Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters: The Musical!



As anyone who's spent more than a few minutes with me, let alone a significant period of time, will know, I'm a huge fan of Ghostbusters. It's one of my favourite films. Being a visual fx person, it was fairly inevitable I was going to attempt a proton stream from the films. A few years back, I did attempt one, and that's the video below.

I recently got thinking about it again (what with all the fuss about the video game and possible 3rd film) and thought I should be able to make a more accurate version of the stream. I played about with a few ideas, and came up with something I was quite happy with. Still not 100% accurate, but hey, I'm not ILM. It initally took longer than it should have, as I was trying to animate the co ordinates of the lens flare, the start and end of the main stream core as well as the start and end of the blue electrical forking, but then I realised all I had to do was link them up with expressions and hey presto, it all worked a lot easier.

I was looking at the stream I'd animated, and I thought maybe it needed something else. Had a brain wave that the stream slightly resembled a wavefom, and that's when I had the idea of animating the stream along to the theme for the film. After working out timings, getting the stream to work with the audio, and animating the logo (made the ghost in photoshop, and the circle in AE) complete with a bump shade to give it some depth, and the video above is the end result. It's a complete labour of love this short piece. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did to do, but things with me haven't been fantastic the past few weeks, and I've only recently had the time and energy to finish the past few days.

Technical notes: Logo partly made in Photoshop, everything else put together in After Effects. Sound fx made by the maestro that is Ken Huegel.

Proton stream original version



Like I said earlier, this is my first attempt at a proton stream. It's shot in my old old flat (which was 99% of the time a complete tip. The day of shooting was no exception) and features the wonderful acting of my own personal Bruce Campbell, Rich 'Lover Lover' Davies. We'd just started putting together Ghostbusters costumes for Halloween, and he's wearing my flightsuit and painted Real Ghostbusters toy proton pack (which is why it's so small). I don't think he was aiming for a ghost, I think he was trying to 'bust some mould that was accumulating on the wall.

Technical notes: I can't remember what we shot this on. Could've been a PD100. Proton stream made in After Effects. Sound fx again by the masterful Ken Huegel.

'Brave New World' test

This is a short test of a spinning DNA strand I've always meant to try and make, but never got around to doing it. After working out a few technical things, I managed it. The full version I've got planned for this will be a bit more complex, with a few more elements composited into it. I'm trying to find someone who can do some digital illustration for it, so when that's sorted I'll get it done.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects.

3D tunnel

This is, like the previous Graffiti post, based on a tutorial on a DVD I bought. Based on a still, I made the walls of the tunnel exist in 3D space, added the motion tile effect to extend them on the z-axis, and 'flew' a camera down it. I really turned up the depth of field on the camera to blur the text out. I've learned a few things doing this clip, which should come in useful soon.

Just in case you're wondering 'Extreme Lift Shafts' isn't a real programme. It's a shame, I know. I really think Mr Jeffcoate would've done such a series a lot of justice.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects.

Graffiti on a wall

This is a simple effect of graffiti being sprayed onto a wall. It's based on a tutorial that's on a dvd I bought, and I thought I'd give it a go. I like the simple camera movement which gives the wall and floor layers a real sense of existing in 3D space. This project could very easily be adapted to make a title sequence, or an ident. But for now, this will do.

Please forgive the quality on this one, compressing it down to get it on the web has really affected the text itself. The full resolution render is much nicer!

This is the first clip in a series of smaller fx clips I'm working on at the moment, before I get into something bigger and much more challenging.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects.

'Standing By' transitions and Space Jaunt

First off, apologies for not uploading anything since November. I bought a new mouse (wired, this time...) but as it was Christmas, couldn't afford a new hard drive. Picked one of those up the week after Christmas, and since then I've been working on Dai's first uni short 'Standing By' which you will be able to view over at his blog when he puts it up this week.

I've got a lot more work to make over the next few weeks. 2009 is shaping up to be a fairly prolific year, and WILL be the one where I make it out of the world of retail and into a media position. Anyway, the work...



The transitions

Working out the concept for these took a while to sort out with Dai, made increasingly difficult because he's in London and I'm in Llanelli, so, after trying out a few ideas and uploading them to our dropbox, the above style is the one he decided he wanted. Essentially just luma and inverted luma mattes of a (pre matted) ink bleed layer, it was made more complicated because of masking and various reasons. Took a lot longer to do them than I anticipated.

Technical notes: Footage shot in London Town by Dai, and starring the wonderful Howard and Paul. Composited together in After Effects, in Llanelli Town.



The Space Jaunt

This took *ages* to make. Time was spent mainly putting all the elements together, rather than the final composition. It was my first attempt at making stellar bodies, so that took up a lot of time. My original storyboards for it were far more complex, with more planets, the star appearing from behind the planet, flying through the nebula, comets and asteroids, and the whole thing lasting longer. Oh, and sneaking in a Death Star, to see if anyone noticed... Alas time was not my friend, Dai had a deadline so compromises had to be made. At least I've got solid foundations to work from for the next time I need to do a flying through space sequence.

I really quite enjoyed putting this sequence together. It's not often I can legitimately watch Stargate SG-1, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galatica DVD's as research...

Overall, despite not putting in many of the original ideas I wanted, I'm fairly happy with this sequence. It achieves what it was intended to do, and looks pretty damn good, I think.

Technical notes: The gas giant, the planet's rings and the Earth put together in Photoshop. The green 'life force' effect, the nebula and all the wormhole/tunnel elements made in Particle Illusion, saved out as TIFF sequences and imported into After Effects. The star and starfields were made in After Effects. Everything composited together in After Effects. Music (not used in Dai's short, I put it in to make it more interesting to watch) is 'The Doctor's Theme' by Murray Gold from the Doctor Who series 1 soundtrack.

Technical problems

Sorry for there not being an update for a while now, I've been having LOTS of problems here. The biggest problem has been the external hard drive deciding it doesn't want to work anymore, which is baaaaaaaad. It either doesn't mount, or mounts then disappears. I've managed to get a few really important files off it, and now I'm leaving it alone until I can get a new external and shift everything over to that, then re-format it, which seems to be the way to solve the problems, according to a few forums. I was *really* worried the other night when it failed, there's so much on that drive now, important work stuff and lots more.

With the current things I needed to keep working now on the (becoming increasingly full) laptop, I thought it would be ok. I wouldn't need to use the external until I've got the new one, so all I needed to do was work on the projects I had lined up for the next few weeks, get a new hard drive, and everything would be fine. I was of course, wrong.

Earlier this evening my wireless optical mouse decided to pack up, mid project. Tried pressing the connect buttons on the wireless receiver and the mouse - nothing. Tried changing the batteries for some fresh ones and pressing the connect buttons - nothing. Went to the Logitech website, trawled through their trouble shooting pages (ignoring the obvious statements about changing batteries and reconnecting the mouse and the receiver) and found a page about Mac problems. From this I tried verifying and repairing the system permissions - nothing. I tried their suggestion of downloading their connection utility software. Installed it, had to restart the Mac and opened the program. 'Please connect the wireless receiver then restart this programme'. So, according to Logitech, I need to have a working receiver before I can run diagnostic software about why it isn't working? THIS DOES NOT HELP ME, LOGITECH.

There's no way I can just settle for using the ibook's trackpad to work on some of the projects I need to get done, it's not feasible.

So, here I am, afraid to use the external hard drive and without a mouse to do any work. Sigh. And it's 7 days until pay day when I can afford to buy a new mouse to get working again. This is going to be a long 7 days.

Backwater, Dawn of the Dead

Back in 2005 I was on the BA Video course at Swansea Institute, doing a 1 year top-up of my HND Media Production, and another student was making a short horror film called 'Backwater' for his final major project, and I offered to make a title for him. He wanted something simple, and water based, so after shooting some footage of water from the dock near to where I lived at the time, I came up with the above pieces of work. Ben (director of 'Backwater') preferred the first one, with 'Backwater' as one word, all in upper case, whereas I preferred the second and third versions.

Technical notes: Shot using Richard Davies's camera (I think) on a very cold, wet and windy day at the dock, by the Millennium Quay flats, back when everyone thought they were posh. Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Scarey 2' by D. Scott from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.

This is a fairly early piece of work for me, and it's something I looked back on recently and thought how much my skills have progressed since then, so I decided to do some newer versions.




I'd recently thought about making some generic horror based titles, and was musing on the idea of making one for a film called 'Thursday the 13th', which is a horror comedy that exists entirely in my head, when I looked at the early 'Backwater' work I'd done, and just thought about using that title instead. It was a fairly simple concept, I wanted to make the title look as if it was written in blood, somehow. I've played around with a few ideas, the blood revealing the text, the text being made from the blood, different background colours, and these are all those tests.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Desert de Glace' by P. Arvay from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.



Ah, I enjoyed making this, and I'm also quite proud of it. After making a few of the above 'Backwater' revisits and listening to the 'Dawn Of The Dead' score, I decided to watch the 'Dawn Of The Dead' remake, and I realised that the idea of text made from blood was something that is used in the titles as well (although they used actual blood to quite nice effect). As I love zombie films, in particular both 'Dawn Of The Dead' films, I thought I'd apply the basics I'd come up with for the new 'Backwater' titles, and refine it to make my own 'Dawn Of The Dead' title. I really like this clip!

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Scarey 1' by D. Scott from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.

Special thanks to George A. Romero, the man who brought visceral horror home, and was a big influence on my life.

Fact: I've written 'Dawn Of The Dead' 9 times in the post.

Basic Productions ident

The illustrious Mr Jeffcoate wanted an animated ident for his work whilst he's away at university, based on a logo he'd created. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible, while at the same time giving it a slightly sleeker, more polished style to the original poster idea he sent me. The first half of the clip is the ident in red, which was the original colour on his poster, with the second half being an even simpler greyscale version.

The size and resolution on this clip really don't do it justice. It's lost the really nice sheet metal texture background, the bump shade and the drop shadow on the title and spinning hydrogen atom. Really needs to be seen full size. If anyone does want to see it, let me know and I'll email it to you.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects.

A transporter, alternate 'Life of Death' and 'My Llanelli' titles

This is a sci-fi transporter effect I've been working on for a while. It's taken a while to sort out, for various reasons (mainly my never being happy with me own work), but I'm going to say it's finished now.

It was originally intended to look like the Asgard beams from Stargate SG-1, but I kept adding things to it. You can still see the original 'white out' style of the Asgard beams underneath the rest of the effect. I like this piece, overall.

Technical notes: Shot in my good friend Sue's front room (thanks for being an on-set dog handler, Sue!)
and in the Graig media studio, with a PD170 camera. I used Particle Illusion to make the energy and particle effects, with all the masking, the glow, the cloning (had to remove some stray light reflections), other effects and overall compositing done in After Effects. Apologies for the low resolution on this clip, it had to be done to get the file size down, even using H264 compression. Full size version is MUCH better.




An alternate version of the 'Life of Death' title. The original was made on quite short notice, with a simple concept that used up RAM like nobodies business. It can be seen over at Dai Jeffcoate's showreel blog, as well as the accompanying crystal effects that were needed. I made this alternate title because I just wasn't happy with the original, which I think looks quite ugly, looking back at it. I'm not happy with the original crystal effects either, but I'll save working on new ones for another time...

The concept behind this one was fairly simple. 'Life of Death' was based on the book 'The Book Thief' so I went with the idea of a book opening, with a sort of mystical text revealing itself, and then the book closes. The time between the prologue and first scene didn't leave a huge amount of room for anything complex, so this is quite short. I like this title.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects, using some very nice textures, ink bleed footage and tutorials that I bought.




A more final version of the 'My Llanelli' title, with a more 3-dimensional text effect, and I've sped up the footage so the clouds move a bit quicker and it looks less like a still image. I much prefer this to the original version.

Technical notes: Same as my previous post, shot with Dai's JVC cam, made in After Effects. This one's a lot more polished than the work in progress, which you can really notice when you see the full size clip. It's not so noticeable on this resolution, but I know the cloning and the colour correction is there...




I was experimenting with different effects on top of the above 'My Llanelli' clip, and I came up with this chalkboard style. It's not fantastic, but I thought it looked interesting, so I'm posting it up.

As always, any and all feedback on the above pieces is welcome and encouraged.

Daf

'My Llanelli' - work in progress

This is my first video upload, so I thought I'd start with something simple. It's only a work in progress so far (feedback appreciated!), as there's a bit of tidying up I want to do to it, and maybe put some music over it. It'll be finished by the end of the week, along with several others.

It was originally intended for a short 3 minute documentary entitled 'My Llanelli' that myself and David Jeffcoate (who shall henceforth be known as 'Dai', as writing his full name makes me feel like a teacher) entered, but time ran out and we had to use an alternate version for it. I liked the concept I came up with, so I decided to make the title anyway.

On a technical note, it was shot on an unusually sunny day a few weeks ago at Llanelli's Millennium Coastal Park, using Dai's JVC DV camera. I made it in After Effects and this version is half size and resolution, and was compressed using H264 compression.

Daf