Hopefully you’ve already enjoyed Soul Searcher now that it’s online in full for free. Now you can enjoy the deleted scenes too…
Right, I have to get back to preparing my lecture about the making of Soul Searcher for tomorrow night (Tuesday). It’s at 7pm at The Rural Media Company, 72-80 Widemarsh Street, Hereford. Entrance is free, but satisfied attendees will be encouraged to donate a little cash to Stop/Eject at the end.
See you there.
Open University programming isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the men with tweed jackets and unfathomable beards who haunt your TV screen at 3am. In their place are men with no chins and terrible haircuts who loiter on YouTube 24/7.
This video is part of the OU’s Digital Film School course, which my good friend Rick Goldsmith co-wrote. You can find out more about him, his company and perhaps even his tweed jacket at www.catchermedia.co.uk
Following on from my last post, let’s take a closer look at how part of The Beacon‘s car chase sequence was created, in particular the bit where Sarah goes flying out through her windscreen during the crash and miraculously lands on the roof rack of the villain’s speeding car. This ridiculous feat garnered a round of applause at the premiere, but how was it done?
The car crash was done for real, as previously explained, but clearly I couldn’t afford the stunt team and wire rigs necessary to catapult someone through the air and then composite in the vehicles below, which is how you would probably do it if you had a proper budget.
In fact there are no visual FX in this sequence at all. The illusion is created entirely through editing, using quick cuts of Sarah (LJ Hamer) leaning through the pre-smashed windscreen, a close-up of her legs being pulled out through the windscreen by a couple of crew members stood on the bonnet, a low angle shot against sky where she’s not moving at all, and a dummy being thrown at the villain’s car. The dummy was pulled together from whatever items we had to hand and looked terrible, but only eight frames of it were needed in the edit before cutting to an angle of LJ (already on the roof rack) dropping from all fours onto her front.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so a video must be worth at least a million. So I’ve put together a little compilation of the rushes so you can see exactly what I mean.
Here’s a look at how I created one of the FX shots in the Wasteland trailer. Tom, the director, wanted to see the central character, Scott (Shameer Seepersand), walking along a deserted dual carriageway to show his isolation in the post-apocalyptic world.
We started by shooting the A50 from a bridge (image 1). Traffic was light, but we were never able to get a clean, car-less shot. (While filming we were interrupted by a couple of blokes from the Highways Agency who wanted to cover their arses in case of accident, so gave us a safety briefing: “Be careful when you cross the road, lads.”)
The next day we drove around looking for a footpath or cycle path with similar tarmac to the A50 which could be shot from a bridge to get the same elevated viewpoint. Having located one, we filmed Sham walking (2).
Shrinking Sham down and feathering the edges of his element into the shot was the work of moments (3), but the illusion wasn’t complete until this element had been colour-corrected to match up the tarmacs.
Next the cars had to be erased, which I achieved partly by overlaying cropped sections from later in the footage (when the cars had moved on, leaving a space behind) and partly by exporting a frame to Photoshop and using the clone tool. The former technique is preferable because using a motion element retains the movement of picture noise; the lack of this movement can be an FX giveaway. Therefore I kept the Photoshopped sections small – just way in the distance where the cars were tiny.
At this point (4) the shot is essentially complete, but I added some extra touches in the form of smoke elements from an FX library, a faint one in the distance (top left) and one on the van which I had left frozen in the picture as if it had been abandoned. I also duplicated the van’s smoke and distorted it to create a shadow for that smoke (5).
All images copyright 2011 Light Films.
A decade ago today principal photography wrapped on The Beacon. To celebrate, here’s Behind The Beacon, a documentary previously only available to those lucky few who purchased the DVD. (I’m sorry, lucky few. I’m really sorry. I hope it was at least useful as a coaster.)
The documentary was made by David Abbott of Star Films, who also served as first assistant director, director’s chauffeur and action vehicle co-ordinator on The Beacon. Yep, The Beacon is a £3,000 movie with a car chase in it. How? Well, a crazy cast and crew, a quiet common and a total disregard for any kind of health and safety procedures. In fact, the chief requirement for involvement in the film, behind or in front of camera, was a complete lack of interest in one’s own personal safety. So I must of course write the immortal words: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.
Anyway, there’ll probably be some more behind-the-scenes video nuggets from The Beacon coming your way later in the year, so look out for those. And you can read all about the making of the Malvern Hills’ most action-packed movie ever by selecting The Beacon from the Blog Categories in the sidebar. And if you feel like you’ve missed something because you haven’t seen the film itself – trust me – ignorance is bliss.
Here is the last of the Dark Side Guides: The Dark Side Guide to Digital Intermediate. I really had to muddle my way through post-production on the pilot, wishing there was somewhere I could get all the information I needed, but there wasn’t – until now!
This step-by-step guide takes you through the complex post-production route known as DI, whereby footage shot on film is transferred to the digital domain for editing, FX and colour grading, before being recorded back to film for distribution and exhibition. Invaluable tips on everything from telecine of your rushes to Dolby authorisation for your soundtrack are complemented by a sample budget laying out all the costs.
As always, if you have any questions that the guide doesn’t answer, please feel free to ask me.
The DSG-ME, as all the cool kids are calling it, is a ten minute dash through the logistics and fiscalities (if such a word there be) of filming things wot are tiny. For any filmmaker contemplating a traditional models-based approach to special effects, this featurette provides a plethora of practical advice including how to choose a scale, what format to shoot on and how much it will cost. I share everything I learnt about working with miniatures while making the demo sequence for my fantasy-adventure feature The Dark Side of the Earth, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Kate Burdette (The Duchess) and Mark Heap (Spaced, Green Wing).
What there wasn’t room to include – and also I didn’t want to digress too much into Soul Searcher (a fear I don’t have in this blog, home to many a digression [in fact, case in point, just look at how much parenthetical digression there is in this one sentence]) – were pyrotechnical considerations, since model work and blowing things up go hand in hand. First off, you should always get a properly qualified and licensed pyrotechnician. They will come with their own insurance, and will know the proper procedures, like informing the police and so on. Even if they agree to work for free, you will have to cover the costs of the explosives themselves, and the specialised transport to deliver them.
You will definitely need to shoot on film, as now you’re not just trying to make the thing look full-size, you’re trying to make it look full-size and in slow motion – necessitating ultra-highspeed shooting. Make sure you protect the camera from flying debris; styrene sheeting from a DIY store will do the trick. Build your miniature extra large, since even with the styrene you won’t want to put the camera very close, and a long lens will make the model look smaller.
All in, unless you’re able to borrow the film equipment, expect it to cost about a grand for one or two shots.
Sound designer and mixer Henning Knoepfel talks about creating and balancing the soundtrack for the pilot.
Compositing supervisor John Galloway (from top VFX house Double Negative) and compositing/rotoscoping artist Joseph Brett explain how the puppeteers operating the Wooden Swordsman were painstakingly erased from the footage using Shake.
A look at the pick-ups shooting during which the fifth scale miniature elements of the Wooden Swordsman and his ceiling mechanism were filmed, along with some full-size shots.