Mattes instead of CGI for special effects

[Nathan Banning]

:)

 

 

Hi. I'm a filmmaker up in Seattle and I'm about to start on a sci-fi neo-noir thriller feature that I plagerized from a novel and I'm thinking about using models and mattes and various other oldskool analogue effects whatever. I'm a big fan of BladeRunner,Alien(s) and Logans' run - HA! just kidding. Serious though I've often thought some of that old black magic looked better than the cartoony CGI of today. I'm looking for any kind of persons,groups,websites that still do that thing kind of thing. Also I'm no-budget. Thanks.

Edited July 23, 2005 by Nathan Banning

[David Mullen ASC]

"No budget" and "large-scale miniature effects" are sort of contradictory, aren't they? In some ways, CGI is cheaper for someone with a desktop computer and some software.

 

I used to do model efx in Super-8 back in high school. I recommend digging up all the old Cinefex issues from the 1980's plus any basic book like "The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography" by Raymond Fielding.

 

My camera assistant / operator still does this stuff on his free time, shooting a stop-motion short film with rear-projected backgrounds in front of miniatures in his basement.

 

The key is that you have to be a really good model builder and matte artist to do this kind of work.

[Nathan Banning]

Not that I'm not going to use CGI - I am. But saparingly - like little salt and pepper. Just a highlight or tint here and there.

 

Also I need guns (full auto M16's and Mp5's) that I can fire in public that don't cause too much hysteria. I wouldn't want people to get all upset or call the cops, on the other had I'm not going to have insurance,police or permission so you get the point. Thanks!

 

Ps. Don't tell me it's illegal,dangerous or immoral 'cause I've heard it all before.

[David Mullen ASC]

Ps. Don't tell me it's illegal,dangerous or immoral 'cause I've heard it all before.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You should listen before someone gets seriously hurt.

[Bob Hayes]

Jon-Erik Hexum Dead 18 October 1984 killed by blank gun

Brandon Lee Dead 31 March, 1993 Killed by Blank Gun

 

It is a Felony to possess a fully Automatic weapon with out a class 3 FFL ?Federal Firearms License?.

 

Also I need guns (full auto M16's and Mp5's) that I can fire in public that don't cause too much hysteria.

This shouldn't be much of a problem unless you consider getting arrested by the FBI and doing a long prison term causing too much hysteria.

 

Ps. Don't tell me it's illegal,dangerous or immoral 'cause I've heard it all before.

And you are going to here it again here.

Edited July 23, 2005 by bob1dp

[Mike Lary]

Ps. Don't tell me it's illegal,dangerous or immoral 'cause I've heard it all before.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's beyond dangerous; it's incredibly stupid and irresponsible to use guns (real or not) where there are going to be people, without letting the police know. A bunch of students at RISD narrowly avoided getting gunned down by Providence police this year when they came running out of a convenience store wearing masks and holding model pistols. They had permission from the store owner to stage a robbery for their film, but never told the police what they were doing. A passerby looked in the window and saw masked men with guns, and she called the cops. When they came out of the store, a cop was waiting with pistol drawn. If those students hadn't dropped their guns immediately when the cop yelled at them, they would have been shot. Some bystander could have been, too.

 

When I was target shooting with a semi-auto rifle in the woods awhile back (there were huge sand lots - would have been great for a no-budget sci-fi piece), a cop drove two miles down a dirt road that most SUVs would have trouble navigating, just to investigate a fearful 'neighbors' report of gunfire. When I saw the cruiser, I placed the gun on the ground, stepped several feet away from it, held up my FID card in one hand and raised the other hand in a friendly gesture. Had I been running around, exchanging gunfire with someone (blanks or not), it might have been a different story. But I had a permit, it was legal to shoot where I was, and the cop was just doing his job responding to a call. He asked if we could avoid rapid firing, as a courtesy, and bid us a good day. Some lady thought 'the enemy' might be attacking because we were in the middle of a war... the FIRST gulf war. That was before WTC and all the other crap that has a lot of people doing a duck and cover when they hear someone pop a wine cork, today.

 

I wouldn't risk getting myself or someone else hurt just to make a film. On the bright side of being irresponsible, though, getting shot might make the whole plagiarism thing a moot point since you wouldn't be around for the trial.

[Annie Wengenroth]

Oh my god...I cannot even tell you how important it is to follow protocol here, jump through all the right hoops, and go through every inch of red tape! I mean damn...and how can you be "no-budget"? Come on, put some decent time, effort, AND MONEY into it and get your ass covered COMPLETELY- you will thank yourself and people will respect you more as a filmmaker. I know it's been said but I had to say it again because I get really angry when I see fellow students doing DUMB STUFF with the equipment that I GAVE THEM. All it takes is one person messing it up for everyone else. Believe me, I know.

 

On the flip side, so that I dont' come off as too negative, I should add that I have a lot more admiration for people who respect the equipment, respect their crew, and above all, respect the appropriate laws and regulations. Have fun and be safe.

Edited July 24, 2005 by SpikeyAnnie

[Nathan Banning]

Thanks Mom and Dad - I won't be using real guns,bullets or blanks (All you saved a fillmmakers life/career today). What about using model guns (besides the above mentioned) with digital gun fire. Does that even look real? Heard it doesn't.

 

Actually, I'm not big on guns but there's going to be a couple of scenes with them and we'll be shooting in the early morning so I doubt anyone will be calling the fuzz. Mostly indoors stuff, like when Harrison Ford gets on the lift in Bladerunner and sean young makes a noise behind him and BAM! whips out his big gun with the little LED light on it (was that a real gun?).

 

The story CAN be filmed no-budget because it's minimalist sci-fi (cronenberg) and there's only a few characters and locations. But since I'm not getting the rights to the story I can't get financing (I love making movies.. it's not about the money). Besides I'm an anarchist and paying for some dead author's book makes me ill.

 

Back to the Models and Mattes!! Is there some kind of Website that deals with traditional FX? I found lots of CGI sites but it's all math and programs and it confused me !! (thanks David for the reading suggestions- I'll check those out.)

[Jonathan Spear]

"""Besides I'm an anarchist and paying for some dead author's book makes me ill."""

 

 

Oh yeah?

 

What makes you an anarchist?

 

 

:rolleyes:

 

 

 

P.S. - With the recent London and Egyptian terrorist attacks, I dare you.... no... I double dare you to fire a gun in public. You'll be shot dead in a matter of seconds.

[David Mullen ASC]

Back to the Models and Mattes!! Is there some kind of Website that deals with traditional FX?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What have your own searches on Yahoo! turned up? Just looking around, I find:

 

http://www.starshipbuilder.com/studio-scal...es_raider2.html

http://www.starshipbuilder.com/studio-scal...ptcrdbrd1a.html

http://www.vttbots.com/page20b.html

http://www.ironnerd.com/articles/model.html

http://www.smallspace.demon.co.uk/SFX/sfx.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/specialfx2/1920.html

http://www.geocities.com/hazelflagg/CINEMA.HTM#Miniatures

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_miniatures_digital_world/

 

A book is going to be more useful to you though.

[Nathan Banning]

Thanks again David!

 

Hey TSM, aNArchY means fu** THE RULES!! haha, put that in your pipe and smoke it!

[David Mullen ASC]

These are some old photos (somewhat blurry, scanned on a flatbed) of a little shoot I did with a friend. He and his girlfriend and I worked on creating a promo for a children's TV show with a sci-fi element. This was seven years ago before desktop FX were as common as they are now. We built a spaceship set, plus two landscape miniatures (one with flowing lava efx); I built a little spaceship model and did some matte paintings. I used smoke for the tabletop landscapes to add aerial perspective.

 

Trouble was that I was assured that we would find someone who could do some basic chromakey composites and effects layering, but it never happened, so the efx were sort of half-done.

 

Anyway, it was a lot of work just for a few minutes of fx and convinced me that there was no way three people could do this for a regular series.

 

 

 

 

[Nathan Banning]

yeah that looks cool. I really need to start reading up on this, James Cameron was a f/x guy before Terminator and Aliens, then I can start up my own ghetto ILM in my place.

 

Hey TSM! was that a double dare?! Nobody! Nobody dares me- especially on the internet- it's on! It's so fu**ing on -you don't know!

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> What about using model guns

 

Model guns will achieve death by police just as easily.

 

> digital gun fire. Does that even look real? Heard it doesn't.

 

It can do. Search Thomas Worth's posts for information. A lot of the stuff in Matrix was done like that, especially for the bullet time sequences. Because most of the elements of gunfire are single-frame events (flash, topslide etc) it's easy enough to drop in using Photoshop. Very safe, very cheap, very reliable - you have a good chance of missing muzzle flash on film anyway.

 

Smoke you can insert by waving some incense around...

 

> was that a real gun?

 

Yes, it was a police-style revolver inside I believe the receiver of a Steyr Mannlicher rifle. See also Judge Dredd for bad film, good guns, and a lot of model work. Aliens was the king of traditional model effects, done more or less at the zenith of photochemical FX with some stunning use of back projection, static mattes, and tabletop models. There's the famous shot of the two guys at the colony in the opening of the director's cut, roping a tarp down over a tractor, which was done by shooting the two guys down the end of the stage beyond a large model. Genius work and it looks great.

 

I miss that stuff as well. It was very good looking, much better than the often slightly-anaemic CGI.

 

And David, that's a -small- shoot? What d'you call a large shoot, Starship Troopers?

 

Furthermore:

 

You know how I'd do traditional model work if I had to now? I'd construct myself a motion controlled pan-and-tilt head - doable with a bit of ingenuity and some basic computer knowledge - and I'd actually shoot the sequences with a digital stills camera.

 

Phil

Edited July 24, 2005 by Phil Rhodes

[Nathan Banning]

You know how I'd do traditional model work if I had to now? I'd construct myself a motion controlled pan-and-tilt head - doable with a bit of ingenuity and some basic computer knowledge - and I'd actually shoot the sequences with a digital stills camera.

 

What's this? Tell us more Phil - details please.. If you have the time, of course.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'd call three people working alone with some used 1K's bought in a fire sale, in an industrial garage space in Riverside, CA, a pretty small shoot -- especially when you've got the DP & director building the sets, lighting them themselves, building the models, doing the matte paintings, etc. We did all the shooting over one weekend using a rented Arri-III (only paid for one day's rental that way), so shooting in 35mm was nice, except that it was with cheap recans. Our dolly moves on the miniatures involved a soft-rubber-tired wooden doorway dolly.

 

The only thing not small was the space that the director was renting for a couple of months -- but remember that this was like an hour's drive outside of L.A. (he lived in San Bernardino at the time.) Also not small was all we were trying to accomplish. But the lack of anyone to do decent composites sort of screwed-up a lot of the footage. If I had known that in advance, I would have planned more in-camera double-exposures, maybe rented a Mitchell, done some glass shots, etc. But that would have taken even more time to set-up. Nowadays, I'd probably have just found someone with the necessary skills to do some compositing work on their own computer, or bought the software and learned it myself. I probably would shoot the miniatures on the Varicam or something instead of 35mm (since this was just for TV viewing.) Getting enough depth of field on 35mm for miniatures with small lighting package is very hard.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Mainly I was thinking of ways to shoot film-res effects, which you could do with a digital stills camera if you had motion control. Most moco model shoots run at the sort of frame rates a DSLR can sustain anyway.

 

As to motion control itself, it depends if you need repeatability or not. I've read of people doing it with stuff as basic as technic lego. Almost none of the model work for Aliens had repeatable moco, although that might not be a model for the DSLR approach as much of it was actually shot high-speed, particularly the dropship landings (which I feel are as fine an example of very realistic model work as you'll find)

 

Depends how big your models are going to be - bigger being better and easier - as to whether you just run a conventional dolly track past it or whatever. The ability to mix your various passes in After Effects afterwards is always nice, though, so you may want to look into something repeatable. Now you're into engineering and that's a whole new ball game.

 

Phil

[Guest Nathan Donnelly]

If you're going to be shooting in and around Seattle, go here and get the preliminary stuff taken care of. A permit is super cheap, and even if you need to hire a police officer for your (public) action scenes, it wont break the bank. The people at the Film Office are super nice and friendly to small productions.

[Bob Hayes]

Hey TSM! was that a double dare?! Nobody! Nobody dares me- especially on the internet- it's on! It's so fu**ing on -you don't know!

 

Nathan:

 

You are obviously an impassioned film maker and that something cinematography.com greatly encourages. For that reason there is a lot of quality information to be obtained here. However, if you want professional advice then I?d recommend posting like one. Ranting, baiting, or flaming isn?t really what Cinematography.com is about.

[Matt Pacini]

"... Also I need guns (full auto M16's and Mp5's) that I can fire in public that don't cause too much hysteria..."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Are you under the mistaken impression that there is some "type" of fully automatic weapon that you could fire in public and not cause hysteria?

 

I suggest using the moon or possibly Mars as your location, because anywhere on this planet, that type of activity is going to cause hysteria.

 

I think you're either insane, a kid, or you're just putting us all on here.

 

MP

[Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith]

SFX in King Kong

 

I found this production diary quite interesting and worth a watch.

[K Borowski]

Daniel, while that link was interesting, that really has nothing to do with mattes at all. Also, it is sickening that they shot everything on 35mm when it is going to be scanned at 2K and then downsized to make little dust clouds and splashes. What a waste of film!!! Even the lady in the video sounded sickened by what they were blowing their film on. If I recall correctly, the quote was "We go through a LOT of fillm, to shoot things like rocks, and duuht (dirt with an Aussie accent ;-) ), and trees".

 

David, those are some of the most stunning sets that I have ever seen. You are a real artist if you and a few friends painted those over a weekend. If it weren't for you standing in front of them, I would take them for being real photographs of real places.

 

Nathan, I agree with David that you really need to read some books. The internet is obviously not going to have anywhere near as much source material for the type of effects-work that you are interested in as a film-school's library. Even at the local community college here in the Western suburbs of Cleveland, there was an impressive selection of filmmaking books. There was a book that I read that really had a lot of things that you would be interested in. If I have time I'll run up there this weekend and get you the title. It really was an amazing book, with all kinds of special-effects techniques in B&W and color as well as an extensive selection of examples, including a lot of detailed descriptions of how they accomplished the special effects in the original Star Wars trilogy as well as some of the Star Trek movies IIRC. Can you tell us anymore about what you'll be shooting on, film/video, and what you intend to distribute in? If your final product is going to be video, whether you be shooting in film or video, a video release means you can do these effects on a computer, although I am so anal that if I were to shoot something for television, I'd still try to finish the effects to film for archival adn artistic purposes as well as personal satisfaction. If you want to shoot some guns off in front of crowds of people, what better way to do it than through bluescreen/matte work? I admire your audacity (I'd probably be inclined to say the same kind of thing if somebody dared me not to do something), but have you ever heard the song "I fought the law. . ."? I have a friend that I want to play that song to 100 times. The police are your friends, but they are your enemies if you parade around with a prop or real assault weapon on the street. Get some extras, have them scream and duck and whatever, shoot tthat, and then composite the gun-toting guy in your film over that image. Really, look for stuff on the Original Star Wars Trilogy, as I would say that that represents the pinnacle of pure analog special effects in films. Independence Day is probably the pinnacle of model/digital composite hybrid mattework IMO. I'll try to find those books for you. I know that you can do bipacking and matte work with Bolex 16mm camera, if you want to do simple effects work and don't mind a bit of a matte line in between the pieces of the composite.

 

Regards.

~Karl Borowski

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Is it me, or do your chances of becoming a camera assistant at least double if you are small, cute and female?

 

Phil

[Michael Most]

What a waste of film!!!  Even the lady in the video sounded sickened by what they were blowing their film on.  If I recall correctly, the quote was "We go through a LOT of fillm, to shoot things like rocks, and duuht (dirt with an Aussie accent ;-) ), and trees". 

 

Do you have any suggestions as to any other way to shoot miniature elements in motion, which requires overcranking for scaling?

 

Independence Day is probably the pinnacle of model/digital composite hybrid mattework IMO.

 

You must have missed pictures like the Lord of the Rings (all 3 of them), Harry Potter (all 4 of them), and War of the Worlds - all of which are full of "hybrid" shots that are far, far advanced from just about everything in "Independence Day." Not to mention numerous others.

[Michael Most]

Is it me, or do your chances of becoming a camera assistant at least double if you are small, cute and female?

 

Do you really think this is limited to camera assistants?