Does Special Effects Enhance Your Enjoyment of Videos?

[Peter]

So doesn't anyone use the method I described then Peter? it solves problems associated with placing and perspective and the "rotoscoping" would be done in reverse, so to speak.
If no one uses it maybe I better patent it, lol

I use it myself. I expect that anyone doing a wound on naked skin uses this technique. It is not as effective if doing a wound on 'clothing', as the clothing might shift.

[smudger]

You need to buy your avatar a tampax though Peter.

[Peter]

You need to buy your avatar a tampax though Peter.

Nah. I like it when the blood flows free.

[gold]

Fx makes the video and recent work shows hollywood type scrib effects.Its not a easy craft but each year most producers get better, If they cut corners the customers know it. Enjoy slo mo and different angels ,Out takes that allmost make it and varied endings.Nothing worse then having great models and only one demise. Sort of like waiting 2 weeks for another video that you know could have been done in the first shoot.For eg Petra often strips or teases the hitman,shes vulnerable and is drowned only.Why not use the room the same film camera in place to knock our a few more scenarios,feet smoking backside or breast. Eg shoot her putting on makeup stab her making a phone call .Or do the dream,or flashback to her ending a rival that you shot but saved from a earlier shoot. Am certain its got drawbacks but it may be cost effective.

[Dr Don]

Peter: You clip is classic Hollywood style editing and done as well as any big budget producers of the past who used such techniques.

Nice example, nice target, nice moulage work.

I'm curious Smudger, but does it absolutely have to be digital effects or squibs, or can it be simply workable editing that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief? As a for instance, I offer this 30 second sample of gunshot effects: A Hail of Gunfire: Delphine - Demo (0.5 meg only)

No special effects per say, just judicious editing and attention to good continuity and timing.

[Peter]

Peter: You clip is classic Hollywood style editing and done as well as any big budget producers of the past who used such techniques.

Thank you Dr. Don. That is high praise indeed, coming from a master of our craft.

[Dr Don]

Peter:

That is another good illustration of the technique of applying the wounds first and erasing them for a few frames until you want them to appear. I usually like to have at least 9 frames with the moulage erased and in some cases I have erased the wounds for more than 120 frames in order to emphasize the "holy F, how did he do that" effect on the viewer.

The Scorpion machine gunning of Christy for example. Obviously I refrain from posting any samples due to the shadows that stalk me on the Internet and legal advice. I observed the scene changes with more blood added between scenes to show the progression of some blood flow which is what I do as well. Very nice clip and very nice model.

The model was directed well too. Her reactions to the impacts are perfect. I prefer less prolonged agony and less convulsing of the body, but that's a personal preference and part of my particular directing style. I go with smaller wounds as well, because I find the smaller pock marks easier to erase and from what I have seen in real shooting victim photos the smaller pocked wounds are more realistic looking. What I do for the initial bullet wound effect is as follows:

I spray paint a brown paper grocery bag using crimson red paint, then slightly dust it with flat black....and I mean slightly...LOL. When it is dry, I use and actual 45 slug and a small set of pointed finger nail scissors to cut out 45 caliber sized circles. Sometimes I will carefully tear them out of the bag to give a less than perfect look to each wound..which also helps the realism. I keep them in a small jar and when I need them I use rubbing alcohol on the model so that when I apply glue stick to the paper bullet holes they will stick to the model's skin. To make the wound look as though there is more depth to the hole, lighten the skin around the wound with some make up. As a rule, making something lighter brings it forward, and darkening something sets in back when viewed on video. So making the skin a bit lighter around the edges of the wound makes the skin look puckered out around the darker red paper used to simulate the hole. Then I used a light coating of fake blood on the surface of the paper and also fill in the raised edge of the paper where it meets the skin. This hides the edge where the paper meets the skin. During follow up scenes, I have added bruising around the wound as well, using make up. The tendency is to overdue the makeup so I learned to be careful and just use a very subtle amount and lightly rub the skin surface with fingers to blend it. For the bruising effect, start with a very mild blush makeup to give a small amount of reddening around the outer perimeter of the hole and avoid the area you made lighter. As scenes progress, you can add some grey blue eye shadow using the tip of the sponge brush and very lightly dabbing it around the bullet wound about an inch out from the perimeter of the wound, then blend it by brushing it toward and away from the wound the blend it in a circular motion around the hole. If you do it right, sometimes you get what looks like the hint of small blood vessels under the skin.

Yes. And that is in fact how much of the wound special effects are done in this community, such as: 'Machinegun Carrie - Demo'. It is however quite a bit of work. My experience in the past back when I did on occasion do such effects was that the additional work did not increase sales one iota. And so I pretty much stopped doing them.

[Dr Don]

The method you describe is how I did it from the beginning. I practiced on videos I shot at home which I had spend months on with VCR editing decks, editing the video to get the typical Hollywood effect as Peter demonstrated. A scene change showing the shooter fire the gun, switched to the model reacting to the hit. I had the bullet holes already on her, and just caught the reaction at the right time, but doing that by playing the video in my cam, and recording it onto a VCR to get it just right required a lot of practice to get the timing right. I wore out the camera and two VCR's doing it.

In 1997 I got my first computer for capturing video. In MS Pro 2.5 I was able to make an image sequence from any part of my video. I would make image sequences of the frames I wanted to erase the bullet holes, then I learned to put in some blood mist, smoke, and a ripple effect to make the impact more realistic. It became easier for me when I got Ms Pro 6.0 because I did not need to make an image sequence any longer. With 6.0 I was able to open video files in a program similar to Photoshop and have access to all the tools plus a power duplicate feature for adding objects to multiple frames with the ablity to move the objects around and animate them, or just power duplicate the painted area on to multiple frames forward or back. If the camera is on a tripod and the model doesn't move much, it became easier to remove the moulage make up. I have been working to perfect the techniques ever since.

So doesn't anyone use the method I described then Peter? it solves problems associated with placing and perspective and the "rotoscoping" would be done in reverse, so to speak.
If no one uses it maybe I better patent it, lol

[Peter]

The detail you describe Dr. Don, going so far as to add subtle variations on bruising effects over time, is one of the reasons you have the reputation you do as a master of special effects. And perhaps one of the reasons I do not.

My productions were always greatly pressed for time. In my later days I was for instance often pressed to create as many as 15 videos a week and I had to do that (and support myself and three part time staff while paying for a studio) on only $1500. a week. So you can imagine, I learned to do things like makeup effects very quickly.

A bullet wound was a grease pencil mark creating a half inch round 'dot' at the impact point, over which was spread some blood gel. The gel would cover the dot and roughly a quarter inch around the dot making a wound roughly one inch in diameter. No effort was made to keep this a 'round' one inch, and in fact a round wound was considered a bad effect. After starting the camera and the actress being in position ready to continue her scene, I would stand ready to run and squirt a tiny bit of regular stage blood onto the wound effect, and then run out of frame and hand signal action. The actress would at that instant 'get shot' and continue acting till I called 'cut' several seconds later. Add new bullet wound, rinse and repeat.

The real skill for me was in editing, as it is often a matter of a single frame being present or removed that could make the difference in making the impact believable. And the biggest problems that we had to remain alert to during shooting was in continuity and camera framing. Not only did precise body positions and postures have to be remembered, but also direction of movement, so as to avoid sometimes insurmountable problems in editing.

[Dr Don]

The detail you describe Dr. Don, going so far as to add subtle variations on bruising effects over time, is one of the reasons you have the reputation you do as a master of special effects. And perhaps one of the reasons I do not.

My productions were always greatly pressed for time. In my later days I was for instance often pressed to create as many as 15 videos a week and I had to do that (and support myself and three part time staff while paying for a studio) on only $1500. a week. So you can imagine, I learned to do things like makeup effects very quickly.

OMG!! I had difficulty with one video update every 2 weeks!! I sure appreciated Holly's husband helping with the moulage and any other assistance he could offer. It's incredibly difficult to do everything on your own, but you did it anyway, so my hat is off for you.

[Bluestone]

Well, this has turned out to be a very popular thread. As for my special effects, I use very similar methods to all of the producers who have posted so far, but have found, like Peter, that I cannot spend too much time in set-up, unless it is a custom production which is helping to cover the costs. I have therefore modified the techniques that I was originally taught, in order to allow me to film more material in less amount of time. I still use f/x for all of my shootings, except for the toy gun ones, but I've used shortcuts in order to cut down on the time required to prepare the wounds for filming.

I agree with the posters who have indicated that f/x is only part of the production. I am a strong believer in also having a creative plot, good acting, sexy costuming, and high quality production values. Together, all of these elements make for a superior production.

One thing about special effects is that it is a medium that always allows for improvement. I recently released a knife throw video that featured a digital knife throw as opposed to the manual knife throw that was featured toward the end of my Kat of 9 Tales series. These are simply two ways of accomplishing the same end. I'm sure there are many many more ways to make and improve this effect. I will keep striving to make my own f/x better and better, and I'm sure that all of the other producers here are committed to doing the same.

Blue

[tommygun]

For me, the special effects are critical. As with John, I love smaller holes in fabrics (the old exploding squibs that turn a shirt into ribbons are totally "fake" for me), which can certainly be done well using compositing techniques. Then, having really good gel-effect wounds that blend well with the skin, but offer a real "hole" for application of running blood, make a huge difference on exposed skin scenes.

The application of blood itself is an art, regardless of whether you want lots or little (I'm a "more blood" sort of guy, for whatever reason.) But the key is to have it be applied small amount by small amount with each little shift of the camera, so it seems to be "flowing" rather than going from "none" to "drenched."

And then there's the actress! She has to get the grunts, groans, gasps and collapse just right as these special effects scenes progress.

With that in mind, the actual filming of a shooting scene itself (or stabbing, or whatever) really has to slow down so that the special effects work can have all the right tape footage for the final product to look "real". It's not easy! We ought to have annual "Shooties" with awards for the best Shooting Effects each year!

[JohnM]

For me, the special effects are critical. As with John, I love smaller holes in fabrics (the old exploding squibs that turn a shirt into ribbons are totally "fake" for me), which can certainly be done well using compositing techniques.

I went retro on a custom I put out a couple weeks ago called "F***ed and Shot". Using makup and digital I created squib-like explosions...it was really messy. It worked a lot better then the spray-pump method and, of course, safer then the explosive blood condom method.



The messy rest.
http://pkfstudios.com/samples/squibish/

Another time that I strayed from my normal method was my homage to Crank 2 movie:


I even put silicone oozing out of her implants (but the effect did not really show).

Effects are great. It is fun to experiment, but also, like Peter, Blue and others--time to spend on them is exceptionally short.

JohnM

[tummyshooter]

I'm curious Smudger, but does it absolutely have to be digital effects or squibs, or can it be simply workable editing that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief? As a for instance, I offer this 30 second sample of gunshot effects: A Hail of Gunfire: Delphine - Demo (0.5 meg only)

No special effects per say, just judicious editing and attention to good continuity and timing.

If I may jump in here uninvited, I agree with the next Smudger post. Editing can only go so far. Squibs and digital editing is the way to go. Furthermore, something that is really needed for realism that I have never seen. If you poke a hole in somebody, blood is going to keep coming out, not just a little splash...then nothing.

[smudger]

Cheers, buddy, but so far as I can tell that isn't the invariable rule for gunshots. Of course it will happen if a major blood vessel is damaged but equally there may be little if any external bleeding. If there are any doctors or ER people on here maybe they can put us right. I have read reports where gunshot wounds passed unnoticed because there wasn't any external blood. That Entwhistle case was one in point, no one noticed at first his wife had been shot twice. My own feeling is that things need to look realistic, but that covers a bit of ground. Perhaps that little spurt of blood is just poetic licence so to speak.