VFX Reel Breakdown – Download

Opening Title sequence: I created and partially animated the titles in 3d Studio Max, then brought them into Adobe After Effects CS3 for the rest of the animation. Background plate was also created in After Effects, and then the two were composited together.

Music and Audio: I created the song you hear using Cakewalk Sonar 7.0 and Reason 4.0. I also added all of the sound effects heard, except for the two smoke creature shots.

Gun fire and bullet hits: I brought in several muzzle flashes, both stills and video, and composited them onto the footage. I masked out and duplicated parts of the talent and added brightness and color to the masks during the flashes to make it appear real. For the ricochets, I motion tracked the background of the footage and composited stock footage of dust and sparks to follow the footage. I created the black impact marks in Photoshop. I masked out the talents arms and legs where appropriate if they stepped in front of the ricochets at any time.

Box Opening – Guy Flying: I had to remove the cable that pulled the talent back by painting it out. I the used different forms of distortion and a slight glow and key framed them to erupt when the box was opened. I had to create mask for the box so the distortion didn’t cover the whole box.

Rocket Launcher Sequence: I created the body of the rocket in 3d Studio Max. Lights were added in 3DMax to match the street lamps from the footage. I then brought the Rocket into After effects and added grain and motion blur to the rocket to match the original footage. The front and back explosions from the actual launcher had explosions composited in. I had to rotoscope masks around myself and the rocket launcher where appropriate. Trapcode’s Particular Plug-in was used to add the smoke coming from the back of the rocket and the launcher.

Basketball Clones: The two clones in the foreground were shot on a green screen so I had to first key out the green. I then placed the clones each on their own layer and laid them over the background plate. After moving the layers so the timing was correct, I created a camera and turned all layers into 3d layers. I pushed the layers back to different depths on the z-axis in 3d space and scaled them back up to a normal looking size. Then I animated the cameras movement and point of focus to give the interesting movement effect seen.

Energy Sequences: I created several layers of particle systems, composed them together, and tracked them to the talents hands. I key framed intensity levels and speeds and any other appropriate parameters as needed. For the energy collision with the sparks, I had to match move the footage in Boujou and get a good camera solve, which I then imported into After Effects and applied the 3d particle systems in the middle to the 3d camera. I created an invisible plane and matched it to floor in the footage and told the particles systems to bounce and slide off of that surface. Subtractive masks were applied to the talents where needed to give the illusion of depth to the sparks.

Car Hit: The subject getting hit was shot on a portable green screen there in the parking lot. His feet were not covered though, as to allow a natural shadow. I keyed out the green and rotoscoped his feet and shadow and composited them all together to make the subject his own layer. I then placed him over the plate of the car passing, and animated his body to bend backwards when hit and move out of frame with the car. To get the hood to bend up, I took a picture of an actual wrecked car hood and cut into pieces and animated them to bend up. I blended that animation over the actual hood and timed it up to happen at the right moment. I created the glass bouncing off the ground using a particle system.

Slow Motion Bullet: I brought an image sequence of the bullet into after effects and had to color correct, and add grain and blur to get the bullet to match the footage as best as possible.

Black Smoke Monster – Passing through trees: I know this isn’t Lost but the Director wanted something that looked similar. I created the smoke creature using a particle system and adjusting the parameters until I got the desired look. In order to make it look like it was in the background moving through the trees, I duplicated the footage, de-saturated it, and crushed the blacks and whites until I had a good alpha matte. I then used that as a track matte for the particle system so that as it passed, it would only be seen where there was white.

Black Smoke Monster – Face Scratch: I started by creating the actual smoke elements using a particle system. I then created a 3d null object and parented the x, y, and z emitters from the particle system to the null objects position. Once that was done, I animated the null object in 3d space, causing the particle system to fly around as needed. I then composited it over the footage of the girl and used a subtractive on the particle layer and rotoscoped it so the smoke would not be seen as it passes behind her.

Smoke Around Face – Created a particle system in After Effects using Trapcode Particular. Animated the emitter to wrap around girls face. Had to rotoscope using masks to cover the smoke element in places to give the illusion of wrapping around the girls head.

- If you have any more questions feel free to call or email. Thanks.

Brandon Russ

BrandonSRuss@gmail.com

352.320.3378