Dreams and Money: How Do We Get Them in the Same Room? Part Two

Last month we looked at the process that has lead me into post production on a movie trailer that I am making to help sell my feature film, Junior Crew (which yes, I know, the working title sucks. I'm open to suggestions!) During our process of pitching the script we met with the owners of New Deal Studios, who were immediately intrigued with the film and impressed with the press kit we had developed for it. New Deal agreed to sign on as our co-producers, handling all of the FX when the film gets made, for a fraction of their usual rate, which would help us with the final budget. When we decided to make the trailer, we asked for some help from them in regards to the compositing and FX.

When we came down to post production, I started cutting to figure out exactly what we would need from them. I worked on some of the FX with After FX and some of the fantastic plug-ins that are available. Here's a rundown of the work I tried to complete myself:

1. I built a heads up display for the spaceship controls, which could be manipulated by the hand movements of the characters. I drew the basic schematic in Fireworks and added the moving objects and video in After Effects. I then added Sapphire Glow (which is my favorite glow plug-in) and Red Giant's Holomatrix to give it that projection effect. After that I just used a null object to track the motion of the handheld camera, and applied the track to the HUD. A simple and effective effect that helped give an old set a more futuristic appeal.
   
   
2. I only had enough money to build two alien helmets and rent two costumes (which funnily enough were samurai outfits from The Last Samurai) so I had to do some duplication to make them look like an army. The shots were fairly simple since all they had to do was march forward, stop, and bow after a wave of magical power passes through them. I pulled the mattes using keylight, and had to do a little bit of root because I used white tracking markers on the greenscreen. Don't do that. Use bright orange or blue so you can key them out on a separate keyer. Some lessons you have to learn the hard way, but take it from me…don't do that! Also, on every set that I shot, I made sure to roll 15 seconds on just the backgrounds before the actors came into place. This is a good practice that can save you time and money later if you realize that you missed a shot, or didn't like what you shot. I ended up using it to create the reverse of a room that didn't exist, and that became the backdrop for the alien pirates. It's a little mickey-mouse, but I was doing fast cuts so it shouldn't look too bad. As it turned out, my keying wasn't that great, so there were some edge issues, but it at least got the point across. The one thing I couldn't figure out a good way to do was the "magical wave" that passed through the pirates. That was going to be a New Deal Studios question.
   
   
3. The reverse of the pirates was on the kids, where Ray raises a staff and the magic happens. I started this process by using some different particle effects. I used Red Giant's Trapcode Particular and GenArts Particle Illusion to create the main parts of the effect. I also used GenArts Sapphire Lens Flare for the shine from the staff, and keyframed it so that it grew as the power grew. I thought this shot would take me the longest, but funnily enough, the plug-ins were so easy to use that it didn't take me more than an hour or so. Just a quick track to apply to the effects and I was done!
   
   
4. There were a few other composite shots that I had, which I wanted to be wide, since most of my spaceship footage was pretty tight. The film should feel epic, so I wanted a couple of big wide shots. My problem is, I'm not a wizard with Cinema4D or Maya, so I figured I would wait to talk to New Deal about that. However, I did know that there was a great site called Turbosquid.com that had some stock 3D models that were pretty cool, so I logged on. I was able to find a spaceship hangar bay interior, which I knew would make it much easier for New Deal to help me since they would only have to texture it.
   
   
5. I was able to create some great slow motion energy blasts in After Effects using a combination of VideoCoPilot's Evolution ink effects, Sapphire Zap, and Sapphire Glow. Those effects are a blast coming from theevil Rohn, and they are blocked by a magical shield which I also created by tracing the actual shield in Fireworks and adding Sapphire Glow, Sapphire Lens Flare, and a piece of cloud footage effected by Sapphire Warp and Glow. Some of the best looking FX, including laser blasts and explosions are the easiest ones to achieve when you have the right tools.
   

Going to New Deal Studios
My main quest with New Deal was to have them handle the spaceship battles, which I had no idea how I was going to accomplish. I had a few set shots storyboarded, but again have no understanding of 3D modeling. They politely told me that those kinds of shots are very expensive to make photorealistic, and that I was better off stealing some footage, since this trailer wasn't going out to the general public. I didn't think that I would find anything with high enough quality, but soon learned the trick of how to download HD source files directly from the place Youtube stores them, this way they don't have the youtube logo on them. Look it up on youtube, theres a video that shows how it's done. I was able to find enough of what I needed in there, and with new color correction and my own sound effects it could work. It also allowed me to do a transition that I thought New Deal would have to do, which was I wanted a camera move that I had backing away from my talent to come through a window to the outside of a spaceship. Even though I don't understand 3D, I was able to trace the window frame from the actual space footage in Fireworks and import that into after effects. I then watched one of the fantastic tutorials on VideoCoPilot.net where Andrew Kramer tells you how to move through the glass of a car window. I was able to make the reverse of this for my shot, and managed a fairly complex shot all by myself.

New Deal Studios agreed to let me use one of their computers, learn the compositing program NukeX, and work on my compositing. They also had two great interns who helped named Emy and Kain. Kain was a Maya genius so she was painting the 3d model of the hangar bay while Emy was working on compositing and rotoscoping. I was a little nervous when Lead Compositor Jeff Jasper (who has done more amazing work in films than I ever will) sat me down at a Mac with NukeX and gave me the 10 minute introduction! I was forced to figure it out on my own, and I have to say that once I did, I was amazed. Nuke is a node-based compositor, and while being extremely complex it is very easy to navigate once you understand the interface. Before long I was creating massive node trees with multiple roots and FX. And a side note, Trapcode Particular and GenArts Monsters are now available for Nuke if you are lucky enough to have the interface, which is pretty expensive.

I was so impressed with the roto capabilities and complex keying tools that I went back and re-keyed all of my other shots as well. Once Kain was finished with the UV Mapping and texturing of the 3D model, she worked on a 3D rendering of the particle effect that I would use to pass through my space pirates. She created a 3D version of the layout of my space pirate shot, and created an alpha effect that I was able to drop in and meld with GenArts Monsters Pixelfly and Sapphire Glow in After Effects to meld the two sides of the sequence together. The result is a pretty awesome, original effect that sells the idea!

In the end I was really happy that New Deal gave me the interface rather than just doing the work. I was able to learn a new interface and get a look inside their amazing facility, and watch the amazing details that they go though on the projects they are a part of. Whenever you are hating your life because of a few seconds of detailed rotoscoping, consider the work that they go through to build the amazing effects you see in their films…like Inception and Dark Knight.

After finishing the FX, I checked in with my brilliant composer friend Gordy Haab, who had worked on another film of mine. He has been doing video game scoring lately, and has had a hand in some amazing scores for Star Wars and Indiana Jones games. That experience was perfect because I was trying to get the old style of sci-fi back with my film. So Gordy was able to draw from those experiences and add his amazing touch to a traditional thematic score that really brought out the moments in this trailer! I knew it would be good, but Gordy went above and beyond with this one.

Next steps:
So now we have the finished trailer, a press kit, a budget, and a lot of plans to make this film. Currently we are building a website for all of this info to sit in, and we'll soon get this out to the investors of the world that at this point still seem like mythical creatures that only show up when James Cameron needs money. Check in next month where I hope to have information on pitching this project with the trailer as our lead item, and find out what happens next!

A.J. Wedding is a graduate of Western Michigan University and has won festival awards for his first feature film, "Pop Fiction". As a writer/director, he has won several awards for his short films, and recently garnered worldwide distribution for a feature film titled “The Disappearance of Jenna Matheson” releasing this year. His hit web series, “Infamous” created an instant fanbase, and spawned interest from networks to create a tv series based on it. A.J. currently works with The Production Green, directing and editing commercials as well as developing his next feature film, "Junior Crew."

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