need help building a "cave"

need help building a "cave"-Cinematography and lighting


 





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Author Topic:   need help building a "cave"
Kavan2
posted 02-24-2001 08:37 PM              
OK, part of a movie we're shooting takes place underground and we need to construct a cave. The walls need to be 40' long and about 15' high. We want the walls of the cave to appear to be a blue dirt-like substance. What's the best way of going about this? Building a frame of plywood and 2x4's and then modeling the cave surface with chicken wire and paper maché? What's good to use for a dirt/rock like surface? I also want it to glisten, so would gluing glass beads on parts of the wall help achieve this effect? If you guys know of a better way to build these pretty big walls lightly so they can be moved around PLEASE let me know. We're thinking of building them in smaller sections and then putting them together when we get to the stage, making it easier to transport them. Thanks for any and all help.

-Kavan

crazy lou
posted 02-24-2001 09:01 PM              
and people call me crazy wow, sounds cool.

frame work 2x4s check, chicken wire check, paper mache check, sectional probably a check there too.

blue dirtlike substance...vermiculite painted or died blue then mixed with something, perhaps the glue you're using for the paper mache and slaped onto the walls might work. the styrafoam insulation board could probably be used for it too, just spray it with an acrylic paint or something that wont eat away at it. reflective...glass beads mixed in with the paint would probably work, but it'd give more of a "scotchlite" like reflection like a street sign. some art stores sell them.

what type of floor is thing going to have? vermiculite (in case you dont know what it is, is used to "thin" potting soil down" its basically just small styrafoam beads) is pretty cool and might make a nice looking sandy floor.

there was a post in the computer forum about making CG walls for a hallway and i think there were some other alternative posted in there that might be good to look into for this as well


later
Tom

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Big Al
posted 02-24-2001 11:46 PM              
If you can get a copy of it, check out a low budget opus called "Alien Species". the producer/director and his son made the most amazing cave set in less than a week. The cave was built on his hilly property in Oakhurst, CA, which had a number of large rocky outcroppings. Peter built 2x4 framing off of these outcroppings, and covered the inside of the framing with crumpled tarpaper. That was spatter-painted to resemble the granite rocks. Under the dim lighting of the "cave", the results were extraordinary.

capt. video
posted 02-25-2001 04:30 AM              
If I were you I would take a tip from "Gladiator" It would have been next to impossible to build the collosium as an actual stucture, so what they did was build the first level and computer generate the rest including the people in the seats. I would build the "practical" sections on your "cave"( the part the actors need to interact with)and use cgi to build the rest. Cgi would allow you to make the cave as impressive as you want at very little cost and you could keep playing with it until it looked real, something that would be difficult and expensive to do with a actual set.As for the practical sections I would go with chicken wire/paper mache constuction light and easy to build and repair

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