knifeinhand wrote:I'm the one who showed all the rest how to do them. I can tell that the few who do some effects learned by watching my work.
Narscism anyone? No worries. We are all proud of the work we do on our own, since we really are on our own, figuring things out. I mean, there is no "Shoot of Efx for Necro Fetish Producers" anywhere. And having started doing effects shots way back in high school---covering a friend in fake blood after drilling them during a chase sequence for a music video I made to Beatles Help.....he is still pissed at me, I can say, I have always been into the movie making process over the movies themselves.
Well, lets see. For shooting effects, Rodzilla was my first muse. Great guy, lives here in Oregon. We came up with some non-digital effects back in 1998-99, having to do with fishing line, special clothing and a reveal process. Of course sycing up sound back then was a bitch.
Then, sometime in 2000-2001, a guy from CA, that was helping us at the time came to a shoot and we did some test footage for digital, using a brand new roto tool back then called Commotion. It was very-very early....right before I moved to Apple.....still fucking with the very early digital editing programs, which sucked. But, it was at that point shortly after Ruemorgue (owned by Hank and I), was doing roto bullet effects. And I believe, DrDon had achieved similar effect a year prior, using some other digital technique...probably hand painting each frame.
But right near the end of 2001, got Mac, and after a disaster with early Premier, went to FCP (Final Cut Pro). It was then, I was able to take total control having grown up a child of the 80's and following the great directors and my love of effects, was able to figure everything out and get the shots I wanted with the effects I wanted. Achieving everything from fantastical bullet riddled effects, gorey guttings, awesome arrows, spears, decapitatons, etc., etc. And since I did not watch other producers work, mostly, I just tried to emulate what I saw from my Hollywood peers with no money. :-)
Over the years I have refined my technique. Technology changed. I went back to Premiere---now much better, after FCP took a dump when it moved to version 10. Commotion stopped worked as it was discontinued in 2004 and I had been giving it CPR for years. Eventually, I created a macro for rotoing out markers that worked as well for bullet wounds and mapped cloning to the process to create a nice stable system for doing my bullet effects. I started creating my own gore to offset the canned effects I already had.
So, yeah, I mostly just figured it out. I would say, all the Hunt series movies I did as Ruemorgue helped the most as I was always having to solve effect problems. Though, when I did Amazons vs. Mutants, with some of the most complex compositing ever, I think that also helps. I did a Blade Runner (and Terminater a few times) homage once, that had some great future city and spaceship effects. It is hard to remember all the sfx shots I have done ever the years.
JohnM