Cheap Cockpit Set?

Does someone have any idea how I can create a good, cheap (millenium Falcon Size) cockpit set? Of course I need a blue/greenscreen hole, for the Window, and then the walls... It should have a size like 3x5 meters... so, what is the cheapest, but real looking material?! Wood? 2 inches big papers? or what?

 

Why not try the CG model of the cockpit. It looks very realistic.(if you have a cgi program of course)

 

Why not just bluescreen the actors and CGI the cockpit?

 

That looks bad. The thing is, that the cockpit will be seen very often... So the actors really have to live in it. maybe I should be more exact about it´s design... and sth. else. I´m in the pre-pre-production of an eventual movie.. But before I even think of starting to make it, I have to be sure how, and how much it costs

 

funny how a cockpit is being sold, and it on the first page too!

LINKAROONIES!

 

My cockpit is as big as an observation room... You know, as big as a German garage. 2,5 x 3,5 x 6 meters, well it should fit in there

EDIT: It shall be as big as a Star Trek Shuttle Cockpit

 

oh. well, in that case, that cockpit is way too small.

Well, you could start off using sheet-metal for the outer shape.

 

I forgot to say, I only need an inside cockpit

 

I suggest you will need the following:

Wood
Sheet metal
Screws and nails
Paint
Little lighted buttons, widgets, screens, etc.
Lots of imagination
Help from someone with a little construction experience.

I don't think there is a way that this forum could help you with most of that.

Well, that's how I would handle it anyway. Everything about filmmaking is solving one problem at a time. Set construction is just another problem that needs to be solved.

 

Christmas lights.
Lots of little, blinking Christmas lights.


Have fun.

 

I think you will need to spend a three figure sum if you want it looking good. The extra expense is worth it because visuals are very important, but equally important is how you decide to light it. If you light it well you maybe able to save some money while still have it looking good. I recommend doing some reading on ligthing to see what tricks you can pull

 

And remember, Foamcore is our friend, not our mortal enemy! I've seen ship exteriors made out of foamcore and plexiglass, no reason why an interior can't have some of the same.

What you need to do, is draw out the blue prints. find out the dimensions you'll need for everything, and buy only the material you need. Then build. What you're looking at, if it's the size of the Trek shuttle cockpit, isn't going to be much cheaper than about $700, and that's if you're crafty.

But let's look at another instance. You already have chairs you can use, and maybe a neighbor kid is tearing down their old tree house (I've never been in one you know!), or a construction project has just been finished and their throwing out allot of wood. And just for fun, let's say there's a junk yard near by that happens to sell parts really cheap and so you geet your metal pieces and tube-ish crud there. You haven't spent much money just there.

But, you still need nails, and glue (I prefer contact cement when I'm building something, but others prefer weaker stuff that doesn't affect your brain), and PVC pipe (possible, probably), etc., etc. etc. Let's just say Durbn has a good list there.

There's little chance of making this look professional and getting it done for under a few hundred bucks. However:

I a guy that was in a group that was filming something for a competition or convention or something, and it was just a basic sci-fi, and they re-used parts of their kids pastors old trek-ish stage and re-arranged parts to make their cockpit. They filmed in a church lobby, rearranged to make a transporter room, and tore down. For nothing more than the cost of food and transportation.

The reason I bring this up is because it might not be that hard to find something that looks spacy and implement it into your cockpit seemlessly. Once on film, and this thing took place mostly in the cockpit, you couldn't tell that the cockpit was eight spacey columns put side by side with a control panel in the front. It was incredible to watch it come together.

Anyway, just some ideas.

Best of luck in any case.

-Matt

 

If it looks bad, then you're guilty of poorly keying it. If you look at a great example - PINK FIVE - you can see just how realistic a green screen and CGI background can look. Even in our film, ROGUE, we had green screened/CGId the cockpit of the TIE fighters and it looked pretty darn good, in my opinion.

So, I for one, reject the notion that a CGI cockpit looks bad - it only looks bad if you do a bad job keying it. It just depends on how it's used and if you would rather spend the money to create a "live" cockpit for the actors to manipulate.

That looks bad. The thing is, that the cockpit will be seen very often... So the actors really have to live in it.

 

That's right, Pink Five WAS keyed! All right, chroma is the way to go!

-Matt

 

"funny how a cockpit is being sold, and it on the first page too!

LINKAROONIES! "


lol...he said 'cheap'.

 

FOAMULAR, from your local Menard's or other Hardware store is a really good, cheap material to use. We've been building our sets with it. It's light, easy to paint, and you can easily push christmas tree lights through it.

[image=http://linnproductions.com/games/cockpit.jpg]

 

The thing about a live set versus a CG is miles apart. The trick for a CG cockpit is not the keying but the model, mapping and lighting for that CG set. Either way it still doesn't compare to a live set, as audience members are not stupid, and most CG cockpits screem CG.. You mention "Pink Five" which is a like totally awesomely funny film.. love that one.. better than troops.. but the one think you need to know is that the cockpit of "Pink Five" is actually the cockpit taken from the star wars films (it was lukes cockpit) the the pink five team simply comped in "stacey" over where luke would sit. It's a real set.. just not one they made but one lucas and his biys came up with. Incredible comp job for the pink five team.
As for a real set.. you can make one on a budget.. go to your local junk yark, and start asking all friends and strangers for junk, and any kind of electronic junk. Go to yard sales and get junk.
Now custruct your cockpit with cheap materials such as 2x4 framing and hardboard. paint and lights do the trick, and use your collected junk to populate the set. Be creative and you can make it work.
Understand on film you can get away with alot. Keep your cockpit lighting low with colored filters, and back lighting when shooting.

Here are a few pics from the cockpit we made. Cost more than really needed but, I wanted to use specific materials that were more expensive. The whole thing could have been made cheaper.. but think around a cost of $600-800 you can do even better if your resourceful

[image=http://panicstruckproductions.com/images/cockpit_still_11.jpg]

Cockpit Construction Pics


Final Cockpit Shots

 

Great work, man! Now if you could only download the plans!

 

Yeah, Shane's set is pretty amazing. Revelations will be amazing.

I can't imagine how you could make CG look realistic unless it's static. But if you're going to moving around and interacting with buttons and controls, and getting several different angles, you should try to build a set. And like Shane said, play with the lighting. A cockpit set doesn't need to be very bright, and you can hide a lot of impefections.

 

nothin like a good ol' BRYCE cockpit

[image=http://ex3online.net/mystory/images/stills/4.jpg]

Well, you did ask for cheap... heheh lol.

*runs, ducks, and hides from the incoming tomatoes*

YIKES!

 

I'm mixed about whether CG cockpits look good myself. I'm sure there are some good ones but there can be bad ones too. And the human eye is very difficult to fool which makes CG very easy to spot.

One alternative is to make a miniture model cockpit, then take photographs of it and use it as a matte. Making a small model is much cheaper then making a full scale one, and if you take time and effort you can make it look as good as a proper set. Plus it will have a lot more character then a CG creation IMO. Of cause the live action will have to be a green/blue screen jobby which will take away the interaction side of things. But this is a more cost-effective method.

 

I will have some cockpits in my film. And as far is it will be possible, I WON'T TOUCH CGI! If someone is a good CGI artist, good for him, he has a great cockpit, but in my case, I'll rather spent a month building a real one. My opinion anyway .

-The/Guy/That/Thinks/CGI/Cockpits/Can/Lick/His/Something/On/The/Behind/and,/sorry/mods/no/offence/pure/fun.

 

The main question between real and CG is what will be more convenient.

I personally would prefer to film as much as I can on real locations, and when bluescreening have as much as possible REALLY there.

The reason being that each piece of actual material is one less thing you have to light, track, render, and composite to the scene.

I'd rather spend a month building a cockpit set and knowing that whatever I film only has to have the stars added, and spend relatively little time filming in the real location, than days filming against bluescreen trynig to get actors to look in the right direction and touch the right point in thin air, and many more months trying to implement the CG cockpit set photorealistically.

If you want true photorealism, take a real photo.

M. Scott

 

@Panicstruckpro, Your set is amazing! A little more cargo space in the back, that would be my thoughts... Sincierly I saw a lot of PC junk in a street in my village.. But sadly I forgot to go out at night to colect some pieces... well, I already have a keyboard which I used for my films... So now I´ll collcet two or three more of them, then spray them black, this will work... Also this great trick with the christmas lights... So by Christmas I´ll collect some of them in the shops! Thank you guys

 

You take a cockpit like the Dr.Jones E-Wing one, and you've got something worth keying there. If you're a good modelling, texturing and lighting artist, it's convenient and cheap. If not...real is the way to go. I know a guy who's building a miniature cockpit for keying. Miniatures suprisingly look very convincing when they're done right. I'll see if he'll share some WIP pics of it. It's for a fan-film-ish/parody thing.

-Matt