Imagine running into a bank with a ski mask and an airsoft gun, and then loudly demanding smaller change for your $20 bill. Chances are, if you could avoid getting shot, you would probably attract a fair amount of attention. And that is an understatement. Businesses thrive on attention, but in our media saturated world it is very difficult to stand out using traditional marketing techniques. While it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for a struggling business to attempt the hypothetical bank stunt, in a metaphorical sense, it is exactly the sort of marketing that will work; something that is new and a little outside the box.
Over the last six months, we have been brainstorming, strategizing and testing a new branch of the Effects Forge that specializes in outside of the box visual marketing. This branch has developed into the Commotion Engine.
Commotion Engine is a guerrilla marketing firm that specializes in producing fun and creative marketing animations specifically designed to penetrate and spread through social media platforms. It is our goal to help clients create a unique Commotion that will be heard and remembered by potential customers, and our team’s expertise with motion graphics, 3d animation and video production are uniquely suited for the job. If you know of any companies that could benefit from this form of marketing, please send them our way!
In the wake of effects heavy movies such as Narnia 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Avatar, there has been a significant amount of buzz regarding the world-class compositor Nuke. Ever since Apple stopped developing Shake (used in Lord of the Rings), fx houses have been searching for a new replacement to handle the increasingly complex work demanded by Hollywood level productions. It is now clear that Nuke has filled this slot.
Our goal is to bring you the best quality work we are able to, and it is in that spirit that we are integrating Nuke into our workflow here at The Effects Forge.
I have been test driving this software for the last couple weeks, and here are the results of my research.
The Geek’s Version: (skip down if you are a director)
Nuke is a node-based, 64bit, floating point application with a world class 3d engine designed to tackle the most complex of shots. The user manual informs me that its scanline renderer can theoretically handle up to a 64,000 x 64,000 image….that’s an incredible 4,000 Megapixels! Obviously your ram wouldn’t take it, but still, it makes 4k footage seem less daunting.
The node based compositing system was probably the most foreign aspect to me when I was first getting into Nuke. I have always used tools such as After Effects and Photoshop where layers are the way to specify render order. However, I found the transition to nodes to be surprisingly intuitive. The compositing principles are the same, but the method of blending imagery is altered. Layers can be faster for simple comps, but nodes are great for shots that require very complex set-ups. Instead of getting lost in hundreds of layers, you can now easily see how things flow from one filter to the next, and troubleshoot problems more effectively.
One of the biggest things that drew me to nuke was the full 3d engine (unlike the emulation offered by After Effects). This allows users to do very complex camera mapping, even utilizing geometry imported straight from Maya. This obviously does not replace a cg application, but it does allow Nuke to tackle shots quickly that otherwise would have required another program. With great camera controls, primitives, shaders, and modifiers, this 3d system is an amazing asset to the compositors arsenal.
With Stereoscopic 3d all the rage these days, the ability to comp for two different eyes can be an important feature. Nuke was used heavily on Avatar and has the necessary features to accomplish this task. For advanced films, the Foundry’s Ocula plugin will also extend Nuke’s functionality with stereo.
The Director’s Version:
Your films will look better…period.
This year one of our top goals at the Effects Forge is to become more effective at marketing. We know there are hundreds of potential clients out there who need our services, but don’t even know we exist. So we are asking for your help! Help us spread the word, build our business and save the world…
Why should you bother? Adam Smith’s invisible hand will haunt you if you don’t. Here’s the deal: if you are able to get a connection of yours to choose the Effects Forge for graphics and/or visual effects we will write you a check for either $250 or 2.5% of our first contract with that client. You choose which one you prefer.
In this increasingly media driven world, there are many companies in need of high quality animations, logos, motion graphics and visual effects work, but it often takes an inside contact to attract attention. If you have a connection who falls into this category, just shoot them an email or write on their wall… Your effort could be profitable for all of us! (We are especially interested in hearing from Sherwood pictures, Answers in Genesis, the American Family Association and other companies who are consistently in need of visual media.)
What is the fine print? Obviously we are looking for companies that we have not already worked with. The customer that you send our way will need to mention that your reference is the reason they contacted us. We reserve the right to turn down work that is inconsistent with our goals and vision. This offer is valid through the end of March unless otherwise stated.
The EF team has recently finished another project during the holiday season (not easy to pull off). It is designed as the intro to a new video series hosted by Vision Forum. You can learn more about the project at www.IntoTheAmazon.org
This sequence was created using a mixture of 2.5D and CG. The underwater simulation and waves were created in Maya, as were the terraced ruins in the jungle. The remainder was composed of layered image elements, stacked in z-space using scripts to randomize and control the positioning.
Special thanks to the following artists:
Josiah Einwechter – CG
Evan Laffin – Water TD
David Bowman – Compositor
Steven Bowman – Matte Painting
Micah Neidhart – Sound Effects
The Effects Forge is excited to announce that over the last few months several new members have officially joined the team by completing their first project at the Effects Forge. Our new members are David Heustice, Evan Langley and David Beal.
Following the San Antonio film festival, the Effects Forge team was blessed with an increase in workload that has kept us all pretty busy. Our artists have been hard at work on visual effects for the Jimmy Valliant film and have also completed graphics for a Chick Fil-A training video and the Navigating History web series. While work has slowed down this month, we have several projects on the horizon and pray that next year will continue to bring an increase in business.
If you are a filmmaker who is working on developing talents in the field of visual effects or graphics and are interested in working with us, please contact us and let us know what you are up to. Because the amount of work that we have to pass out directly depends on the number and types of projects that we have running, it could be a while before we are able to add you to the team, however, this does not mean that we are ignoring you. We hope to add several more artists as the demand for our services grows.
Here are some brief bios to introduce them.
David Beal
Motion Graphics Artist
David Beal has developed his natural talents as a filmmaker and artist by working with his father at Beal Media for several years. David excels at creating motion graphics, and has already demonstrated speed and quality in the work he has completed .
David has experience with Adobe After Effects, Motion, and Final Cut Pro
David Heustis
Compositing Artist
As co-founder of Heumoore Productions, David Heustis has an impressive portfolio as the vfx supervisor of award winning projects such as Heartstrings, Widows Might and Ace Wonder. Through this work, David’s formidable talents have been honed and developed, putting him among the best fx artists in the Christian industry.
He has extensive experience with the RED codec, After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere, and Blender.
Evan Langley L.
Effects TD
Early in high school, Evan Langley became interested in CG and took college level courses in Maya. Eventually, his focus became dynamic effects. Now working mainly on simulation and 3D compositing, his current goal is to further master Houdini and Nuke, with an emphasis on Technical Directing.
Evan has experience with Maya, Mudbox, Mental Ray, Renderman, After Effects, Photoshop, Nuke, and Houdini.
Over the past week the Effects Forge team has been working on an exciting project called Navigating History; a web series spearheaded by the Western Conservatory. The show follows four young men (one of them my brother Steven) who are on an expedition to Egypt to shoot, edit, and deliver an online video series, entirely from the field….well almost That’s where we come in.
EF was commissioned to handle the motion graphics for the series on a very tight schedule. Some of the motion graphics were fairly standard (completely pre-assembled) while others required the flexibility to be modified and rendered on the fly…I’ll explain below.
As with any location based series, this expedition needed an easy way of plotting progress and position. The NH (Navigating History) team would be traveling from Cairo to Luxor and needed a map that could easily be updated while on the move.
The map was created using satellite imagery, linked together and scripted so the high-res detail would automatically fade up as the camera pushed into the map. All aspects of the map can be customized including topo lines, cloud layers, and city labels.
Another simple but essential detail was a high-tech background loop for enhancing bullet points, lower thirds, and various other data.
It replicates a satellite scan as different widgets scan/update and gps coordinates fluctuate over the terrain.
Another custom element was an animating timeline to highlight various points in Egyptian history.
Like the map graphic, finer notches and events appear automatically as the camera pushes in. Scripted controls allow the user to control the proximity and speed of this effect.
Lastly the Forge was commissioned to create the opening titles for the series. My previous post regarding TV Series Intros was part of my research into this. As you might gather from these examples, most openers rely heavily on footage mixed with text overlays. Unfortunately, the team had not yet departed for Egypt, and we had almost no footage to work with. We resorted to a mixture of still photos with 2.5D to add more life to the graphics. Dust elements and CG titles helped to finish out the look we were targeting.
This final video was used for Episode One. Additionally, the project file was delivered to the team in Egypt to enable them to quickly drop their own footage into the timeline to add variety to subsequent openers. The epic music was composed by Benjamin Botkin, so be sure to check his work out. Video is nothing without great audio.
This project certainly represented unique challenges, but I was excited by the fresh concepts and opportunities presented. It’s not every day your work gets to be edited on the field in a foreign country, and it is always fun to send graphics to an international location where they will be integrated and transfered back to the states for viewing.
Hope everyone enjoyed this post! Very special thanks to the following EF artists for making this happen!
Visual Effects, by definition have existed since the dawn of cinema . Whenever a director must use artificial means to accomplish a desired shot, he’s delving into this arena. As early as 1900 we see the first use of mattes, double exposure, camera cuts, and other tricks to combine disparate elements into a single strip of film. Of course, these early attempts were rather primitive and haphazard, at best. Still, even in those days, it didn’t take much to amaze an audience who still wasn’t used to the idea of moving pictures.
For example, when the Lumiere Brothers released this film to the viewing public, some members of the audience were afraid that the train would come crashing through the screen and into the theater! It certainly didn’t take much to impress them, and there weren’t even any vfx.
Today, however, the audience is far more demanding and unforgiving. They’ve seen far too many “making-of” documentaries and have become familiar with some of the tricks of the trade, like chroma key and CGI. Thus, less than perfect mattes, average green screens, poorly textured 3D models, and incoherent color correction are inexcusable. Let me be clear that Visual Effects cannot, and never will fix a film which has a bad plot, bad acting, and bad pacing. However, poor visual effects will kill what might otherwise be a cinematic masterpiece. All too often, a budding director will settle for a mediocre fx shot due to shortage of time and budget limits. One of the most common excuses may sound like this:“well everybody knows that this isn’t an expensive film. They can’t expect it to be Hollywood grade!” WRONG! One look at those bad matte lines, and those plasticy animated characters and the average high school dropout will be ready to leave the theater. Better that your effects be toned down and look real, than extravagant and cheesy, and it doesn’t matter how important the message of your film may be. You’ve lost your credibility.
Like this…
…or this.
Even Hollywood had its bad vfx days. Seriously! A giant vulture/Sesame Street character, and a monster praying mantis? Can you imagine trying to sell something like that today? Even if these stories weren’t lame (and they are), it all looks terribly fake.
A good visual effect shot is the result of careful, concise planning and execution. They are an integral part of your story, like an accent in a piece of music, or a bit of seasoning in a pastry. They are a means to an end, but not an end in themselves. They help to broaden the scope of your film, bring greater cohesion, give control over the elements, and alleviate budget limitations. This could be something as simple as a color tweak to change the mood of a particular scene, or a sweeping establishing shot to let our audience know the context of the world our characters inhabit.
This amazing shot from the Academy Awarding-wining epic, Ben Hur, was accomplished by combining live action footage with a gorgeous matte painting.
If a director decides that a particular shot will be done using visual effects, he must make plans immediately for where green screens will be set up, tracking markers, and light probes. He must coordinate with the effects artists, taking note of the lighting, lenses, and elements. The actors should also be made aware of what digital additions will be made to their surroundings. All of these add together for a much more streamlined process and a far more satisfying result.
Now, I’d like to send a little message to all those people who would like to become successful effects artists. Keep things in perspective. The very best you’ve been able to achieve is probably laughable, compared to what Hollywood studios like ILM, Sony Image Works, or Weta Digital have been able to make. This is not meant to discourage you, but rather to shatter any false sense of security you may have about your situation. If you think you’ve “arrived,” I can quickly enlighten you with a few shots from George Lucas’ Revenge of the Sith, or Roland Emmerich’s 2012. Never settle for second best. What you think is just okay is probably unacceptable for the big screen. Invite your friends to review your work, and don’t tell them which parts of the shots are visual effects. You’ll know you’re getting somewhere when they ask you how you got a real building demolished for your film, or how in the world you were able to hire enough extras for an entire army! Bottom line: if anybody says the shot looks fake, believe them and get it fixed.
Consider, for a moment, how much effort went into these shots. This is the very best that the industry has to offer, and guess what! We’ve got to do even better!
For too long, our culture has dismissed Christian films as cheesy, preachy, and low quality, and they’re exactly right! It’s high time we changed all of that. Be willing to go out of your way to make even a low-paying job look fantastic. Remember that sacrifice today, means greater rewards in the future. We’re playing with the big boys now, and they’ve been developing this art-form far longer than we’ve been in business. Pray that God will make us effective Christian artists in this competitive field of cultural dominion we call Visual Effects! Sure, it will be difficult, but a faint heart never won fair audience!
As effects artists, we are often called upon to create engaging motion graphics as well as vfx. Our software is capable of doing both, so it makes sense that we find ourselves switching around between them.
Unlike vfx which are usually based on existing shots, motion-graphics are created entirely from scratch or blended using video/graphical elements. I find that good reference material is critical to inspiring me and getting me going. As the saying goes, “Art is either revolutionary or plagiarism.” Great looking graphics should certainly be unique, but they are seldom created in a vacuum.
Recently I’ve been researching TV series intros for some work I’m doing. They’re typically a combination of motion graphics and video footage, cut to energetic music. While re-enforcing the show’s brand, they alert the fans that their favorite series is coming on.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT recommend ANY of these shows….considering I don’t watch tv how could I?
Fringe Intro:
A great blend of 2d and 3d elements in a completely computer generated title sequence. Lots and lots of particle and matter layers, complete with a reverse shatter simulation at the end. Created by Andrew Kramer himself and most likely built using After Effects and 3ds Max with some plugins.
Flashpoint:
Mostly fast cut video footage with some clean title overlays and little hash marks moving around. I’m a fan of smaller fonts, and I think this looks pretty cool.
Terra X:
This was a really awesome concept! It’s basically a time lapse of the entire world’s history, as if you had left a camera running for 5 billion years…obviously we have some worldview problems here, but it looks neat just the same. You can find a great article on this here where I discovered it.
NCIS: Los Angeles:
Personally, I would have skipped the teacup, but everything else looked fine
Lie to Me:
This show is about an expert who studies human tendencies and is able to tell whether a person is regretful, angry, lying (you name it), by their expressions. This is clearly communicated with this intro. I really like how they linked the graphical overlays to the underlying footage using track data. I really want to try this concept one of these days…The hash marks along the border and the desaturated footage against white give it a medical feel.
Human Target:
Now, I’m not a big fan of blood and gore but I still found the aesthetics of these titles to be well executed. The use of ink and texture give it a nice feel along with the animating elements. The grungy text fit perfectly, and the whole thing is one seamless animation. Some of the layers have been staggered in z-space to add some perspective shift. Reminds me just a little of the Sherlock Holmes credits that came out last year.
Without A Trace:
This opener has a very fragmented feel to it as it flashes through various files and snapshots. This re-enforces the “missing persons” theme to the movie while presenting the credits.
House:
The theme song for this series is pretty universally recognized. If it were coming up on tv, you would definitely know it. The visuals primarily consist of footage from the series cut with medical diagrams that have been spiced up and blended with particle and lighting effects.
The Pacific:
This isn’t a tv series per-se, but it’s close enough. The charcoal blended with live-action is a really nice touch. It has the gritty feeling of war, complete with a typewriter-ish font reminiscent of the 1940′s. The charcoal shots were filmed on a Phantom Camera shooting at 400fps. You can read more about it here, or see my friend Jeremiah Warren’s attempt at recreating the effect with his Casio EX-F1
As you can see, motion graphics can be used to create visually engaging intros that re-enforce the message and branding of the series. Let me know if I’ve missed any important intros. I’m always looking for more reference!
This demo shot was created by the Effects Forge team over a three day period at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Academy. It was built around a single still image of the Hollywood Sign. More details about this project will be posted as soon as possible, but for now we are all recovering from the 200 combined hours we put into this
The Team:
David Bowman
Steven Bowman
Josiah Einwechter
Benjamin Curlee
David Heustis
Jeremiah Warren
Cory Taylor
Micah Neidhart
Over the past few years, theSan Antonio Independent Christian Film Festivalhas developed into one of the most important resources for the rapidly growing Christian film industry. The Academy has provided a valuable training and networking center, and the Festival has provided a testing ground where filmmakers can put their productions to the rigorous test of general audience and professional evaluation. Already, a few very successful filmmakers have launched their careers at this enjoyable and vital event.
Several of us at the Effects Forge are excitedly looking forward to attending the 2010 SAICFF next week. We are pleased to announce that a few members of our team will be speaking at the Academy, including our effects supervisor, David Bowman, who will be presenting a lecture on The Art and Science of Visual Effects. The Forge may also have the opportunity to provide a practical effects demonstration during the course of the Academy. This will be an enjoyable and valuable opportunity for all of us, and I definitely look forward to learning more about film and making new friends.
If you are planning on attending, we look forward to meeting you soon!
That’s where we come in.
