The post production was the main focus for this video. My mindset while taking all the footage was to fill in all the gaps in post production, if there was a mistake, I would have to correct it or edit it out. If extra content needed to be created, I will do it in this stage.
I will be focusing on all the shots that needed visual effects added into them. There are further shots of me running from one target to the next; however no effects, other than colour correction really covered them. Therefore I don’t feel an absolute need to bring them up. I am just explaining all the time consuming parts.
Some of the effects have been generalised because they have been used more than once, some of the more specific effects are explained in greater detail.
Targets
The targets are all done in the same exact way so I won’t talk about each on in detail as they all act in the same way.
For all the targets they are composited on top of the footage, tracked so if the camera moves, they follow, then the tree they are attached to is duplicated and masked so it looks like the target is behind the tree. This was done for all the targets that were attached to trees.
They are then moved in any way I like for them to reveal. Because they are linked to a null object the position can still be manipulated, even though the null object would be manipulating its position anyway.
To make the targets explode I used the effect ‘shatter’ to make it explode into bits. Then by manipulating the opacity they fade away.
The reason why these are so large images is so that the can be transparent so when they hit the parts are able to go flying. If the parts disappear beyond the edges the shatter parts disappear, so logically you want these images are large as possible.
Camera shakes
Camera shakes are used throughout the video to give a more solid feel to the video and give a realistic look. The camera shakes were applied to the clips after all the editing was done. In other words it was one of the last jobs to do. To do it I changed the whole composition into a 3D layer, created a camera and linked it to a null object.
Whenever there was a gunshot, or impact from something I would make the camera shake. To make the camera shake, you make a key frame, move the null object in one direction, then make another key frame and move the null object in the opposite direction, the more you move the null object the more there will be a shake.
This effect is applied to pretty much every shot and impact. And the shot of me stamping my foot on the floor.
Particles
Particles in this are very important because without them there would be no explosions, or beams or shots the gun makes. There are three secret ingredients to create such effects. The rest is manipulating the physics, size and colour of the particles. For this I used particular for two reasons it’s more flexible compared to 3D particle world in terms of colours and sizes and types. The second reason is particular can easily be set to follow a null object whereas 3D particle world needs to be given expressions to follow a null object. The reason why I would want it to follow a null object is so that I can make the particle follow a set path.
The second secret ingredient is null objects. Null objects are very handy for getting the particles to follow a set path and make it easier to manipulate where the particle comes from and where it goes. I use it constantly for all the gun shots.
The third secret ingredient is the effect ‘echo’ which copies the clip a number of times but offsets it so it starts a frame afterwards. This gives the particles a wisp like effect. I used this on a number of effects. The first targets explosion uses this effects.
Colour Correcting
Colour correction was the last step I made video wise. Once all the footage was ready I brought out Magic bullet looks, and added these things in.
Firstly I added curves so I could change the highlights the mid tones and the shadows of all the colours. I also added a colour range to bring out one or two certain colours like for the greens for the leaves and browns to show some of the bark. Then a subtle vignette to stylise it slightly. This in the end changes the look of the video completely and made it look a lot more professional.
So the first secret ingredient is the birth rate and manipulating it to create an explosion. To do this you key frame on one frame and set the birth rate at 0. The on the next frame whatever number you want, then on the next frame set it back to zero. Here your basically telling it to give off x amount of particles on one frame, so they will all go at the same rate and die at the same point. This technique is used to create explosions. They are very handy for fireworks. This sort of effect is done on explosions of the targets and the sparks the gun creates when it fires.
White flashes
You may notice one or two white flashes throughout the video, I find white flashes are a really great way to show explosions and impacts from certain things that produce a large amount of light. I used a few white flashes throughout the video just to give it a little bit more of a visual kick. Plus it helps the effects to look a lot more solid.
Effect 1- The hologram.
The hologram sequence was a rather simple effect that I wanted to pull off. Firstly I wrote a script and recorded a briefing. I then manipulated the audio so that it had a more robotic voice rather than my own recognisable voice. I did this because I wanted it to sound like a briefing that you might hear in a James Bond movie.
Once the beefing was done I created the hologram base in Photoshop, I chose the colour blue as blue shows an electric and futuristic look which helped represent the technology in the movie. I also included my own JR logo just to show that it was my own work. This is more of an Easter egg than anything else. Next I took this into after effects and animated visuals in time with the brief; these went on top of the template and kept the audience interested as it was around a minute long and it did feel liked it dragged, however without it there was no context of why I was in a forest shooting targets.
Next once I finished the hologram I had to composite it into the scene. For this I motion tracked a null object and linked the hologram to the null object, it was then a matter of placing the clip over my arm and bringing the opacity down so you could see through, doing this made it look more like a hologram that was being projected from my watch, rather than just an image I had overlaid.
Next I applied the effect CC light rays to make it look asif there was light coming out of my watch, I tracked this to the watch face. Both together this looked a pretty convincing hologram.
I also planned to have the hologram shown at different angles, this also helped keep the audience interested as it was not just one lingering shot. It was two shots instead. For this shot I had to track my hand again and apply the track to the hologram. I also flipped the hologram as this was taken in reverse so the hologram would be reversed to the audience.
One last point about this shot was there was a little dog that got into shot half way through the clip. Through a little bit of editing I was able to remove the dog. To do this I duplicated the clip and freeze framed it on a frame where the dog was not present, then masked it and cut it to only show when the dog could be seen. This removed it. This subtle edit is unnoticeable in the final version.
Before
After
Effect 2- Falling gun
The next effect was trouble however I worked around it, the idea was to have the gun materialise in my hands, however getting it to appear confused me so I scrapped the idea. Instead it falls from the sky and I catch it. This was a simple effect taken in two shots, me holding the gun and me bracing myself to catch the gun. Then just cut the two together so one second the actor is looking up and the next there catching it. The only part I had to edit in was the gun falling from the sky. To do this I created a rectangle shape which was about the same size as the gun. Then key frame it to move from the top of the screen to the actors hands. Then cut it to disappear on the frame where the gun is on screen. The fall is so fast that the rectangle blurs, there was no need to cut out a picture of the gun as there was no need for a huge amount of detail. The colour of the rectangle matches the colour of the gun I did this because it was the one detail that was needed to show that it was the gun.
Effect 5- The fireball
The fireball effect was the first shot of the gun, I wanted it to stand out and be different to all the others I wanted it to grab the audience’s attention and show that this gun packed a punched. So the first shot was the most important. For this I wanted a magnificent fireball created with particles which flew around the camera with a bullet time like effect. However when I started creating the particles I found it very hard to get them to rotate with the camera, even tracking it was next to impossible. So I decided to try something different for the first shot. Instead I found an 8bit fireball from Super Mario and resized it and got it to rotate with the camera. This shot was successful and worked perfectly. I chose an 8bit fireball because I liked the style and a shout out to show my appreciation to Nintendo.
The actual fireball is a 3D object that rotates in 3D and just looks like it’s moving away from the camera, it is not tracked. To make it bigger and smaller I manipulated its scale and 3D position.
It then hit the target and exploded in a shower of sparks. Refer to my part on the particle effects to find out how I did this.
Effect 6- Shot of the actor and close up
This shot was to show that the actor meant business. Though not much editing was needed for this shot there were two things I did.
The first part was clearing up the medium shot of the actor. In the original clip there is a bug that flies by and makes a disgusting blur on the clip. I had to get rid of that blur otherwise the shot was ruined and unusable. To do this I freeze framed a frame without any blurs on it and masked it over wherever there was a blur. Doing this removed the blur. I did need to move the mask since the camera moves very slightly, in the final cut this is unnoticeable.
Second part was giving the character a vignette which darkened everything except his eyes. The vignette was done to show he was determined to complete the mission, the focus on his eyes and darkening of everything else shows the focus and that he wasn’t going to look back or waste any of his time.
The vignette was done by creating a black rectangle which cover the whole screen, then I added two masks, the inner mask was put to subtract so it revealed his eyes in the film colour, the other was add to show the black. I then feathered both the layers to fade out the black. I then manipulated the opacity of it to show the vignette when the actor moves. This emphasises the movement he made.
An example of this is show in the difference video at the bottom.
Effect 7- Arrow
The next effect was a simple arrow composited on top of the grass. I tracked the movements of the camera and applied them to the arrow so it stayed in the same place. I then created a shadow for the arrow. To do this I duplicated the arrow, moved it below the original arrow, tinted it back and gave it a Gaussian blur. This made it look like a shadow and as if the arrow was part of the shot.
Effect 8- Triple tree shot
One of the most complicated and time consuming effects was the triple tree sequence, where the actor has to shoot three different targets one after the other. It was complicated because of the amount of rotoscoping and what is actually going on all at once, which makes it also feel quite busy.
For each of the shots there are three particle systems, the bullet, the sparks from the gun and explosion. The multiply each of these by three.
Then you have the three targets which are tracked into the shot, and when the camera moves are manually tracked as the tracker could not pick up the tracking because the camera was panning too fast, which have to shatter at a certain time too. Each of the targets need to be masked behind each of the trees they are connected to as well.
Then on top of all this I had to rotoscope around the actors face as well as the gun otherwise all the overlaid content would have been above the gun and it wouldn’t have looked right.
So the layers are
Targets
Mask of tree
Particles
Gun and face.
Looking back I think that this sequence would have been better if I took a photo and green screened the footage of the character shooting since I wouldn’t have had to rotoscope or track as much, it would have saved time and the tracking would have been much better, as the tracking in this scene I thought could have been much better.
Effect 9- The panorama shot
The penultimate effect that I did I call the panorama shot. This is where we took pictures of a straight path in the woods, then in after effects I connected the shots together to create a path that seemed longer than it actually was. It was also a chance to try out some composting through duplicating parts from a scene and adding them on. Through this I could hide the seams and also add extra plants onto the scene which blended in. Although when viewed without a motion blur you can see all the edits, but with the motion blur you can’t tell a difference and it just looks like a very long pan. To make the pan, I made all the layers a 3D layer and created a camera and linked it to a null object, this allowed me to pan from one side of the pictures all the way to the other side.
Without motion blur
With motion blur
This sort of technique is sort of used to create repeating backgrounds.
The other important part to this scene was the particle effect because it had a DNA strand like effect, through experimenting I worked out how to make this sort of effect;
This effect had three particle systems a blue one, a red one and a white one. (Reminds me of toothpaste because of the colours) There are three null objects, one large in the middle, and to the left and one to the right.
The null objects on either side of the middle null object are both linked to it, so if you rotate it they both rotate with it. Then I just linked a particle system for each null object, then coloured them, blue on the right and red on the left, white went in the middle.
When I keyframed the location for it to move and rotated it, it gave a DNA effect. I shall keep this effect in mind as it has the potential for some fantastic effects that I might create after this project.
Effect 10- Sky shot
The sky shot was split up into a number of different effects so ill run through them in order.
My idea for the sky shot was the actor shooting into the sky and the sky gets sucked up to reveal the night sky (not exactly realistic) and then the sky becomes ammunition to fire at the target. I thought of this idea when we went through sky replacement and thought to myself how I could incorporate a sky replacement into a gun related piece of work. This was what I came up with
Firstly there is another hologram which was created in the same way the first hologram was created, however this one was a little larger and used different graphics showing that it was a ‘sky shot’. This is the target.
The next effect was part of the gun close up aiming up into the sky. I added a purple flare that moves through the tubing showing the build up of energy as this shot powered up.
Particle effects were used for the shot into the sky.
For the sky replacement I put the image of the moon under the layer of the sky, then masked the actual sky layer so it would reveal night sky in a circular shape. I then took the explosion from the particles and put it in a new composition, this allowed me to reverse time layer it so the particles ran backwards. Then I timed them together so it looked like the particles ran with the mask and reveal of the night sky.
I then added a further particle effect representing the sky which rushes down passed the camera. The colours here are white and blue to represent the sky as an image and what people think when they first see the sky, I then also gave it a yellow glow to light it up. I chose a yellow glow as it would show a glow of the sun and the light of day. I chose yellow as yellow is a warm colour and is associated with heat and light.
The next clip needed extra editing with lighting as logically there would be no light, and the only thing lighting up the actor was the energy rushing down from the sky. This causes a lot of energy to spill so a few particles explode even on the landing and bounce on the floor.
This needed a further particle effect; however I had to use 3D particle world as that has a bouncing system that lets particles bounce on a virtual floor. Which was what I needed, and since the particles did not need to be too elaborate I could get away with using it. Once this was done I made a duplication of it, tinted it black and Gaussian blurred it, this created a shadow of all the particles which were reflected in the light.
Then I created a further particle to fire towards the camera which cut through which to destroying the target. When it explodes I wanted to show that the sky was returning and it became day again. So I changed the gravity so the particles headed up towards the sky.
Also for this shot I had to rotoscope around a tree as it was in the way of the hologram. I could have removed it, but that would have made it looked properly edited, so I chose to have the hologram behind the tree.
Effect 11- After math
For the aftermath I created vibration blur effect which showed the shock waves from the final explosion. To create this effect I duplicated the layer and created two masks and keyframed them to move across the screen. Then I took the masked layer and scaled it up slightly so it looked like a distortion. Then I gave is a Gaussian blur to blur the effect.I did this effect partly as an experimentation and just messing about with what I could do. But also I wanted to add something else to the particles that showed the power of the previous explosion. I think that I could use this effect somewhere else in another project though for something sound related. There are two shock waves in total.
Effect 12- Teleporting out
The last effect was the teleport out of the scene this was done by having two clips in the same position, one with the actor doing everything he needed before leaving, and a second clip with nothing on it.
The idea was to freeze frame the actor in a suitable position, so you could rotoscope around him and cut him out. At the frame where you freeze frame him you duplicate the rotoscoped footage and put it on top of the footage without the actor on. Then you can manipulate the freeze frame however you like and you will still have a full background. The only problem that you have to cover and do is colour correcting.
For my teleport I manipulated the colour, to make the actor go black and white and manipulated the scales so it looked like a cartoon like teleport. I chose this one because I thought it would show a representation of teleporting. It also shows the idea of how advance the technology is in the story. I could have simply made the character just fade out, but I want something of a true manipulation rather than just something simple.
Now you see me.
Now you don’t!
As well as all of this I also created a small video showing the difference between the original footage and the finished footage.
That’s all for now folks.