Cheap or no cost simple VFX needed for short film

[Jon O'Brien]

I've written a story, for a short film to be shot on 16mm, with sound. It's set in Scotland in 1850s.

The location is a coastal area, with rocky coastline, and a sort of small cottage close to the sea but a bit up a hill. It's supposed to be a fairly remote location.

I can film the coastal scenes nearby to me, and with the 'magic' of moviemaking make it look like the little wooden cottage is close to the coast even though the cottage I want to film those scenes at is miles away from the beach. Also, the cottage is in a small town, so it definitely doesn't look like a remote Scottish location in the 19th century to the left and right of the cottage.

How can I cheaply do a simple effects shot of the cottage, on a grassy hill above the rocky coast? I will be filming this on 16mm so definition doesn't have to be pristine if you know what I mean.

I also don't mind if the effects shot of the cottage looks a little bit fake. As long as the shot carries the story forward and doesn't look ridiculous I will be happy.

I thought of photographing the cottage, or even painting it by hand, and glueing an image of the cottage onto a large photograph of suitable terrain. Then just filming that. Only a brief establishing shot is needed. I even wondered if somehow I could use AI to make a shot for me, if I input an image of the cottage and ask it to rerender the house on a suitable background,

If I used AI in this way, how best would I cut this shot into my short film? I guess if I could get the file into Davinci I could 'grain it up' and make it look as much as possible like film. Any ideas or advice?

[Jon O'Brien]

A matte painting would be very difficult to achieve, but I did think of that. Too much urban build up in the coastal area I want to film at.

[Aapo Lettinen]

10 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I've written a story, for a short film to be shot on 16mm, with sound. It's set in Scotland in 1850s.

The location is a coastal area, with rocky coastline, and a sort of small cottage close to the sea but a bit up a hill. It's supposed to be a fairly remote location.

I can film the coastal scenes nearby to me, and with the 'magic' of moviemaking make it look like the little wooden cottage is close to the coast even though the cottage I want to film those scenes at is miles away from the beach. Also, the cottage is in a small town, so it definitely doesn't look like a remote Scottish location in the 19th century to the left and right of the cottage.

How can I cheaply do a simple effects shot of the cottage, on a grassy hill above the rocky coast? I will be filming this on 16mm so definition doesn't have to be pristine if you know what I mean.

I also don't mind if the effects shot of the cottage looks a little bit fake. As long as the shot carries the story forward and doesn't look ridiculous I will be happy.

I thought of photographing the cottage, or even painting it by hand, and glueing an image of the cottage onto a large photograph of suitable terrain. Then just filming that. Only a brief establishing shot is needed. I even wondered if somehow I could use AI to make a shot for me, if I input an image of the cottage and ask it to rerender the house on a suitable background,

If I used AI in this way, how best would I cut this shot into my short film? I guess if I could get the file into Davinci I could 'grain it up' and make it look as much as possible like film. Any ideas or advice?

It would be better to use digital camera than AI if those are the options. AI would be the absolutely last resort if nothing else works... but, well, everything always work out without AI so would just scrap the AI idea and do the effect for real. And there there is no single AI shot ruining the entire film. Practical is always better than AI and basic vfx is always better than AI even if it is not 100% perfect.

Good options would be:

- miniature of the cottage made for real, then forced perpective "real world compositing" placing the camera and miniature cleverly in front of the suitable real background.  Pros: Cute end result even if tiny bit fake looking, lighting matches automatically on foreground and background, fun to work with miniatures and building them, likely affordable enough, you can use the normal film camera for shooting,  Cons: time consuming to make the miniature though you can use 3d printing to ease up the process a little, wind and rough terrain can make shooting difficult.

- shooting vfx plate of the cottage on digital camera (to make masking/rotoscoping as easy as possible), then shooting the background separately on shore location on either digital or film and compositing in post.  Pros: Affordable and fast to shoot, you can test and have second tries, you can fine tune the end result in post. Cons: needs compositing experience, grain levels need to be matched manually in post preferably by shooting mid grey grain plate and compositing that on top of the digital material, you need to match lighting of the cottage to the background plate, time consuming to mask out / roto the background of the cottage out of the plate,  the edges can look fake depending on the composite skills though adding film grain masks the small imperfections really well.

- shooting a miniature in front of shore location on film, then adding and matching very realistic textures and details to select spots like wood/brick etc textures, windows, front lawn, trees, etc. in post from digital plates. Adding film grain from real film grain plate to digital material if possible.  Pros: matching lighting on miniature, really realistic end result, cool film look, you can shoot with real film camera, much more realistic than miniature alone.  Cons:  really tricky and time consuming compositing, more work to shoot the plates and matching them, needs more time shooting overall, small imperfections can look like faults instead of adorable.

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I would first try the miniature on shore location and without much post tricks, just making something half realistic and half adorable and if it looks too mediocre then trying to fine tune it in post by additing composited details to sell it better.

[Aapo Lettinen]

if the shore background needs to be heavily manipulated in post to hide buildings etc structures and those cannot be hidden behind the miniature, I would probably shoot the shore plate separately on digital to make compositing easier and shooting miniature in front of greenscreen but outside to light it with natural light and being able to turn the miniature freely to match light angles and camera angles if not able to shoot it at the same time with the background plate. Then adding film grain over the final image when finished.

If background does not need much manipulating it can be on film but you can still shoot the miniature separately in front of greenscreen on digital to allow making it separately and having free shooting schedule and easy compositing. This would allow real film look on background and lots of control on how the miniature would look and would save on costs if needing to reshoot the miniature plates afterwards or add details to them

[Phil Rhodes]

I have to say my immediate reaction was to have AI do a matte painting for you. Naturally you can tweak and clean it up a lot, patch together various versions and generally mess with it until it's what you're after, but it's hard to beat the price.

Then, comp as normal.

[Jon O'Brien]

Thank you Aapo and Phil, very helpful advice. I forgot to say, btw, that it's a static shot.

I did build a model once, for a short Super 8 film, but man it looked fake. I'm not sure what I would attempt to build a small model cottage from -- does anyone have any ideas? Icey pole sticks (or whatever they call them overseas), and then paint it? I've not done this sort of thing for years but I don't rule it out.

Phil, forgive my lack of experience with matte paintings, but how physically is the matte painting filmed? You literally just set it up in front of the camera and film it? Or do you mean do it digitally? If digitally, E.g. in Davinci or a similar program, how do you do it? Here is a video I found. Did you mean something like this? 

Also, does anyone know what a simple 6 second shot like this, of a small cottage on a wind-swept remote Scottish coastline, for a 'semi-pro' level short film on 16mm, would cost if you asked a vfx person to supply it for you?

[Jon O'Brien]

Also, although I don't rule out using a bit AI here and there in the future, I do make a bit of a stand against it in filmmaking, and so i'd prefer to not use it if I can get out of it. But for an effects shot I don't mind shooting on digital, just the same as I don't mind recording sound on digital, and using digital post in general. But 95% of the project is definitely to be shot on 16mm film so somehow I would have to match up the look of the imagery to blend with film. I'm sure it could be done. Ideally I'd just glue a picture of the cottage onto a large photograph of suitable coastline. You would get the natural swirl of grain but the image itself wouldn't have a single blade of grass or shrubs moving in it.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally, they used to do matte painting on location or on the studio set, later in post production. However, this was a highly skilled job, Albert Whitlock specialised in this work  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Whitlock .

If interested there is a book "The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography" by Raymond Fielding, you can find it on Amazon, however, it's expensive.