archived-videos New Teleporting Effects

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Which one of these two versions put together back to back looks better and why?

https://vimeo.com/101051210

PW is mdmpllc

I am reworking special effects. Feedback will help me determine if I am on the right track.

The second version is a newer version. I was inspired to change it to the newer version after watching the pilot for the TV series Weird Science and Star Trek Voyager.

I am planning to re-shoot the model spaceship next year with my crew in a makeshift greenscreen room. We will not be using silver fishing wire ever again. I am planning we use a greenscreen colored stand or wiring to make it look better than before.

So, right now, I am primarily interested in the teleporting effects with the cyborgs. Any suggestions to make it better?

Thanks in advance for help.

 

[WalterB]

You and your prop master seem to miss the point I try to make about the door.
(Yes from enginering point of view it's 'different', but that was not my main point.)
My point is if you you have no door, don't land and teleport, but teleport from the sky. That way you don't have to tell your audience there is no door.
The problem isn't teleporting without door. It's landing and teleporting. It feels like using an airplane to drive from Amsterdam to Rome: the logic seems off.
So that needs explaination, while when it flies there you don't have to tell the audience it has wheels as well.

(And even if there was a door, it doesn't mean you need to show that door, or that the model ship needs to have a door as well.)

It's not about a lack of imagination, it's about storytelling.
Usually if a SF movie needs to give a lecture about the designs of a spaceship it takes viewers away from the story. So less lecturing means more time for story.

There is a difference between story and backstory.
Your story will and must be influenced by your backstory (and you got plenty of backstory, I can tell), but don't let it get in the way of the story by trying the explain every detail of the backstory.
Teleporting while not on ground level doesn't conflict with your backstory (I guess) AND saves you explaining why they are teleported over a distance of 3 feet instead of using a door. (Which isn't there, which means you need to explain it.)

Talking about imagination:
you say you have only one shot of the teleport (of 5 people, btw, instead of 3).
I suggested before, and The Murph does the same: skip that shot.
Show the ship 'dropping a beam' in the forest. Cut to the shot right after the teleport shot.
Your DP shot a rather useless, or at least a very difficult, shot with too much movement. 99% chance it will always looks fake with any background movement. Actually when you succeed in matching the movement, it will look like a picture moving around, because it's hard to pull off the parallax effect you need for this.

I'll show you what I mean, but first I need to do some other things.

You think to literall about this scene to find a solution beyond the footage you have.
I know it's hard to ditch a shot: I find it hard as well.
Actually for the community project one of the best composed shots I shot with my unit will have to be ditched to preserve continuity. Sad but true...

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

My prop masters critique of you guys is some of you guys are too literal with limited imagination for science fiction where you have to project your thoughts to a world of new technological breakthroughs and technology. And, I agree with him. I work with real world computers and electronics every day and I know how to project technology for future technology. We are keeping teleporting with no doors.

This isn't a question of our ability to imagine future technology. Walter & I have both been giving you advice on how to construct the shot so that it doesn't matter whether the ship has doors or not. Yet for some reason you keep focusing on the issue of the doors, trying to use it to explain the shot when it has absolutely no relevance to any of the advice we've given.

The ship has no doors - we get it. It needs no doors, because they can teleport - fine. But just like it needs no doors, it also doesn't need to land - because they can teleport. So have them teleport from the air, simplifying the sequence. There's absolutely no conflict between that advice and anything you've said about how the ship or technology works, so I'm not really sure what your resistance to the suggestion is.

 

[TheMurph]

As WalterB and ItDonnedOnMe have pointed out, this isn't (or at least I didn't think it was) about the future technologies and their backstory and how it works in your story universe, but rather how to correct a problem in effects. Whether the ship has doors or not is inconsequential.

Listen, I'm a nerd, love me some Star Trek, BSG, etc... and from what I've seen and heard their effects were a lot of times done out of practicality and in order to put the best they could on screen. As has been mentioned above by many, you could achieve a cleaner effect by cutting a bit out, avoid random flyby's etc... Just opinions.