The film i'm prepping, "Thunder Lord", is an Homage/Parody meant to be presented as a lost film from between 1979-1984. As such, it has been my goal to utilize or at least cheat the Special and Visual effects techniques of 30+ years ago. One other point to make is the utilization of Red Giants suite of products to achieve a slightly aged look as the idea set in our viral mockumentary will be that this "Lost movie" get restored-Cleaned up. I've got people to do Hero shooting models and guest models. My queries are: What suggested techniques and methods would YOU employ for matte paintings, animation and compositing? AND Who in the Denver area can do this (any or all), if not , who ANYWHERE can on a budget. Relative cost would be appreciated.
Post-Production : Question for the Wizards..... by Nick C. Goins Jr.
Question for the Wizards.....
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Funny enough, it may be much cheaper to use older techniques, like shooting at higher frame rates and slowing it down, doing optical tricks, vaseline to hide things, even building puppets and stop motion filming them. The animation will take you a lot of work. You have to build the models in CG, then build the armature inside of it, then animate it, AND then render it (this takes forever.) Right here is where you realize if it came out good or not :P Thus, I recommend puppets! From a visual effects/character animation perspective you're looking at about 1,000 per minute, finished on a very low end, to 10k on a high end to make it look good.
That is my ver point insofar as the spaceships, makeup an so on go. However, nobody does glass matte paintings anymore, as far as animation goes, i was refering to lazer beams/bolts, lightening and so on. Rotoscoping
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Hi Nick, this is another Nick. I've been 15 years in digital visual effects. Although I don't think your original question suggested using CG to recreate the old style effects, I can tell you that any CG you can get for $1,000 per minute will be absolute garbage. To create CG visual effects that look as real as models, minitatures, optical effects will be as expensive as modern VFX, in other words $1000 to $10,000 per _second_ or more depending on the demands of the shot. You are far, far better off researching and executing actual in-camera effects as used before digital technology. In general, you should never use CG unless you have no other way of doing it. That said, creating laser beams and so forth similar to old effects should be relatively simple using a compositing tool like Nuke or AE. All you need is some reference of the kind of effect you want. The digital artist should be able to recreate it fairly easily digitally. Matte paintings do not need to be done on glass to look like glass. Again, find some reference. Have a digital matte painter recreate the feel you are after and composite the matte painting into the BG digitally. I hope that is useful. Nicholas Boughen Senior Trainer | VFX Supervisor CG Masters School of 3D Animation & VFX
As concise an answer as i would expect from another "Nick".☺ That is also largely the plan.My problem is finding someone in the area who can do it. If not, someone elsewhere who will work with me on a smaller production.