Audierne opened this issue on Dec 15, 2009 · 9 posts
SentinelJeff posted Tue, 05 January 2010 at 8:21 PM
Point at should be used judiciously. I've never used point at on a body part. I've only used it with lights and cameras. With camera less than lights. that's because having the camera absolutely point at a human object will cause the camera to wobble and shake as the human moves, since we don't move in straight lines, and since as we walk. we bounce up and down.
I would probably always prefer to select the head and then scroll all the way to the bottom and use the eyes left right and up down and key frames to control the eyes.
In a movie, I might have eyes track a plane flying by, but not a person. We don't track people or really even planes that way. Our eyes dart around, even following something smooth like a plane landing. We'll follow it so much and then dart to center it. Our eyes use very reactive muscles like in grasshopper legs. It's difficult for them not to dart. So smooth or wobbly smooth eye movement will seem drunk. I would also line up most blinking with eyeball movement since I can't seem to turn my own head and eyes much without blinking.
One time I thought I had the whole point at thing beat by having the camera point at an offset of the hips, but as the model walked past the camera, the camera wobbled more and more, both up and down and tilting left and right. It made it seem like she made the ground shake more as she got near. Even when she was far away, doing her modeling moves, the camera followed her too much. She doesn't belong always in the center. that's amateurish. So I shot her approach with a different camera.