First tests for the hand camera - Josh Brown

For our short film, we had an idea that our main character, could use his hands as a camera. He could simply hold up his hands in a square shape, and just take a photo of the object he is admiring. In order for the picture to stay in the square shape made by his hands, we had to do some tests. Below are our first tests using a green screen, trying to get the image to stay inside the hands.

 This was our very first test. We stuck a small square of green card to the back of Josh's hands and moved them around the frame and tracked them with the camera. We then imported this movie file into Final Cut Pro to see what the clip would look like if the image behind the hands would move with the hands on the green screen.

This was our first attempt at trying to move the image with Josh's hands. As you can see from the clip, the image moves around inside the hands, this looks very unprofessional. Our media technician said if we used Adobe After Effects, we could anchor the image to my hands, meaning we would not have to use the green screen which is much easier because even during our very first test we found it hard. 

As you can see in this clip we did not use the green screen as a base for the image in the hands. After Effects allowed us to simply anchor the image to the hands. We noticed a significant improvement in image movement. This looks far more impressive.

Josh Brown