Visual effects for low budget movies!

Why bother with effects, I'll just cut away.  Well you can do that but it makes for a really boring film as just when you get to something interesting you are cutting away from it.  Most low budget movies are very claustrophobic with lots of two shots of people shot in just a few locations.  Even if you just stick in a few digital mattes to set the scene for your audience you will be increasing your production value and the enjoyment of your story as it will open it up.

 

One thing going for low budget digital movies is the word digital.  Movies shot on film are very expensive for the effects as they have to be scanned into the computer.  Our footage is already digital and ready to be worked on. After Effects and other programs will open the footage into a format that you can use, even changing the rectangular pixels that video uses into the square pixels that computers use.  These programs can also bring in renders from 3D programs like Maya and Lightwave as well as digital still photos and photoshop compositions.  Any still camera with a resolution of 1mb or more will work for mini-DV video  also anything that can be scanned or shot on digital still or video can be brought in to be worked with.  Colors can be changed, it can change from day to night, rain snow, movie looks...

So what type of VFX (visual effects) are possible?  Pretty much all of them!  Need a castle, use a vacation still photo, shoot video of your sentry, and put them together.  Add some clouds from another still photo panning in the back ground and you've got a digital matte shot. 

Need a trained goldfish to jump out of a bowl or an airplane to hit a motel sign?  A combination of a  digital matte painting or still photo along with a CGI character modeled or purchased and animated simply in either Maya or Lightwave or another 3D program.  How about a tennis ball that goes where you want?

Or a theater full of people when only 20 extras show up for the shoot? Not too hard.  lock the camera down on a shot of the empty seats and move your extras around to different positions as the camera is rolling.  in post go back and cut out and paste the different sections together for a full house.  Need more soldiers for your civil war battle, take your ten or so re-enactors and with the camera locked down shoot them on the left side of the screen then rearrange them on the right side of the screen.  Cut the two shots together with a mask and you have doubled your army.

Battle set in a thunderstorm and the sun shines everytime you shoot?  Change the contrast and lower the saturation in post and add a rain plug-in, or snow, or fire.

Most of what we see in the hollywood blockbuster is possible in our mini epics. Does it look as good? Well, those movies cost over a $100,000,000 so no it doesn't look quite as good but it looks pretty close to the effects that are done for television and mini series as they are often done with the same tools.  Of course they are shot on film or at least HD. 

Won't this cost a lot?  careful planning and shooting and a smart use of effects can keep the costs down and since they can be done using standard software and desktop computers it is very reasonable.

Example: A digital matte shot.

on my first movie Franky's Heaven directed by Joe O'Ferrell, we had a problem.  Joe had found a great location for the house in heaven that ends the movie.  Only one problem, the perfect house and grounds were towered over by a huge steel factory building on top of a hill right behind them.  I went out on the shoot with the rest of the cast and crew and we set up a series of overlapping locked down shots and shot our actress and the house in the background.  In after Effects I trimmed and edited the three shots into one very wide video canvas (after effects lets you work at any size you want.  You can make something very big and drag it around in front of your normal camera size and it will look like it is panning or zooming or whatever) In this case we wanted a nice pan from a pond to the house.  The factory as well as the rest of the sky was roto-scoped out and replaced with a doctored digital still of a beautiful heaven type of sky and lofty mountains.  I even added some CGI butterflies skimming on the pond and landing on the actresses' shoulder.

How to plan for digital effects:  Since you are on a tight budget you must plan carefully and shoot what you need.  The first step is to go over your script and hilight any shots that you are not sure how they will be done.  Some of these might be candidates for VFX some might work as practical shots.  Once you have decided your shot a storyboard should be made detailing exactly what is going to happen.  It doesn't have to be great art just some sort of plan to get what you want.  If you have a certain look that you are going for you might want to clip photos from magazines that have the look you are going for. Research!!!!

The most important thing about budget VFX.... LOCK THE CAMERA DOWN AND DON'T MOVE IT. What does this mean?  It means put the camera where you want it and tighten everything and turn it on.  Don't pan it, zoom it, or even touch it.  any movement no matter how slight will add ten times or more to the work and the cost of your shot. Here's why: in the franky's heaven shot above I mentioned locking down the camera and shooting three overlapping segments.  (the camera was panned from one spot to another between the shots but never during) When cut out and placed in After Effects with the overlapping shots next to each other you end up with three locked off shots that slightly overlap on the edges.  Trim the edges off until you have one large image that looks like it was shot in cinema-scope.  The tree line and roof-line of the house were all carefully masked in photoshop to cut away the sky and the offending steel building.  Since the camera didn't move Only one mask was needed which took about a half an hour to make. If the camera had moved a mask would have been needed (or animated) for each frame of video.  That's 30 frames per second (29.97 actually).  That's 30 times more work and expense for each second of your shot which will be several seconds long.  I think this shot was ten or twelve seconds.  That is a worse case scenario and sometimes you will be able to animate a matte if the matte line is simple which may only be ten or more times more work.

What about motion tracking?  This is useful but tough to do especially in Mini-DV and time consuming also.

Yeah I know there are all those great crane shots during visual FX in the Lord of the Rings but that's where the millions of dollars are spent.  They also have these motion control camera which can repeat the same pass over and over and tell you exactly how it did it. 

Hopefully this will give you some ideas for your next movie.

Craig Herron is owner of Herron Designs and produces, directs and animates his own productions as well as doing VFX for many under $30,000 movies and animation for commercials.  His short documentary Freedom Dance is currently making the film festival rounds, starting with the Maryland Film Festival.