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vfx VFX work with Filmmaking

I have a little bit of VFX in my practical SciFi film. Mostly green screen in order to blend the spaceship. But, most scifi shorts these days apply VFX to almost the entire production to save cost and assets.

It was extremely time consuming and costly just to make a set/spaceship, I can only imagine it would have been slightly easier with all VFX approach.
Also, it takes less teamwork/people if you get a good VFX artist or two. As opposed to the amount of people needed to build props/sets/costumes.
 
Just curious, how much VFX is being incorporated (today) into your short and feature films? Percentages?
We shot an entire feature film, TATTLETALE CORPSE, in our living room in front of a green screen. Without the green screen, our locations would have included a police station, jail, morgue, funeral home, hospital, church, TV studio, exterior murder sites, and more. With the green screen we shot an entire movie (including purchased file footage), for about $3000. Also,we just finished shooting a green screen short called MAMA'S DEAD AND LIVES IN THE BASEMENT. Cost was $150.
 
It varies. My first feature had one VFX shot (it should of been two, but I didn't know how to do the second at the time). Feature number two had one scene that was all vfx (greenscreen driving) and my third feature had around 210 (greenscreens, sky replacements, monitor replacements, gunshots and bullet hits). As my experience in VFX grew, I was able to use them more and more to up the production value of my films. After spending seven years now as a VFX supervisor for a small studio, I've learned Nuke and physics in Blender and am incorporated my new skills in my fourth feature which we shot last summer. I don't have the final number of VFX shots yet, but it's shaping to be a lot more invisible effects like set extensions and people removal.

If you're making movies by yourself, my motto is write what you can do, then challenge yourself slightly. If you know nothing about VFX, pick one thing to learn, learn it well, then incorporate that into a movie. On your next film, use the same skills and maybe write one thing you're not sure how to do. This way you'll keep learning and adding to your skillset, without getting overwhelmed. I have a bunch of videos on learning VFX (using free node based software) over at youtube.com/indierebel
 
Depends on your screenplay. My last two shorts were stupidly full of vfx that i had to do by myself.

Don't do vfx kids, not even once.

Kidding, but if you can pay people, then all the better.
 
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