“Wouldn’t a bank of security cameras be neat?!”
Making a bank of security monitors can be a real adventure, especially if this is a major set-piece in a major or recurring scene.
A bank of security camera monitors
In this set from Flesh of my Flesh, the main location for all the action was a laboratory that contained a bank of video monitors, and throughout the entire movie, this set-piece was visible, and there was always some “background” motion on it, and several times during the movie, characters observe specific actions on the monitors.
But how could this be done easily?
The first thought we had was to set up the bank of monitors and simply feed a bright and unusual color to it, such as green, and then use the greenscreened monitors to later add video of our choosing. The trouble here is that the monitors were so ubiquitous that adding and motion-tracking all that video would be a huge pain.
Instead, we opted for the low-tech solution.
First, we made a grid on paper of all scenes that took place in this lab. Off the top of my head, that was maybe twenty. Then the other axis of the grid was each security camera (in this case, there were twelve). So, there were 240 video feeds that had to be created and managed.
This was not as scary as it sounds, because by-and-large, the footage running on the monitors is in the background, so it can be an empty corridor, or a random person walking down a hall. And each empty corridor could be mirror-reversed, thus making two empty corridors (as long as we didn’t show them both in the same scene it was fine — no one’ll notice).
To collect the footage, we grabbed a little Handicam that had “super nightshot” mode. That little camera had its own special tape. Whenever we had a few minutes, we hopped up on a ladder, shoved that Handicam in a corner, and shot a minute or two of still corridor. Sometimes, we had a zombie or two shambling through.
As we progressed through our various shoots, this Handicam collected well over 100 different video “streams” to feed cameras.
As an additional trick, we bought a few fake video cameras (more popular than you might think!) and whenever we shot a scene, we tried to make sure there was a fake security camera somewhere in the room, usually up in a corner somewhere. After all, if this monitor bank covers so much ground, it stands to reason that there should be cameras all over the place (our DP reminded us of this).
In some cases, we had a combination scene: characters would be doing something, the camera would pan slowly up to reveal the security camera watching them, and then cut to the laboratory, with the video feed on the monitor. In these cases, we shot the scene normally, and did the pan up to the fake video camera. Then, we swapped out the fake video camera with the Handicam, and reshot the scene, filming it from the vantage of the security camera (which was, of course, locked down, as are most video cameras in the real world).
So…
Eventually, we get to the laboratory stuff, and we need to make sense of all this footage.
I went through all of it, digitized it, and sorted through it, finding the “hero” shots, and making sure they didn’t get lost. For each block in the grid above (for each of the 240 video feeds), I made a video loop. For the generic “hall shots,” that was pretty easy to do, because if nothing’s moving in the hall, then the video feed could be looped with lots of small pieces. Each feed was about twenty minutes long, so there was a lot of looping. The important thing was to have the video do its own looping, instead of making a tiny piece of video and expecting a DVD player to do the looping.
For “hero shots”, where there was supposed to be specific action, I guessed the best I could on where the special action should appear in the loop (usually about five minutes in), and I padded as much after the hero shot as I could to try and make a twenty minute stream.
Eventually, I had 240 twenty-minute video feeds. Some were only snow for a while (halfway through the movie, the video bank is repaired and all monitors work properly).
For each monitor, I made a DVD (and in some cases, had to make multiple DVDs). That DVD had a menu that read “Scene 4,” “Scene 6,” “Scene 12,” and so forth. Each scene in the laboratory was a menu selection on each DVD. Each DVD was clearly labeled “A,” “B,” “C,” and so forth, to “L”, to designate which monitor it fed.
Over time, we collected twelve DVD players and twelve monitors or small TVs. Fortunately, the scene called for something that was a bit jury-rigged, so it was okay that the monitors were a bit mismatched. The monitors were mounted on a big shelf, and all the video feeds were wired behind the shelf to a hidden room where twelve DVD players sat. A Hardy Soul (Terry, as I recall) babysat all the DVD players.
As each scene would start, the AD (Leopoldo) would “remote pilot” Terry through the various settings for the monitors, because she couldn’t see what was on the screens as she operated twelve different remotes behind the wall. Each remote was labeled “A” through “L” and each DVD player was labeled “A” through “L”. Leopoldo would tell her “Go to monitor A’s remote and hit menu. Now, down. Down. Down. Down. Okay, hit enter. Now go to monitor B’s remote.” They did this for every monitor for every scene. The task was complicated somewhat in that several of the DVD remote controls interfered with each other, so often a previously set monitor had to be jiggered back into shape.
One of the monitors (lower left) was tied to a live feed of the same set from a high corner angle. This was to sell the idea (for those who notice) that all of these video feeds really were live.
You would think this was a huge pain in the ass, and in a lot of very important ways, you would be right, but in even more important ways, it completely eliminated a huge amount of worry and post-production work. We never had to worry about whether or not the monitors were visible in the background, we could swing the camera all over the room, characters could go right up to the monitors and you could see the same image properly reflected in their glasses or their eyes, and the acting and interaction with the images was much more natural.
A lot of work in preproduction (and in little bits all during production prior to this set of scenes) resulted in a completely no-brainer approach when we were actually on set, with the only complication being occasional interference with DVD remotes, and about five or so minutes at the top of every scene preparing each video feed.
So…
If you want to have a bank of security monitors on your set, and you’ve got more time than money, this is the method I’d suggest you consider. It looks perfect and it’s a very real, practical effect that adds a lot of realism to a set. Of course, not having a big bank of security monitors on a major set-piece will save you the headaches of preproduction, too, but that (shrug) is a decision up to the Writer and the Director.