Last Week in VFX

Quick update this time.  Just showcasing some recent visual effects work I did over the past week.

Like my last post, it's all "day for night" stuff this time around.  It might look a little dark on a computer or phone, but these should look pretty nice in a darkened theater.

Anyway, enjoy these before and after shots!

Some have additional effects as well, like the flowing mist/dust in the flashlight shot below:

And now… the toughest shot of them all (and also my favorite):

The Original Footage:

The Final Result:

Still more to go, but I'm really happy with how these shots are turning out.

- Erik (Director)

VFX: Day for Night

Hey everyone!  Back with another VFX update.

Now before I explain what I've done, check out this clip below:

Does it look like it was filmed in the night?  Well, this was actually a test to see how well I could pull off a "day for night" shot.  Yep, it was actually filmed in broad daylight.

Believe it or not, here's the original clip:

Crazy, right?  There are many ways to go about doing a day for night shot, but the quickest is just to apply some simple color corrections (notably reducing the brightness, and turning everything blue):

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite satisfied with the simple method above.  As you can see, the background is much too visible, especially the sky.

So I had to do some rotoscoping (you know... that super tedious process where you edit clips frame-by-frame) to separate my character from the background.  Here's the result (called a "matte"):

Luckily, because it's a night shot, I was able to do a rougher job of it and decrease the time it takes quite a bit.  And the final result looks just as good:

There's still a lot work to do with the rest of the day for night shots.  But luckily I believe this test was a success, and I think I can now pump out these shots in a reasonable amount of time.

As always, looking forward to posting more as I progress!

- Erik (Director)

Preparing a Fire Scene

Been a while since my last post.  I've had to switch gears recently from post-production back to actual filming as there's a lot of little insert shots/scenes that I'm starting to need now (as part of the VFX stage).  A switch that's slowed down my process a bit, but I'm closing in on finally having all this extra footage in the can, so I should be getting back to posting more frequently in the near future.

Otherwise, here's some photos in preparation for a fire scene (which should be a pretty cool sequence).

First up, testing out a firefighter outfit...

(Click image for higher resolution)

Then, some burn/ash makeup tests...

(Click image for higher resolution)

And in other news…

Remember that news scene I was preparing the mic flag for (with my little "RP 6 News" logo on it)?  Well, I finished up the filming for that as well as the visual effects for it!

Here's what the original footage looked like:

(Click image for higher resolution)

And here's the final result:

(Click image for higher resolution)

Really happy with how it turned out.  One of the coolest visuals in the film now, and it actually wasn't all that hard to achieve.

Gonna try to post more frequently now.  Aiming for about once a week, but we'll see.

- Erik (Director)