Motion Capture

I remember at the start of these holidays I said I'd try to do some motion capture to see if we could use it in a coursework piece, I carried out the test two weeks ago with the help of Matty. As expected there were some problems (but this is why we do tests, so that problems can be anticipated for later):

1. I had 4 live video sources (webcams), one of them was a Mac webcam and required a firewire port, which my computer doesn't have. Two others didn't have the driver software pre-installed. This left me with one remaining webcam.
   How can this be improved in future? Check all video sources work properly before going to film.
   

2. No calibration software. I was able to get up the motion capture software, this is no easy task as it's all quite crude and command-based. Camera calibration is done by a complicated maths suite, I think it's called MatLab, anyway we didn't have it so cameras were uncalibrated.
   How can this be improved in future? Find a way of calibrating cameras, possibly without downloading MatLab, I'm sure someone from the Maths department would help us out.

3. Natural light. We were doing this in the South Site drama studio and there are blinds on the windows, we wanted to close them but couldn't find the stick which is used to turn the special wheel which closes them.
   How can this be improved in future? Find that stick, or use the North Site drama studio.

Matty bought a green-screen kit last week, it cost him £140. I already have a blue screen, it's about 10 metres by 4 metres of blue cloth which I bought from the Glousceter Green market for £15. I've also still got a £25 work light somewhere in the tiny shed in my garden, it's not exactly a professional photographer's light like Matty has but it's pretty bright, and it does the job. DIY film-making is cheap.

Nonetheless, a high-quality green-screen kit might come in handy for the practical piece next year, if Matty lets us use it.