It's just an illusion

By 1984 my obsession with movies was in full throttle. Indy, Superman, Rocky, Bond, they'd all gotten good hold of my attention. When 85 hit and movies like Back To The Future and The Goonies came out, my obsession exploded. So when the hits kept coming in 86 I was headed over the edge, right over the edge into the passions of moviemaking, a movie titled FX would put me there.

The story of a special fx artist hired by the government to help fake an assasination. Of course the fake assasination turns out to be a real assasination, and our fx guy hero is framed for the murder. Now on the run from the law, he must use his special fx genius to defend himself and get back at the people who set him up.

How the hell was I not going to love this movie.



By 86 I had already read Tom Savini's Grande Illusion front to back and had every fx diagram memorized, I had watched every ILM documentary I could find, I had created my earliest form of blood squibs (using ketchup, tylenol capsules, and a sling shot. Yes, it hurt), and was already working with latex and make up appliances (my parents were quite confused when I'd ask them for money so I could buy liquid latex and spirit gum, when other kids were buying action figures.) I was at the very beginning of learning how movie FX worked. So of course this movie was right up my alley.

I was propelled back into those old nostalgic feelings when I was flipping channels only to find that FX the Movie was playing. I caught the tail end. It all came rushing back to me. Everthing. The first time I saw this movie. How excited I was. How much cooler it made me feel wanting to work on fx and make movies. The thrill of learning how an fx shot worked. And the fun of learning the hard way how one 10 second shot is usually accomplished through hours and even days of tedious work.

A valuable lesson I learned when I was a kid, something that would prepare me for my work now. Today in fact.

Currently working on some fx stuff for a project. Learning new tricks everyday, every minute, aplying them to the old techniques. It's kind of a fun time right now. Feels like 85, 86, 87, all over again. And in the end that's kind of what I'm working towards. Achieving those old nostalgic feelings I felt when I was kid. Trying to capture that old magic, put it in my own work, and hopefully share it with the world.

OK enough delay. This blog was partially just to get a break from the long and tedious work of keyframes and compositing. 6 hours of work for a 5 second shot. Just like old times.

Back to work.

Demon Face in Vegas

This guy did a nice little demon face effect using Vegas 6. Which totally intrigues me since I'm all about the monsters right now, and I own Vegas. I may have to try my own variation for the MC intro.

Wings

I'm going to attempt to build wings. Monster Wings. Here are some research vids for me to peruse over later.








AND two links to folks who've already endeavored in this project.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Articulated-Wing-Framework/
http://www.tokyopop.com/Robofish/tp_article/286954.html

Visual FX Test 2808

Gunfights are mandatory in Monster Cops. But good gunfights are a requirement. In all honesty you can't beat the real thing. And when I say real thing I actually mean blank firing guns. I've used them in the past and they are just amazing. I am fascinated by the use of prop nonfiring guns and then later compositing gun fire over the footage, but with blank guns you get the same realism you'd get with the real thing. The smoke, the blowback, the shell ejecting, and just that overall feel and sound.

However I do have to run tests to look at my options, because putting the gun effects in after the footage has been shot costs me nothing. Now I do have blank guns, but some of these scenes call for more than one gun firing within a shot. So here I am testing it out, gun flash composites, nightvision filter, I even threw in a neat little blast just for the heck of it. Let's see the 20 second test shall we.



So what do I think. I think it's rather neato to watch, but I still think it's not up to par for what I want. First of all I haven't put in the shells being ejected and for me that's a big minus. I like to see the actual action on the gun and the shells pop out with each shot. I think some of the flashes look fine, but too long on the shots and they look too produced. The gun sounds are fine, seeing as how I recorded them myself from real guns. I like the nightvision, should fit in fine with our other nightvision footage. The blast really sucks. Heck I'm looking for perfection here and I haven't found it. However some of this in small spurts cut in with the actual blank firing gun footage should do fine. Vince DeNiro I wish I could afford ya. Perhaps when we do the feature.

In other news I'm actually finished with casting for this episode, but if you were looking to be cast, not to worry, I've got so many great resources and people now that I've just got to do 2 or 3 more, so I'm actually still casting for two more Monster Cops shorts. But more on that later.

Video blog coming up on locations, fx, casting, rehearsals, and all of the behind the scenes goodness that is Monster Cops.

Our tripod was a napkin and a coaster.

A great article from Studio Daily about some of the VFX work on Cloverfield.

Cloverfield Carnage
How Double Negative Smashed Up Manhattan
By Bryant Frazer

And an interview with Matt Reeves from Shocktilyoudrop.com.

The way Cloverfield was shot is a good example of how I want Monster Cops to feel especially with the monster and battle scenes, minus the puking factor of course.

Motion Tracking Research

One thing I know I need to work on in doing much of the effects for Monster Cops is the Motion Tracking.

What is motion tracking?Motion tracking is also known as Match moving. Here's Wikipedia's Definition.

In cinematography, match moving is a special effects technology to allow the insertion of virtual objects into real footage with the correct position, scale, orientation and motion in relation to the photographed objects in the scene. The term is used loosely to refer to several different ways of extracting motion information from a motion picture, particularly camera movement. Match moving is related to rotoscoping and photogrammetry. It is sometimes referred to as motion tracking.

Some of the more popular programs being used for Motion Tracking are:
3DEqualizer
Voodoo Camera Tracker
Maya
RealViz MatchMover
Icarus (I hear it's discontinued, but still floating around out there)
After Effects

After Effects seems to be fairly popular, and is what I will be using the most for specific effects. Here are just a few videos from YouTube on the subject of Motion Tracking mainly with After Effects.

EDIT: Instead of posting every video, I've compiled them into one vodpod. Click on a thumbnail to view a vid. So much more convenient.


get your vodpod

I'll update more info as I come across it.