Todd Vaziri, who has worked on some really awesome titles such as Mission Impossible III and Transformers (see more here), has some in depth and informative points to consider when setting up and creating visual effects camera work. Check it out at FXRant. If you ever wanted to know about real work application of the rule of thirds, Todd shows a great example from ‘A fish called Wanda’ and contrasts it to an effects shot he did on Mission Impossible III – the bridge attack scene.
Maybe the reason why it’s more pleasing to line up the eyes on the top third line is because our eyes are situated on the top third of our face, or it’s just a good place and predictable. ha ha ha.
Well either way the natural feel one gets from lining up and panning a physical camera is not easily simulated in a digital environment, it’s gotta be something about the chaotic nature of each person’s interpretation of a move, the intricacies in the panning and tilting mechanism of the camera package, or the random responsiveness of people’s reflexes.
So watching and studying the real camera moves as well as actually performing them would go a long way to achieving a realish feeling digital pan and/or tilt etc. That is to say that experience will out weight curve presets 99% of the time but will add effort and time to the task at hand.
