This episode of Film Riot is brought to you by domain.com.
Today on Film Ride, we do some Slurpee modding and some CG work. Oh yeah, baby-dude. Welcome
to Film Riot. Place the thing I say every week here. I'm your host Ryan Connolly. Do
you remember last week ?
Since then, a lot of you have been asking us to explain where we got the wrist weapon,
how we made it move, and how we did the lens flare. So today, we're gonna do all those
things that I just mentioned just a second ago when I said all of those things. So those
are the things that we're going to do today.
So, yeah.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was bench pressing a car when my little sister
showed up with a Slurpee. I was like hey The cup looks like the thingy from Cowboys and
Aliens, Wrist Bracelet of Doom. Oh it is! I bet you I could cut the cup off and use
it as a prop. And then I did. First I cut off the bottom then down the side, then peeled
away at the cup to clip the nub that connected the cup to the wristband.
Once I had it free of the cup, it was still a bit big and uncomfortable for Josh to wear.
So we lined the inside with some black cloth, and we were ready to go. This $7.00 cup turned
prop looked surprisingly good, but still needed that extra something to make it work really
well. And that of course was a lens flare to match the movie's version.
So we had to add these bad boys digitally of course using optical flares from Video
Copilot, which is a $129.00 plug in for after effects. To add these little shiny devils,
first make sure you have the lights on when you're shooting. This is very important since
we're going to be using those later.
Next bring your footage into after effects, duplicate the video layer, then create a mask
around the lights and animate it to follow the light like so. Next we desaturated this,
and added levels so that we could single out the bright area and black out everything else
like so. Now we will add a black solid, put it directly below this layer, then precomp
them together.
Now we will hide this layer, then create another black solid and add optical flares to this
one. An optical flares is... if you click options, you get a screen that will give you
a ton of great options for flares. So you can find one that fits your liking, then customize
it even further if you want.
But once you have the flare you like, change the source type to Luminance, then set the
source layer to that duplicated layer. Now, set the optical flare's layer to add, then
adjust the scale and brightness of the flare you choose until you have the look you want
and you now have some delightful full flares happening.
The great thing about this technique is that you can use it subtly to add a lot visually
to many different scenes. Take this for example. We have a guy who comes into a room with a
flashlight searching around. Looks okay, but we drop in the lens glare technique, and we
have a lot more of a cinematic feel.
So take advantage of this technique, remembering that you can slap flare on to pretty much
anything to brighten the scene, so go get all Michael Bay up on it. Be right back.
It's all in the job. You wake up in the morning. You put on your armor, eat some stuff, and
you're doing the job.
That's how it is, man.
Sometimes it's rewarding. Sometimes it's rough--I mean downright bananas!
But it's always the job.
Just the job Berry.
We do a lot of patrolling. You've got to keep the eyes on the prize. We've also got to keep
our bodies right. And ready at all times.
You guys carry weapons?
No. No it's actually illegal for us to have firearms, but I've got Damien. That's all
the fire power I need. So now we're doing our basic patrolling. We drive through the
area, grid by grid, scanning for perpetrators.
Sounds like a lot of work.
That's because it is!
We 've got one.
Looks like you're going to be seeing some action after all my friend. Alright. Well
you go around the back.
No time.
Section 6?
7.
Well, then you hold on to your pixie dust.
And one more click, and I'll be a proud owner of a dotcom.
Intruder! Are you an idiot?
Who are you?
You're about to buy yourself a dotcom. For a video set.
Yes.
You didn't know Dot T.V.'s the best place to showcase your videos online?
I didn't.
With Dot T.V. people know what they're getting. It's right in the extension.
Simple mathematics, Sandy.
Listen. I don't want to be rude, but I don't think you guys. You want to get tazed in the
neck?
No.
Then you listen man.
Burn.
You want to showcase your sweet vidges on the web you need to get yourself a Dot T.V.
With Dot T.V. you can control your content and look more professional than just having
one of them YouTubies.
I got an itchy tazing finger.
Oh God, what do you want me to do?
Just go to Domain.com, search for the perfect Dot T.V. domain name for you, and then enjoy
your path to fame and fortune.
That's it?
That's it.
Now?
Right now. Beautiful.
You know it's times like these that make it all worth it. Makes you just want to go back
in there and share a drink with the perp, congratulate them on their new site. But then
I'm pretty sure he called the cops, so we'd better go.
Don't forget to use the coupon code FilmRiot at Check out to save an extra 15%.
Logo.
Done what?
Dude. That's the Cowboys and Aliens thing.
I know this is one of the things you guys most wanted a tutorial on. Stark did this
in 3D Studio Max, and we were very happy with how it came out. So I guess let's talk about
it and stuff. Since Josh's wrist pretty much had no parallax to it, we really didn't need
to 3D track him. We just tracked it later on in after effects.
So first Stark took a good reference frame to use as the background in 3DS Max to line
up correctly with the wrist thingy. Then we roughly measured the actual bracelet and modeled
it to correct physical size so that the light would be as physically correct as possible.
And the final model was made to look as flush against the side as we could possibly get
it.
Next we animated the motion, which is pretty straight forward, as you can see. And now
we need a texture. We looked for one that was visually close to the actual brace, although
the color didn't matter as much because we could change that later. For the light that
you see on the 3D object, it was just a self-illuminating material to give the surrounding objects illumination
and look all lit.
and what have you. From there, Stark also rendered out a luminance mat for later use
in After Effects with optical flares, like kind of like we did before. Lastly, he rendered
out the frames. And at this point, nothing is tracked yet as we'll take care of that
in compositting. And to composite, we'll move over to After Effects.
So we'll bring in the plate footage of Josh and then the rendered frames. Of course, we're
working in 32 bit linear working space, which is 100% essential for perfect blending of
layers especially when using lights. Now it's time to track the bracelet, then attach our
rendered frames to it, and voila, the fake C.G. object sticks perfectly.
Now after we color match the C.G. assets to the plate and turn on motion blur so it matches
the plate, the last step was adding the flares which we did the same way I showed you before
using that luminous mat. So just repeat those steps to add the lens flare, and.... Dude,
that's the Cowboys ; Aliens thing!
We now have a moving Cowboys ; Aliens wrist weapon of coolness. The history of CGI is
a long one, including West World, Tron, and Young Sherlock Holmes as major landmarks.
But it wasn't until Cameron used it in The Abyss and then again in Terminator 2 that
gave the people behind Jurassic Park what They needed to convince Spielberg to give
CGI a try for the dinosaurs.
Originally they were going to handle all the dinosaurs' effects using stop-go animation.
But once they tested it out using computer generation for this, they immediately switched
and created some of the most iconic moments in film, and now 18 years later still some
of the best CGI work that I have ever seen.
Well, that's it, my friends. Next week we have the Red Camera coming in, so we're going
to be showing some BTS stuff of what we're doing with it and me getting used to it and
drooling all over it I' m sure! And then the week following, we're going to have episodes
actually on the camera....so, super excited about that.
But as always, if you want to stay connected, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/ryan_connelly
and stay connected on our Facebook page. And I'll see you guys next week when I make a
chick flick disguised as a manly action film because no guy movie's going to have shirtless
men in slow-mo, playing volleyball because its just not.
I'm making for some bomb-breaking.
Oh, my God!