Computer/After Effects for a short film

[macmorgan]

Hey guys,

I'm directing a short horror film that we're shooting in a few weeks, but I've never done any real post/computer FX for a film. But we have a few moments in mind that will require what I think would be simple/subtle computer FX (I think with After Effects). I want to make sure that in the filming of these moments we do anything that we need to to properly set up the After Effects to look as good as possible. Below is the general description of the moments and what I'm looking for. If anyone can tell me what's involved in layering the FX on and how complicated it sounds or if it will be easy & effective, that would be great. We can afford to pay someone to do it, but not a huge amount so I'm hoping this stuff isn't overly complicated and time consuming.

-There's a scene in a darkly lit basement with a girl and we want to create a spider coming down a thread of web over her shoulder, since the scene will be dark I'd be looking for a spider mostly in silhouette, so it can be shadowy in detail but I'd want it to look & move right.

-The film takes place during a snow storm and weird supernatural things start happening. There's a moment where the glass on a window behind the girl gradually frosts over with ice crystals. This is the one I'm most concerned with pulling off right. It doesn't have to be a ton of frost, as we'll probably have some practical frost spray already lining the window panels, but I'd like it look like a thin layer of frost freezes up the rest of the window behind her.

I was hoping that for these it would mostly be the case that we shoot the scenes like normal and then an fx person can layer whatever visual effect on top of the existing picture. Is that the case? Or does any of this require us to shoot anything specifically to achieve the effect?

Any help or clarity would be appreciated!

 

[trueindie]

I was hoping that for these it would mostly be the case that we shoot the scenes like normal and then an fx person can layer whatever visual effect on top of the existing picture. Is that the case? Or does any of this require us to shoot anything specifically to achieve the effect?

You want to talk to your fx person before you shoot the scene. You need to be sure of 'what is possible' for your budget. You may have to shoot something and then layer it in later, but if you don't know what the post production requirements will be, you're probably not going to shoot it right. So just talk to the fx person you'll hire, or an fx person who is your buddy and buy him/her a beer, and discuss.

 

[manio143]

For the spider one, since it doesn't have to be very detailed you can just take an image of a spider and animate it using Puppet Pin Tool and moving it slowly down. For cobweb, well if you want it to look very good you should look for some one with Photoshop skills rather than After Effects.

The freezing effect is really hard to get but it's possible if you can get an appropriate texture (but I don't really know where) and then make it light blue and use the masks to slowly unhide the parts you want. And if the girl is partially covering the window, you can duplicate the footage layer and apply Roto Brush Tool (AE 5+).

I hope I could help.

 

[macmorgan]

Thanks so much! I think we would mostly have the girl out of frame (she'll move off) when we begin the freezing effect on the window, so the camera will be a still shot on the window, hopefully to make the effect easily to pull off.

 

[crazysnail]

do they need to be hyper realistic?? you could achieve both these with practical effects and just a bit of compositing. There should be plenty of spiders, just catch the biggest one you can find film it in macro on a green screen and volia, a real spider and no need for manual animation.

Is there anything of significance behind the window, and how big is it?? You could freeze a thin sheet of ice, photograph it on a green screen again and composite it over the video, use some turbulent displacement maps and opacity keyframes. Aniamting it on is going to be a lot easier than creating it all as a Visual effect