Today’s episode of Film Riot brought to you by Drive San Francisco
Today on Film Riot, we drive fast.
Welcome to Film Riot Mondays, I’m your host Ryan Connolly.
Now, I found out we were going to be sponsored in an episode by the awesome Drive: San Francisco
game, which filled me with delight, which also is neither here nor there.
But what is important is it reminded me of a few e-mails I've been meaning to answer.
Ry Ry Guy: I want to do the effect where the camera moves really fast toward something
or through something… ya know what I mean?
I hope you make this an episode.
That wasn't a lot to go off of but I'm pretty sure I got it
And then there's this e-mail as well…
Hey Film Riot, is there a way to do a car chase without breaking the speed limit?
I thought these questions suited today quite nicely so, let's do this thing.
First of all, let’s talk about the shift of fact, which is the fast moving through
an area and into the car shot that I did.
I say shift affect because that's what happens in the game, you can transport from one car
to the other like that which is where I got my motivation from on how to do this.
And you'll be happy to know that this is another super simple affect so.
First thing we need to do of course, is shoot your footage.
For this I used a mono pod to act as a stabilizer so I could lift the camera high into the air
and then back down again.
If you don't have a mono pod don't worry any tripod will good just as well.
So I've got my shot by lifting the mono pod up high and then walking at no regular pace
towards the back of the car.
And once I made it all the way to the back of the car window, I cut.
I need chose this card because it has a hatch back and works perfectly to shove the camera
through the back.
So I opened the back and continued to the shot all the way to the steering wheel where
I had Josh grab on queue.
Now the most important thing to this effect is how you shoot your footage, you have to
have this entire shot mapped out in your head so you can move through that area smoothly.
Meaning, if you get to the back of the car on the left once you're inside the car you
should also be on the left side.
If you mess this up the effect will break and look really crappy.
So now that the footage is shot you can bring it in to your editor of choice, I'm going
to use After Effects because it makes it a lot easier, but you can do the same thing
in pretty much any editor.
So inside After Effects I will stitch my shots together at the point to where the camera
comes against the back of the car and then, cut to the shot inside the car.
Now, just add a fade to smooth that transition.
Next, it was time to stabilize the footage, which I was really impressed with the Adobes
built in work stabilizer plug in, I've been hearing a lot of people talk about it but
I hadn't had the chance to try it out for myself so, I got to say…
me likey, me likey a whole lot.
So all I needed to do was at the warped stabilizer to my clip and then let it and a lot of.
Once it's done I can play around with the parameters without having yet to start at
square one every time and I love that.
I love that a lot.
Now this would still work without stabilization it just wouldn't look as good since it would
be jerking around a whole lot.
But now that we've got our footage without it being a jerk were going to pre-comp this
and then start adding time remapping.
Again this is very straightforward and can be done in any editor since were doing hard
stops and starts meaning there's no ramping.
So all you need to do is speed your footage up between the point of where it starts and
stops moving.
So you can cut at the beginning of the move and your sweet change, cut when it stopped
at another and so on.
Super simple stuff.
But now you should have this, look crappy that's because we haven't added the blur and
again I did this as easily as possible.
For the move up, I just key framed a directional blur to intensify, and then dropped down as
I stopped and for the move towards the car, I did the same thing but with a radial blur
instead.
Both of these are basic blur options found in pre-much any and all editing affects software.
But now, we finally have this.
And now to once again show how much sound and color correction does for your project,
we added the finishing touches and finely end up with this.
Fun, oh so much fun.
And this effect can be used for a whole lot of different things, like swishing up the
Josh's face like I did, so take this technique and go crazy, get creative and take your stuff
from here to more fun.
That's the level right?
That's a big freakin’ level.
The original developers behind Driver I, the number one videogame in 1999, period.
And Drive II are back to create ubisoft’s first driver title.
San Francisco is a driver’s playground, it makes a ton of sense for drivers to bring
it to open world, expertise to city by the Bay.
There's over 200 miles of drivable roads in this game and its representation, San Francisco,
is amazingly close.
The ferry building, the Transamerica building, the Golden Gate Bridge you better believe
they're all in the game.
Driver is known for its classic muscle cars, the 1968 Mustang GT fastback, the 74 Ford
Grand Tereno, the 1970s Chevelle SS, they're all in here.
In fact, there's over 120 license cars within the game.
Pick a car and pulled the throttle.
The game is available now so go get it and drive really fast without getting a speeding
ticket or a car crash, both things you don't want.
And now back to the shoe, chase scenes are pretty difficult to do unless you live somewhere
where you can find a lot of empty roads which I do not.
So making it look like you're driving really fast can be pretty tricky, but, if you're
clever you can definitely pull it off.
So real quick, let's bust out four tips to look like you're driving fast without breaking
the speed limit.
Number one, move your camera around a lot.
And this really goes for all action really, the more you move your camera the more exciting
and fast-paced it will seem.
If you have a more stable shot while you are driving 45 miles an hour, if you look like
you're driving 45 miles an hour, not too exciting.
Of course don't go too crazy to where your like what am I watching, and people vomit
all over the place, if you don't want that either.
Number two.
Low angles are your friend if you can get the camera low, do it.
This will also make everything look much faster than it is and higher angles again it will
show how slow you are actually driving.
Number three, get a plethora of angles, the more shots you have to work with the better.
Because the more you cut the less time it your viewer will have to see you were actually
breaking the speed limit.
A great advantage for me was the go code camera, you can do actually safely mount these mother
f’ers to your car through suction cup mount and then drive on playa.
I was able to get some pretty cool shots by doing this, like this one, this one, and this
one.
Delish.
Number four, sound effects.
Sound is your friend.
If you're not good with sound, learn.
If the car sounds like it's going fast, you're going to perceived it this way.
Of course if you're going 10 miles an hour, it's just going to be comical.
But with all these tips combined., You get a very convincing effect without running into
the 50.
So there you go, four tips to driving fast without actually driving fast.
Now we plan to go more in depth with filming a car chase scene in the future, but since
were also finishing up our short action film Losses, we ran out of time.
Speaking of losses, we’re releasing our 9 min.
action short this Wednesday, and to say that we're excited would be a massive understatement.
We shot this bad boy on the red epic and are uploading it in glorious 2K.
After it's uploaded, were going to start releasing episodes showing how we did all the action.
So check out our YouTube on Wednesday and let us know what you think about our short
film.
That’s it, I’ll see you on Thursday but until then, be safe and don’t forget to
watch Losses, on our You Tube channel.
Where’s it going to be?
You tube.
When: Wednesday.
Which is the 14th.
Probably around noon, but don’t take o