Matching Perspective of Miniature Shoot to Live Action Plate

Hey guys. I have a question. This weekend, I need to shoot some car miniatures in 1:18th scale for the background of a shot. I need the perspective to match one live action shot background, and I'm not sure how to "line up" the miniature shots to match that of the live plate. Any suggestions in this area?

 

Do you have the measurements of the live plate to scale down? It sound like you could eye it. Difficult to suggest without seeing the plate.

 

No, I'm afraid I don't have the measurements. Luckily, in almost every shot the background is tight and out of focus, and I can just shoot a profile of the miniature cars, and their perspective doesn't matter that much at all.

The establishing shot however, is a wide shot of a Washington DC street. Might have to just use a CG car on that shot and camera match it.

 

I guess my suggestion would be the opposite: build minis of several items in the footage (curbs, street-lights, other objects whose size you can estimate well) and then do an optical/visual camera-match, not a CG one.

 

That sounds more practical if you have the mesh and texture for the cars. It saves you a day of filming, and due to the backrounds focus blur should come out good.

 

Shoot your live action, view it full-frame through a monitor, tape some tracing paper over the monitor and lightly trace out your key perspective points and vanishing point(s) with a pencil. Then use that as your guidelines as you shoot/view your miniature stuff. Then later, eye the depth-of-field blur if there is any.

 

Brilliant.