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Behind the Scenes of Big Feet, Little Planet
There has been some interest in how the video Big Feet, Little Planet was made. Here is a breakdown of the workflow.
Big Feet, Little Planet from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.
I was trying to visualize the idea of people stepping onto a scale and finding out the weight of their carbon footprint, so I spent a couple of hours designing a sheet of glass that I could film from beneath which would safely support a full grown human standing on top.
There were a couple of problems with this approach. It required more money to build a safe and sturdy structure than I was willing to spend. And it would result in a shot looking straight up into someone’s crotch.
Thankfully my colleague Mike had the genius idea of turning the equation on its side. “Why not have people lay down on the floor and put their feet up against a window?” he suggested. This solved the safety issue and the crotch issue, so I grabbed an old storm window from my basement and we were off.
We filmed in three environments: an abstract/hi-tech space, an office space, and a home/outdoor space. The first two feet were mens’ feet, the final one was a woman’s. I’m not sure if you can tell a person’s sex just by looking at their feet, but you can definitely tell how hairy a person’s legs are and I wanted at least one nice smooth leg.
All three shots were filmed on location, so we set up the storm window, set up the lights or the bounce cards and got a couple takes. It was surprisingly difficult for the models to hit their mark on the glass quickly and accurately. They could hit the mark if they went slowly, but it was often too slow to work for the shot. However once their foot was already on the glass they could pull it down out of frame no problem. So I ended up reversing the footage on two of the shots. In the finished piece it looks like they’re putting their foot up, in real life they are taking it down.
With the shots in place I opened up Blender, a fantastic and free animation suite and modeled the effects.
If you are curious to look deeper into the process, here are the production files.
If you’ve never used Blender feel free to download it. You’ll need it in order to explore the files above.
Once you’ve got Blender installed, just double click on a file to open it. Then tap your left or right arrow keys to step through the animation frame by frame.
-Daniel
Nathan said,
August 10, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
Great video and thanks so much for the tutorial.
The film is very imaginative and witty.
And although it’s simple it’s full of little tricks that made me think ‘I wonder how that was done’.
I’m looking forward to examining the blends.
Daniel said,
August 10, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
I’m glad you like it. I hope you find the blend files useful.
Lucas said,
August 11, 2009 @ 11:19 am
I really liked your video, great work
. Thanks for publishing blend files from this production 
.
aws357 said,
August 11, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Thanks for the links. I’m currently out of home so I won’t be able to check the .blend before next week
(dang dang)
Byron Kindig said,
August 11, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
Daniel,
Thanks for your work and thanks for posting the “How it was made.”
Great job. Very imaginative and skilled.
theJikz said,
August 11, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
Very cool, sort of inspiring in a way. What simplicity and quick renders! Gives many ideas for other easy FX for video compositing. THANK YOU for sharing your knowledge with the files. Open source at its best!
Mufeed Al-Hashim said,
August 12, 2009 @ 4:15 am
I loved it.
Thanks for new & impressive ideas that you provides us with.
;->
Shashu said,
August 12, 2009 @ 5:46 am
I liked the idea of achieving simplicity out of chaos and complexity and the reverse foot trick was neat.
Thanks for sharing
Shashwat
btw, i saw ‘pitch’ and was amazed by your minimal aesthatics. It taught me new ways to visualize and achive things.
thanks
manuel said,
August 12, 2009 @ 10:34 am
hello GREAT!!! it’s effect vector video!!!
thank for your files blend so i will study it as tutorials!!
but i have 1 ask you..
how is make “composite” blender or other software:
merge A video(blender-rendered) and B video (camrecorder)? kdenlive or cinerella? thanks you
Daniel said,
August 13, 2009 @ 7:23 am
Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments. I’m so glad that the blend files were useful.
@manuel I used Final Cut to composite the graphics on top of the video. Blender’s sequence editor would have done the compositing beautifully. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Sequencer
I wasn’t comfortable enough with the sequencer to use it on this project, but I’m learning it now and intend to use it on the next project.
matpen said,
August 14, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Thank you for sharing! Great job, it shows how blender can achieve professional results! And the idea is fantastic!
One thing I can not reverse-engineer: the font object “bar1OB” in foot2.blend (the number of the rising bar) changes its text over time, but there is no ipo curve linked to it, nor any other artifact I could find..how did you do that?
Thank you!
daniel said,
August 20, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
@matpen The text changes because of a short little script. Open the Text Editor in Blender and you should find the script.
-daniel
Matt said,
September 5, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
Nice. I really like that spot. The only problem I see is that the .blend file links seem to have gone bad.