Put a Helicopter in Your Film

Here's a pretty cool tutorial on how to turn a cheap toy helicopter into a believable life sized helicopter using green screen and After Effects.  Film Riot also has a lot of other cool tutorials like this.

Stop-motion Tetris Chalk Animation

One of my favorite channels on Youtube, called AWE me (Amaze, Wow and Educate), is home to a collection of videos based around creating various kinds of art, props and actual forged weaponry. While the channel's most popular video series revolves around the channel's owner's blacksmithing business, there are some pretty cool videos involving chalk art. This video in particular, which depicts a stop-motion simulation of the game Tetris on a large chalkboard surface, is really impressive.

At the end of the video, you can see how the chalkboard surface actually curves onto the floor from the wall, which makes it look like the Tetris screen is actually standing straight up on a surface instead of just being plastered onto a wall. I assume that similar techniques with the angles of surface onto which images are displayed can be used on green screens to project more realistic simulations, rather than just having them be flat.

Over the weekend I watched Sin City for the first time. For those that do not know much about the Frank Miller comic series, Sin City was originally a comic-book series that was adapted into a film by Robert Rodriguez. The whole film is shot in green screen to gives the film a neo-noir and graphic novel look. During the film several colors are picked out for emphasis and I have found that to be very interesting. The opening scene gives a great look on what I mentioned. I have given both the rough cut and the finished product to make it easier to see the transformation.  

SPACE JAM

One of my all time favorite movies, and one that interestingly I hadn't thought to take a look into. Until one of the film blogs I follow (www.traslacamara.com) posted an interesting article on the actual BTS. This was super relevant because we had just done the tracking lab in class and I can only imagine all the tracking that went into this movie.

As you can see they used many actors dressed up in morph suits to get the motion down, but interestingly enough I didn't see any track points on the actors themselves, which must have made putting the animated characters over top of them a bit of a struggle.

And if that wasn't enough to satisfy your BTS needs, here is a fantastic video of them actually shooting (A+ camera movement as well)

Oblivion: Sky Tower Practical Effects

Oblivion is one of those Love it/Hate it type of movies, meaning that there are things that you can really like/love about the movie, and then there are things that arent so great. To get it out of the way, the not so great thing was the story, as it came off as weak and confusing to me.

However the redeeming factor of this movie (in my opinion at least) is the visuals. Everything looked so practical and realistic, even the CG and visual effects were very photo real compared to other Hollywood movies out there.

When I watched this BTS featurette about how they accomplished the Sky Tower in the movie, I was amazed at how practical they made it. They really wanted the actors to feel like they were really in that moment, rather than trying to interact with it via Green Screen set. They accomplished this look by capturing footage of the sky and clouds that they filmed at the top of a really high volcano. And then they took that footage and front projected it onto High Res Screens on the set.

This truly was a cool and very practical thing to do. It looks more real, the light from the footage helps illuminate more light into the set, and best of all, it would save VFX artists the headache of having to deal with green screen spill in the set, because that green would bounce around everywhere I imagine, and would be a nightmare to have to key out and make as real and clean as possible.

To see the Oblivion Sky Tower Featurette, check the video out here:

  

Green Screen Edit Tutorial

As most of us are doing our last project I thought it would be helpful to share a green screen tutorial. Here is one I thought was very helpful! Good luck with your editing and I hope this tutorial was helpful to you guys!

Advanced Keying Techniques

So seeing as everyone will be keying their footage over the next few weeks, I'd like to share this tutorial. I used it for my scene, and it makes a tremendous difference. Traditionally I've always boosted greens a tad through the Hue/Saturation effect, then applied Keylight. Asides from that though, I don't do much else with green screen footage.

However this tutorial from 8 Bit Digital TV, shows a way of keying which preserves the colour of your footage, while using the matte from Keylight. See, normally the Keylight effect will not only remove the green background, but also green tinge in the skin. While this is helpful, since it's trying to remove so much green, it can take too much away from the skin and make skin tones look off. Whereas in this tutorial, you'll learn a way of simply using the matte Keylight creates, then taking away the right amount of green tinge in skin.

Check out the full video for a more in depth explanation, I'd highly recommend it for this project.

Blue screen vs Green screen

As we are all working on our rotoscoping projects using green screen, I wanted to give a little more information on what blue screen and green screen do and what they differ in.

The obvious reason for choosing one or the other is the object or person in front. So if you are filming Kermit, you probably don't want to use green screen and if you are filming a Smurf (they're real), you probably don't want a blue screen,

i found this video below to be super helpful in further understanding the difference and learning more about why we should use one or the other and when.

Do Ya Thang - Gorillaz

The Gorillaz is arguably one of the best bands to have ever graced my ears since birth. But aside form their music, they are a prime example of transmedia. What started out as a British rock band has transcended into comics, online games, and interactive holographic concerts! But what I want to talk about today is their Style-o (Stylo is one of their popular songs... This is a joke). Many times you'll find a blend of 2D and 3D animation, and practical effects in their music videos which always helps to blend the creepy, disgusting, and fantastical world of Gorillaz. "Do Ya Thang" was a collaboration between them and Andre 3000, to help promote Converse.

The video below is a making of the very same music video. Here you will see snippets of the production process. Everything from the storyboard, dressing the set, blocking the actors, and eventually modeling the band mates. It's interesting to see how paper comes to life not just through a green suit but the detail they put into designing even the skin of all the characters.

Disney's New Cool App and Motion Capture

I stumbled upon this video and I think this is such a creative and awesome idea.

Disney has really created an amazing tool and I hope it becomes available to the public soon.

While exploring some more, I found out that using motion capture to track human motion has been mastered after years of work but the same cannot be said about animals.

Motion capture is quite literally means recording the movement of humans or objects to capture the motion.

I found an article about researchers at Bradford University who have used motion capture on animals to improve the biomechanical accuracy of animals in films and video games.

Previously, only a few markers were used on animals to capture motion; however, the researchers from Bradford University did it differently. Check out the article with the video of their work here.

In case you wanted to see what motion capture looks like with real actors, here's a fun video of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

More Rotoscoping

While considering what movie to place myself in, I've watched a number of YouTube videos of examples and tutorials of others doing so. Here I've found a short tutorial by Tara Arts Entertainment--though quite corky, it is informative and effective.

The man who makes the tutorials on this channel I find to be funny, knowledgeable and easy to follow. All things that make a difference when learning an extensive program like After Effects. The video above covers everything we talked about in class including the green screen, keylight (chroma key effect), in addition to other helpful how-tos like color matching.

Also, I found this quick little video to be something of interest. Here the artist takes a video of himself, then uses rotoscoping to create the outline for his desired animation.

While thinking of some movies and television shows to rotoscope myself into, I took some time to look for some examples and inspirations. This is Freddie Wong's spoof trailer of "Twilight: Eclipse". I found that he did a great job of fitting himself into the negative spaces of the film as well as weaving in some funny one liners between the characters conversations. Even the scene where he puts himself in the same bed as Bella and Edward, he did a pretty good job of editing himself in there. Not to say that there weren't some quirks to the video. At certain parts I could see the green screen feathering around Freddie, and at other parts you could tell that the lighting he used really put him out of place, but this is ten times better than what I will probably do.

I also watched Ellen DeGeneres' skit of the same idea. Although hers had a lot more practical effects, like rebuilding similar sets, but I think her editor did just as well! 

Putting yourself in a scene, and Rotoscoping

One of our new projects for class is to insert ourselves into a movie scene using green screening. This effect was something that was actually done on my favorite YouTube Show about filmmaking: Film Riot.

Film Riot is an awesome show that teaches you "the effects and techniques that go into some of your favorite Hollywood films." So everything from pre-pro to production and post production, they cover most everything that it takes to become a filmmaker. And from time to time, they teach you how to how to do some cool VFX using After Effects. One in particular is how to insert yourself into the scene of a film, or in their case the trailer for the first Avengers movie. Its a really fun tutorial, and the technique is almost exactly what we talked about in class, which covered lighting, placement, and motion. If you need another reference for how to do this effect, this is definitely worth watching!

Also, earlier this week, I found a really great article that talks about the history of Rotoscoping. IT goes from when the technique was first invented in 1915 by Max Fleischer when he created Out of The Inkwell to what we use it for now. I love using this technique to make lightsabers and other fun laser sci fi-based effects. If you want to check out the article follow this link here: https://www.rocketstock.com/blog/rotoscoping-from-early-animation-to-blockbuster-vfx/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=Rotoscoping:-From-Early-Animation-to-Blockbuster-VFX&utm_campaign=09-2015-facebook-posts

Green Screen Magic

Recently in class, we have been learning how to insert ourselves into scenes from movies and TV shows using green screens. The process has been pretty fun, and it's something that real world productions actually use. One thing that comes to mind is a show I've been watching a lot recently, Fringe. In this science fiction show, the characters have to deal with an alternate universe, including alternate versions of themselves. This often involves scenes where the actors are talking to themselves, sometimes in camera angles that make it nearly impossible to just use a body double.

So they made use of a number of special effects techniques, including green screens, in order to get the actors to appear next to themselves. Sometimes this can be quite the experience for some actors. To get an idea of how working with green screens can be for actors, just take a listen to this interview with Jasika Nicole, who played Agent Astrid Farnsworth.

The Whip

The Whip has been a staple of KickTV programming since its launch in 2012 and the host of that show has been the amazing Rachel Bonnetta. Today Bonnetta announced that she would be doing her last Whip ever and decided that the best way to give a farewell would be to "Periscope" her final recording. This offered and insight behind the scenes of The Whip and how it was made. Basically Rachel stands in front of a massive green screen and talks about all the crazy soccer videos on the web that week. In her words, after she records they send the footage off to people who can "do magic with it." Well this is a lot simpler than she thinks. All it takes is a little bit of masking and a few quick settings to get everything in there thats needed. The hard part is organizing it all and making it look good and corollate to what she is saying. However, this behind the scenes look was very interesting because it showed how many of KickTVs videos are produced and what goes into them, which not many people get to see. I highly recommend checking out any of their content, and if you can watch Rachels' farewell to The Whip on Periscope. Here is a sample of one of The Whip videos to show exactly what I was talking about.

The Avengers Behind The Scenes

Since we are all shooting are green screen final projects this week I thought it would be interesting to share this video. It takes a behind the scenes look on The Avengers movie and some of the green screen techniques they used. Obviously none of us will be doing something as technical as this but it's still cool to take a look at. Cheers!

Avatar and After Effects

Avatar was revolutionary in terms of 3-D animation and use of various digital effects. This video explores some of the post-production work involved in the process of putting the final cut together. I found it interesting that the video explains some of the terminology we have gone over in class such as rendering and the use of green screen. It's crazy to think that we are working on the same software that has been used to produce films grossing billions of dollars.

TAPE Production and Postproduction Reel

In the midst of my daily adventure to find inspiration via the internet and the physical world around me. I came across a video today that was filled with motion graphics and animation that could do easily (being that we already discussed this in class.) The TAPE production and postproduction reel visually illustrates the use of particles, color correction, expressions, and green screens (or green people). Either way the video is pretty short but is enough to ignite your imagination with tons and tons of ideas.

TAPE | Production & Postproduction Reel from TAPE on Vimeo.

WURST - Stop Motion

Found this amazingly creative video on Vimeo called "Wurst." It's a clever title because it's a german film and wurst serves two meanings.

It actually took me a while to realize this video was stop motion, and the cinematography was so animated, I figured it had to be green screened. It's quite a cool story as well.

The website has a "how it was made" page which is such a cool behind the scenes aspect.

Jurassic Park: The Making Of

With the recently released trailer for the newest addition to the Jurassic park saga, Jurassic World, I was inspired to revisit the origins of this series with the original movie and how it was made. Produced by Amblin Entertainment, Kathleen Kennedy, and Gerald Molen, Jurassic Park is what I consider to be one of Steven Spielberg’s best directed films. It’s weird to think that a film that I was absolutely obsessed with (and mildly terrified of) came out over twenty years ago. And taking the time to re-experience it, I have to say that it is a film that has certainly withstood the test of time. Especially considering the quality of their special effects, their rigs, and their innovative approach to putting dinosaurs onto the big screen.

At this point, if you’ve ever been interested in how they brought these ancient creatures to life, you might have heard everything from animatronics to green screens. And the fascinating thing about Jurassic Park is it utilized a combination of everything from giant malfunctioning T-Rex robots, to animated raptors, to green-screened sections of the actors staring up at nothing (while pretending they're experiencing what is the possibly one of the most extraordinary things a human can hope to witness).

Taking the time to at least browse through how they handled different situations (which I personally suggest watching the T-Rex animatronic), is a great way to inspire new and creative ways to approach projects of our own. If anything, it's definitely something that's worth watching just for the pure joy of knowing how they made such an iconic film.