No Small Effect

Lately I’ve been planning for the additional shooting for ‘Distortion’ but also playing with music and with visual effects. As I mentioned in a previous post I am going to be getting a very cool particle generator for After Effects to help with some of the visual effects for the film. But other effects are not so intensive but no less important.

Here’s a good example of me not wanting to get into trouble but a different kind of trouble followed. When I was in film school my friend Joe made a film which was a big chase scene. I was the chaser and wore a long coat and had a water pistol. Someone not realizing what we were doing called the police and three cop cars pulled up. This was the summer of 1993. Different time. Different world. During the summer of 2008 I wasn’t about to take the chance of any one of us getting into trouble. For the film I used an air soft BB gun. It looks real and even operates in a very real manner which is awesome for a low budget film. But for legal purposes they are made with an orange tip so that it cannot be mistaken for a real gun. In Illinois, or Chicago specifically, they’re not fans of these guns either. To avoid any possible issue I decided to not paint over the orange tip and find someway to color it out in post. Unfortunately that means I do have to go frame by frame. Luckily the fun is only in two scenes but still quite a lot to do. Here is a rough test for it.

Raw camera footage.

The orange tip has been recolored and then image is color corrected and matted.

Another effect in the film is an eye glow. A typical effect but I wanted to try and do it in a cool way. Not have it look cheesy. While it’s hard to tell from the still the glow does pulsate and have inner movement. While still a rough test I was pretty happy so far.

Raw camera footage.

Rough test. Eyes were motion tracked and the red glow added. Plus color corrected and widescreen matte added.

More stuff coming soon.