Week 3: Lab 3 – So what exactly is Matchmoving?

1. What is matchmoving, how does it work, and why is it important? How is matchmoving different from the 2D tracking you did in After Effects? Show some interesting examples of matchmoving in action form movies or online videos.

So what exactly is Matchmoving?

"In cinematography, match moving is a cinematic technique that allows the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot." - Wikipedia

In my matchmoving lesson, I inserted 3D human and zombie animated objects into a video footage. The lesson teaches us how to position the human and the zombie in such a way to show that the zombie is chasing after the human. It also teaches me how to orientate and scale both of the objects so that the human is bigger than the zombie and that both objects are facing correctly the way it suppose to be.

Matchmoving the human and zombie in the footage (objects located at the left side)

How does it work?

Matchmoving tracks the movement of a camera of a footage so that a identical movement can be reproduced. When there are new animated objects composited back into the original footage, they will appear as they are moving with the movement of the camera. In Wikipedia, they said "they will appear in perfectly-matched perspective and therefore appear seamless" instead.

Why is it important?

It is important because matchmoving helps to track the camera movements and allows us to add in 3D animated effects in moving footages. It is found all around us, be it in advertisements, television or movies. Sometimes, we do not know it is there but it provides us with a lot of entertainment and interesting information. For me personally, i think without matchmoving, there won't be interesting and action-packed movies for us to watch.

How is matchmoving different from the 2D tracking you did in After Effects?

The 2D tracking exercise I did is just tracking of the camera movement. Matchmoving requires 3D animated effects or objects in the camera-tracked footage, and make further adjustments like orientation or scaling of the 3D objects to make it move with the camera movement.

Show some interesting examples of matchmoving in action form movies or online videos.

1. 'Bait' Movie
Although this is in Italian language, but this is an English movie called 'Bait', where the sharks in the movie are actually in 3D form and animated into the movie.