Explosivo
A couple of weeks later and I received an email from John. The shots were complete. He attached a tiny little compressed version of one of the shots and told me to come on over and pick up the full size masters on disk.
Duly I down loaded the shot and watched with a content smile on my face as a corridor full of zombies got turned into crispy critters! A number of times in the run up to the shoot, and for a period after it. I had questioned how much it had cost to hire the fort. Was it worth it? The four shots that John had doctored screamed a big fat YES! They were easily worth 5 times what we’d paid for them. In fact on a number of occasions since, we’ve seen professional productions on TV and film, looked at each other and gone “Our explosion’s better than that!”
But it wasn’t easy. Producing the finished shot required masking off a number of elements in the corridor. Because a tripod hadn’t been used for the shots, what should have been a relatively simple task (solid unmoving mask’s placed over walls and door frames) became a pain staking, frame by frame, labour of love as John had to essentially rotoscape the whole scene. The finished effect was well worth the effort, but did lead to the following out burst from John.
“Next time you take a shoot like that make sure you use a tripod. In fact I can recommend a good brand. What was it called again… It began with and F… That’s it. Use a F**KING TRIPOD!”
Dutifully I passed his comments on to the production team. Never the less the completed FX shots inspired me. I’d already had a play around with my footage in an editing package. Putting together my scene to see if it played out the way I wanted it to (which it did, mostly) but having seen the cool stuff John had done I wanted to do a little bit more. I began to assemble a little promo reel.
It didn’t follow the script of the episode and it wasn’t real a trailer (Neither of these options were open to me as I only had 1 days worth of footage) It was more a sort of extended action sequence, and it wasn’t easy to paste together. In many of the scene’s there was a depressing lack of coverage. For example, the ‘split up’ scene consisted of 2 shots. A master and a single close-up. In the official version a number of these instances are sneakily covered up by cutting in CG shots, or using bits from other scenes. Well I didn’t have the CG bits, but I had a plan! I pulled some sneaky tricks, and some not so sneaky tricks, all with the intention of making the viewer so sea sick, they can’t spot the mirrored or reused shot’s! It almost works!
I finished the edit and slung it across to John for some additional effects, muzzle flash, smoke, that kind of thing. While he worked on that I started to neaten up the sound.
A couple of weeks later the newly finished audio track was layered over the finished video and we had a complete little promo, it looks suspiciously like this…
Well okay it looks a lot like that, although the compression has made the colours go a bit squirly. The start is suspiciously orange, and the end is a little to dark, meh! If I cut it again (which I won’t, the project is over. George Lucas could learn a lesson from me here!) I would probably get rid of the nasty, wildly swinging camera shots. But tough, you’re stuck with ‘em.
For those what is interested (and cause I don’t wanna get sued) the music at the start is ‘Through the Loop’ from the album 'Hold Your Colour' by Pendulum and the main piece of music is ‘Seizure of Power’ from the Resident Evil Soundtrack. Clicky the links to go buy albums and find out stuff about the artists.
The day after we finished the promo it was the Lazarus premier. The journey was almost over.
Duly I down loaded the shot and watched with a content smile on my face as a corridor full of zombies got turned into crispy critters! A number of times in the run up to the shoot, and for a period after it. I had questioned how much it had cost to hire the fort. Was it worth it? The four shots that John had doctored screamed a big fat YES! They were easily worth 5 times what we’d paid for them. In fact on a number of occasions since, we’ve seen professional productions on TV and film, looked at each other and gone “Our explosion’s better than that!”
But it wasn’t easy. Producing the finished shot required masking off a number of elements in the corridor. Because a tripod hadn’t been used for the shots, what should have been a relatively simple task (solid unmoving mask’s placed over walls and door frames) became a pain staking, frame by frame, labour of love as John had to essentially rotoscape the whole scene. The finished effect was well worth the effort, but did lead to the following out burst from John.
“Next time you take a shoot like that make sure you use a tripod. In fact I can recommend a good brand. What was it called again… It began with and F… That’s it. Use a F**KING TRIPOD!”
Dutifully I passed his comments on to the production team. Never the less the completed FX shots inspired me. I’d already had a play around with my footage in an editing package. Putting together my scene to see if it played out the way I wanted it to (which it did, mostly) but having seen the cool stuff John had done I wanted to do a little bit more. I began to assemble a little promo reel.
It didn’t follow the script of the episode and it wasn’t real a trailer (Neither of these options were open to me as I only had 1 days worth of footage) It was more a sort of extended action sequence, and it wasn’t easy to paste together. In many of the scene’s there was a depressing lack of coverage. For example, the ‘split up’ scene consisted of 2 shots. A master and a single close-up. In the official version a number of these instances are sneakily covered up by cutting in CG shots, or using bits from other scenes. Well I didn’t have the CG bits, but I had a plan! I pulled some sneaky tricks, and some not so sneaky tricks, all with the intention of making the viewer so sea sick, they can’t spot the mirrored or reused shot’s! It almost works!
I finished the edit and slung it across to John for some additional effects, muzzle flash, smoke, that kind of thing. While he worked on that I started to neaten up the sound.
A couple of weeks later the newly finished audio track was layered over the finished video and we had a complete little promo, it looks suspiciously like this…
Well okay it looks a lot like that, although the compression has made the colours go a bit squirly. The start is suspiciously orange, and the end is a little to dark, meh! If I cut it again (which I won’t, the project is over. George Lucas could learn a lesson from me here!) I would probably get rid of the nasty, wildly swinging camera shots. But tough, you’re stuck with ‘em.
For those what is interested (and cause I don’t wanna get sued) the music at the start is ‘Through the Loop’ from the album 'Hold Your Colour' by Pendulum and the main piece of music is ‘Seizure of Power’ from the Resident Evil Soundtrack. Clicky the links to go buy albums and find out stuff about the artists.
The day after we finished the promo it was the Lazarus premier. The journey was almost over.
7 Comments:
Think of all the experience gained from moving cameras and compositing. I had to do some too, and as annoying as it was, it payed off, camera moves in post never really work properly, they tend to be flat and lack dimension, the depth of field isn't right and the shadows don't move. I am quite happy with the footage we shot and of the decisions I made, after all I did go out to make an eerie SB episode, not a music video. The constant need to tell the audience anything and everything in a scene just ends up with lots of pointless shots cut together quickly with no respect for the actors or the frame and is generally either insulting or plain boring. People could learn alot from Buster Keaton and Méliès.As I have learnt over the many years of studying and practicing the arts, there is no such thing as "That is how it's done."
As enjoyable and also stress filled as it was, there is still more to come, new cgi, new matte paintings, and other such goodies. I do fear that my brain is bleeding with all this SB.
Yup Both you and John gained a lot of experience :) But as stated all of the finished shots were well worth the effort!
As for coverage, well it never hurts to have more than you need. After all you don't have to use it!
Having said that the lack of coverage was mostly down to time constraints, which kind of makes it my fault anyway for writing to much to shoot, Doh! :(
Actually, all of the camera shake in the explosion scene were added in post. The scene in general would have probably been better if we'd use a tripod simply because I could have worked more efficiently on it (I do this for fun - so the amount of work I put in is dependant on my boredom level)
Anyway, as to shots - Better to have and not use than not have and need... after all - That's what DVD Special Features is for! :)
On the other hand... shoot what you need and nothing else can work... Just look at Ed Wood.
Sometimes I wish I had a bit more time with things, but then again, it's all just a hobby, and a fun one at that. Yes it is time consuming, but if it look good, then it's done its job. I do take my hat off to John for the epic amount of work he did, and in such a quick turn over if you take into account other hobbies and employment. Anywho, I'm off to carry on downloading Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.
Wow; that was amazing!
Any chance of the whole episode making it to tvchichester or onto youtube anytime soon?
Erm dunno maybe, possibly, sometime. Big Steve would be the man in the know, maybe if we're lucky he'll enlighten us here.
Although beware of people lying to you with trailers! While Dan wasn't trying to make a 'music video' I just about managed to cut one with his footage : )
Hiya,
TV Chichester are certainly taking their time... 30 episodes I delivered back in February spanning our 2001 and 2002 seasons with the idea that they would reach our 2006 season (and Lazarus) by the summer. They have so far uploaded 4 episodes.. an achingly long time if you ask me, but they're a new outfit and these things take time. If Six TV Southampton was back on air, Lazarus would be getting its proper premiere straight away. Its all cued up, its just waiting for that transmitter to get repaired...
Steve
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