SPECIAL EFFECTS ON THE CHEAP

Here’s a confession. I love special effects. I think I really fell in love with effects when I was a kid and received the book Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects by Thomas G. Smith. You all know the one: that big, black, heavy book with beautiful full color glossy pictures. In college I took a course on effects—I watchedBlade Runner, Tron, Star Wars and saw these films in a whole new light. Then, I got a chance to work with Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) on the film The Mask.

Back then, making an effects laden film was expensive (and still can be), but a lot of things have happened to help democratize the process. Enter Apple and the Macintosh computer. Their early Mac, the IIci enabled ILM to do digital mattes inexpensively for the first time on the film Die Hard 2. And things have trickled down from the high end ever since.

I like to be at the bleeding edge of technology, so even making a short film; I try to add some effects, if the story calls for it, (see my film A Family X-mas as an example). I don’t throw them in frivolously like many a Hollywood producer and director does in most films today—effects for effects sake. Remember the cardinal rule of filmmaking. It’s the story, and everything has to propel that story forward, not just propel things through the air because it looks cool.

Okay, back to SFX on the cheap. The other big innovation in low budget effects came about because of a program, originally put out by CoSa and eventually bought my Adobe, called After Effects. After Effects, uses a time base metaphor, (you key frame and animate or manipulate the various elements over time), allowing you to manipulate moving images, 3D elements, stills, graphics and EPS files, even a virtual camera and lights to create effects. You can also output as SGI files, TIFFS, QuickTime, and many other formats (DV resolution up to film rez). And with the built in 2D motion tracker (or 2d3’s Boujou program) you don’t have to use very costly motion control rigs if you plan your shots correctly.

Then there are the various plug-ins you can add to After Effects that take some of the drudgery away and allow you to concentrate on the art. I won’t get into specific plug-ins but a hop over to The Plugin Site to give you an idea of what’s out there.

So where is all this going? With the DV revolution, anyone with a camera became a filmmaker. And these tools keep getting better. When DV was first introduced with its 4:1:1 color space, it was very hard to pull a key using green screen or blue screen, but this has changed with DV Matte Pro—especially designed for pulling keys with DV footage. And now we have HD and HDV, and the prices keep dropping, as the resolution gets higher.

In the 3D world this is also becoming true as the price of the tools keep getting cheaper. Once costing upwards of $7000.00 or more, these tools can now be had for a fraction of that: Newtek’s LightWave, or Autodesk’s Maya to name two.

Okay, so I’ve laid the groundwork for what’s out there and why things are cheaper. It is the do it yourself mentality. But how do you do it yourself? The attention to the details is what is important. I don’t always mean what looks the most realistic, but what makes a shot look real?

What if I wanted to say… put Reindeer on a rooftop. Sure I could get real deer and a deer wrangler, but wouldn’t it be easier to use 3D reindeer and a compositing program? So how do you sell a shot like that? The trick is realism. Make the deer move realistically and people won’t notice if they aren’t the most detailed models. The idea is to fool them into believing they are reel I mean real. What if you have two left thumbs when it comes to 3D? Well, a quick search on the web and you can find royalty free 3D models ranging in a variety of prices and quality.

One caveat of SFX is everything must be planned well in advanced. It is not something you just say, “I’ll wing it.” If you are going to do motion tracking, you have to plan what the camera move will be or how you want to photograph the image. Something’s are better done in camera than in post—planning and preparation is paramount. On the day you’re shooting, make sure you get exact measurements of everything, from room dimensions, to camera distance from subject and height from ground. The inclination in degrees of the camera, the lens you are using as well as f-stop. Make a lighting diagram of the lighting set up is you can recreate it in your 3D program if you are adding 3D elements.

When it comes to blue/green screen work, always make a diagram of your set up (so if something goes wrong it’ll be easier to go back and reshoot). Also remember that spill can be the kiss of death when pulling a key. Spill is when light reflecting off the blue / green screen spills on to the subject being photographed and contaminates the subject with the screen’s color. Always make sure there is adequate distance between the subject and the screen. And remember the screen is never big enough. Another trick with blue screen is to put yellow gel on the backlight to help cancel or negate any spill. Yellow is a complimentary color to blue.

With blue/green screen the screen must also be very evenly lit. There shouldn’t be any variations in the lighting so make sure to measure the screen with a light meter. If there are shadows on the screen this equates to different densities of the screen color and makes for a harder key to pull.

For miniatures, try a red screen lit with black light. When you have human’s there is a pink hue to skin color, which negates the use of a red screen. But if there is no red in the model, the red screen works great. And it doesn’t matter if the blacklight spills on the subject, the camera won’t pick it up!

Which brings us to the most obvious question. When do you use blue vs. green screen? Generally, the rule of thumb is if you are photographing a subject that has blue, whether because of make-up or costume, use green screen and vice versa for green. If the subject has green on, use blue screen. Here’s the headache inducer; there are variations of each color—digital blue and green, chroma blue and green, etc. So be prepared to do some testing and some research before you shoot.

Working with SFX also comes down to proper planning and common sense. Even if you don’t storyboard a movie, you should story board the effects shots so everyone is on the same page—from the director of photography to the visual effects supervisor (if there is one). On bigger productions they go so far as to previsualize the shot using 3D programs. Sometimes this can be quite elaborate and almost finished shot not far removed from the final film. Of course most of us don’t have the budget to do this, unless you are pretty crafty in a 3D program. One trick is to A) storyboard or B) take a small video camera and try to make a makeshift model of the set and film the SFX—a poor man’s previz.

I’ve only really just scraped the surface of doing effects work on the cheap. Low cost equipment and software are the new great equalizer. But using the tools and using them well will set your work apart from others. If you have questions or comments, write in the The Filmlot and I’d be more than happy to address them in future articles.