been using a fixed CCTV camera concept for "action replay" videos in my cinematics recently.

To achieve this I've used the following post-processing tricks:

• De-saturation – makes the colours look faded
• Increased brightness – adds to the "bleaching" effect
• Fixed camera position – CCTV cameras are usually stationary and don't move

If you've ever seen those "crime fighting" type documentaries on TV, you'll notice how CCTV cameras always seem to be terrible quality. The tricks above make your video clips look lower quality.

You can see an example of CCTV effects in the "Observation drones" video clip above.

This approach is relatively easy to achieve, so long as you're video publishing software can apply the required post-processing effects.