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Today on Film Riot, we get simplistic, like Josh’s math skills.
Die in a mosh pit.
Yikes.
Brunoski. Hey Buddy Guy… that (beep) got real. You dirty licker of fart. What? I know
what you did. What did I do? You did it. I did? Suck bullet juice.
You suck man.
Welcome to Film Riot, the show that takes the mystery out of the fascinating techniques
(OMG… what in the world is he saying here??? Geezz!!) of some of your favorite Hollywood
films, I’m your host, Ryan Connolly and I really don’t know what that sketch was
all about.
Me either.
It kind of just happened.
Kind of like this.
Did I do that sketch for no reason? Nay. There is a method to my madness, as it were. Look…
“He RyRy, any change you could do a Film Riot Monday on how to achieve the effect of
bullets traveling through water?
Yes. And I’m going to make it so easy, that good ole nana could pull it off. Who’s nana?
Oh nana.
First, before I can even start thinking about the effect, I have to decide how I was going
to get the underwater footage. Now I do have that underwater housing which I used for the
music video. But that is just a plastic bag for a case and although it works great, it
makes me nervous to put my 5B in it every time. But then I was like, hey, why don’t
I just use my new Go-Pro camera?
So, I’ve got the Go-Pro hero here, these things are awesome, they are about 200 bucks,
they do full 1080 video, they are super resilient, they run on SD cards and the cool thing about
them is they come with a water proof casing, so you can put them in this little baby, jump
in the ocean, your pool, whatever you want and bam, for 200 bucks you’ve got a camera
that shoots 1080 video and is underwater ready. Plus I can drop this thing… this is the
kind of thing you see like birds flying away with and then they find it and it is perfectly
fine. These things are awesome.
Now we’re going to shoot all the underwater stuff with Bruno, with this instead of my
5B in the water proof housing. So now I don’t have to panic about ruining the 5B, if we
mess up housing at all, cause it is only $200, which is a lot of money still. Right Bruno?
Yes.
So now, I can jump in the pool and go crazy since I don’t have to worry about being
super careful with the camera because these Go Pro cameras are built to be abused. But
now that I’ve decided how to shoot the footage, it was time to start thinking about how to
do the affect.
And at first I was thinking compositing, maybe getting a green screen into the pool. Maybe
3D affects and then I thought wait, why don’t I just throw some (beep) at Bruno.
I get to throw these at Bruno.
My personal favorite type affect is a practical one, if I can do something as a special affect
in camera, I would much rather do that than a visual affect in post. It always comes out
looking better, especially when working on no budget, so…I decided to go as simple
as possible on this and we just grabbed a few rocks and threw them on either side of
Bruno while he swam. That’s it.
Now this would work much better if you had a sling shot and you have to find the right
type of rocks. Small, smooth rocks with a thin arrow like head works best, they cut
through the water and look like a bullet. Flat, bulky rocks just end of flopping around,
and looking horrible. So, if I were to do this again, I would use two sling shots and
have two guys, one on either side of Bruno shooting into the pool and I would probably
use marbles instead of rocks. Thinking ahead of time.
And of course use a gallon of safety when doing this, we were throwing rocks a good
four feet from Bruno but the angle made it look like they were so much closer so don’t
be stupid and pull and David and Goliath on your friend, use up all that caution when
you are doing your cinema making.
Finally, you need to have proper audio. This is a big part of selling the affect; the sound
tells the audience what they are seeing. So, for me, once again, I went super simplistic,
I thought I would have to do a lot of EQing, but in the end I just found the sound I wanted
and then added a low pass filter to it. That’s it. And a little pass filter is exactly what
it sounds like, once the filter is applied it will allow the low frequencies of the clip
to be heard and it will block out the highs. Before I added the plug-in to my sound affect,
it sounded like this. But after I popped that little devil on…
It worked perfectly and to my surprise, this ended up being one of easiest things we have
ever done on Film Riot to date, so, go grab grandma, grab some rocks and get filming my
friend. Booya.
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So that’s it my friends, but as a little bit of an update, we are getting close to
finishing our action short, Losses. We’re adding in all the visual effects, refining
the edits so hopefully, we will be about two weeks from now and then you will be partaking
with your eyes.
Also, I’m still hard at work on Tell, my other short film. I have a good draft of the
edit down and I’m really liking how it is coming out. It is all a matter of getting
the audio and the color correction done. And I’m on the hunt for a composer right now.
So Tell is a bit further out, but we are definitely getting closer. But now that I have updated
yo-anus, you can follow me on Twitter is you to or our Film Riot Facebook page is always
fun, so fun. But I will see you again on Thursday, so until then be safe, and watch good films.