A Guide to Using Visual Effects for Independent Filmmakers

[Adam Benson]

In my years of working in Visual Effects I have often been faced with the “Fix it in Post” challenges presented by many independent filmmakers. These days, people assume that, with the advent of the personal computer and After Effects, creating complex visual effects at the last minute is as easy and cheap as pushing a button or loading a plug-in. And after spending mind-bending hours trying to get After Effects to create “Lord of the Rings” effects on a Tuesday night budget, these filmmakers often fail and end up posting an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to do their effects for them for whatever meager pennies are left in their already spent budget. Only to find that either no one will do it for the price their offering, or that the guy who takes their money does no better a job than they did. The problem is two-fold; lack of planning and lack of understanding. This paper aims to alleviate some of these issues and show you how to use Visual Effects to their fullest extent and get the most for your money.
The first thing you need to know as a filmmaker, is how to kill, maim, destroy, or in all other ways eliminate the person on your set who says the words, “Fix it in post”. You have a number of options at your disposal; poison, gunshot, stabbing, cutting the break lines in their car… the list goes on. Similarly, if you are prone to saying these words yourself, suicide is always an option. Why, you may ask, would I suggest murdering people who utter the words “Fix it in post” on your set? The reason is simple. “Fix it in post” is the most expensive thing you can say on any set! And it’s one of the fastest ways to ruin your film. The words “Fix it in Post” can easily cost you more than the entire rest of your budget if you’re not careful. It is always easier and cheaper to do something practically, in front of the lens, than it is to do after the fact. “Fix it in Post” is the Devil’s mantra. I will be drilling that fact into your head for the rest of this article.
The main reason that “Fix it in Post” is a horrible, horrible way to go about things is that it never has any plan to it. In essence, you are admitting at the time of creation that your footage is bad, and you’re blindly hoping that some poor sap can push pixels around in a vain attempt at making your picture viable. Having no rhyme or reason to the “bad” footage, the person slaving away in post production is spending sleepless night after sleepless night trying to find some solution to your lack of planning and balance that with how little he’s getting paid for it. There is a better solution!
First, in order to understand how visual effects work, you first need to understand the pipeline of the modern VFX studio. The term “Post Production” is a misnomer when talking about Visual Effects. They are two different things. Post production is the process by which you take all of the elements that were “produced” during “production” and put them together into a film. Anytime you are “producing” elements you are in “production”. Production includes the score, your visual effects work, the filming, the acting, and anything else that gets “produced”. Post production, by contrast, is the art of putting those things together into a film. This would include the editing, the sound mixing, the compositing (to some degree), and the color correction. If you understand this, you’re already on your way to saving money on your next film.
One thing you’ll notice watching big budget features is the names in the opening credits. These are your “above the line” folks; the people who had creative input on the making of the film. Traditionally, these are your actors, your director, the producers, the writer, the composer and… the visual effects supervisor. Any good production brings in their key people during the pre-production process. The reason is simple. You save money by having all your key people plan things out from the very beginning. The director and the writer work out the screenplay, the story boards and all the ideas. The producers secure the money, the locations, the crew, and all of the logistics. The actors rehearse and get into character. The composer starts coming up with ideas that fit the mood of the film. And the visual effects supervisor comes up with ways to help the director get the shots they want in the best, most inexpensive way possible.
For this reason I strongly recommend every production bringing on their visual effects supervisor during the earliest stages of pre-production. If you don’t have one, find one! He or she will only save you money! Even micro budget films will benefit from having a knowledgeable visual effects supervisor on board from the very start. Generally this will be somewhere around the storyboarding/shot-list phase. Even if you’re doing a very simple film, say, four people sitting around a table talking, get a visual effects supervisor to consult with you on the script. It may seem mundane and unnecessary at the time, but you will be amazed at what they come up with to save you time and money on your project.
There is a huge difference between a professional visual effects artist and a guy who knows After Effects. The guy who knows After Effects will be the first person on your set to say the words “Fix it in post”. They’ll also be the first person to convince you that it’s something they can do easily, saying things like, “Yeah, man. I can do that in no time. Just get me the footage when you’re ready.” Furthermore, they’ll be the one person who suddenly becomes impossible to get a hold of when it comes time for you to deliver that footage and/or once they get it, it will be three years before you ever hear from them again. Kill them on site. They are not doing you any favors. The difference is this, After Effects is a tool. That’s it. Like any tool, just because you know how to use it, doesn’t make you a professional. I know how to use a hammer, that doesn’t mean that you should hire me to build your house. On the other hand, a professional visual effects artist is someone who understands the concepts and techniques behind creating visual effects. A professional visual effects artist will be able to create effects exactly as planned regardless of the tools at his or her disposal. There is far more to VFX than just “knowing After Effects”. Don’t get suckered into the “I know After Effects” trap; hire a pro.
As I said before, by bringing in a professional VFX person at the very beginning stages of pre-production you can save yourself a ton of money. This may be as simple as a consultation. For instance, the idea of the four people sitting around a table talking example that I used before; the consulting artist may read the script, go over your ideas with you, and say, “Looks fine. What do you need me for?” At which point you are officially done with your consultation, move on with your life. On the other hand, let’s say this is a period piece, the visual effects supervisor might come up with tons of clever little ways to add all sorts of life to your movie; things that you may never have thought of for a movie with four people sitting around a table, or perhaps things that you were going to try and avoid because it seemed too expensive, or unattainable. Now, you’ve got someone who can help you plan these effects out, and subsequently raise your production value!
In any production planning is the most important stage. Personally, I hate pre-production, I like to dive in and get busy just like you do. However, I’ll never do anything without a rigorous amount of pre-production. The better your film is planned out, the better your film will be. Again, the better you plan your film, the better your film will be! Having the right people on board to help you plan is the best way to cover all of your bases. Your visual effects work is no different, in fact, VFX usually require far more planning than most of the rest of your film. Often times, in films that are heavily VFX dependent, this is one of the first phases that gets planned out.
Bringing your VFX Supervisor on board from the beginning gives you the chance to collaborate with your producer, your director of photography, and your visual effects supervisor at the same time. The key here is to get everyone on the same page. A good VFX supervisor will collaborate heavily with the DP since one’s work always affects the other. This road goes both ways. Elements being created in the virtual world will affect how the DP shoots the live elements, and the way the DP shoots the live elements will affect the elements in the virtual world. The closer these two work together the better.
A common mistake that comes through our studio is people taking the back and forth collaboration between the DP and the VFX supervisor for granted. Often time companies don’t discuss their VFX ideas thoroughly enough with the DP and just let him or her shoot the plates however they see fit; leaving the VFX supervisor completely out of the loop. Then a massive “Fix it in Post” occurs as the VFX supervisor tries to make his work fit into what the DP shot.
The best way for this process to work starts again in the planning phase. If all the shots are planned out to the letter then the DP and VFX supervisor can both get to work simultaneously and work together to create the necessary shot. If your VFX are being created while your principal photography is taking place then at the end of the day, when everyone is watching dailies, the DP gets a better idea of what the VFX guys are doing, and the VFX guys get a better idea of what the DP is doing. In this way harmony is created, and “Fix it in Post” is eliminated.
Take for example Michael Bay’s movie, “The Island”. There’s a scene in the middle of the film where the heroes are hanging for life on a giant red “R” that is mounted on the side of a tall skyscraper. The pursuing villains start firing heavy weaponry at the heroes, unintentionally breaking the supports of the giant “R”. Suddenly, the “R” breaks free and comes crashing to the ground, knocking a helicopter out of the sky, and trashing the city below. Before the scene was shot (during the pre-production phase) the VFX supervisor worked with his team to plan out the shot, design the big “R” and work out how the footage would need to be shot to make the effect work. If you were to take out this planning phase and just rely on the DP to shoot the plate on the fly (as often happens in independent films) then later on the plates he shot probably wouldn’t work. For instance, the lens might be too tight, or the angle might be too close to the building; a whole host of things that could have ruined the shot were eliminated, because they had a talented VFX supervisor plan the shot out, to the letter, before photography ever started.
At this point, once the DP delivers the footage to the VFX team then they can start making their adjustments to the CG elements to make it fit within what the DP shot. Again, it all comes down to planning. If this had been a “fix it in post” shot, it would not have had the impact that it did when it was completed.
Another issue that I find taking place on independent film sets is the tendency to run right to the green screen. At one of the studios I used to work at, we would joke about anything that needed to get done on set, saying “Let’s just green-screen it”. Unfortunately, that joke comes from the fact that many independent filmmakers do just that. It seems as though many people don’t fully understand what the green screen is for. They see it in the behind-the-scenes of their favorite DVD and just think it’s some sort of cure-all for VFX work. It has but one purpose. It is not a “VFX” Screen; it is simply a method for creating what is known as a “traveling matte”. It is only a method for cutting things out!
I’ve been on sets where people cover up things that they want to remove with blue gaffer’s tape, or green construction paper. In fact, anything that they’re intending for “post-production” they automatically cover it with green. Simply put; this is just plain wrong. There is a time and a place for the green. Green screen, blue screen, or any other color of screen for that matter, is known as a Chroma Key. The term key, or “Pulling a key” comes from the early days of cinematography when filmmakers wanted to create a “keyhole” matte for a scene in which the audience was supposed to be looking at a woman through a keyhole. The studio created a large plywood matte in the shape of a giant keyhole for the camera to pass through. So, the end result was what appeared to be a shot looking through a keyhole. After that, anytime a matte was created for an effect it was known as a keyhole matte, because it was cut out to the shape that they desired for the effect. Later, when chroma “key” was developed, the traveling matte was given the same designation of the keyhole. Thus, the term “pulling a key”. There are other ways of pulling keys in cinematography. These include luminance keys (keys pulled using light and dark values), difference keys (keys pulled using differences from one plate to the other) and of course the Chroma Key (any key pulled using a color).
On one set, the director decided that he wanted to change all the clocks in the house from reading the time, to words that would later creep out the main character. The clocks were not moving and the camera was locked off. At no point in time did the actor ever cross in front of any of these clocks, and yet, every one of them got covered with green tape. Some of you may not see a problem with this. I’ll explain.
This scenario represents a lack of planning on the director’s part, and a lack of expertise on the part of who ever suggested that he did this. Again, this also represents the difference between someone who knows After Effects, and a Visual Effects professional. Anyone who really knows what they’re doing most likely would have left the clocks alone entirely. For one, having the real clock faces in place gives you a reference for how the letters should look on the effected finished product. Two, if the actor never crosses in front of the area to be effected there is no reason to create a traveling matte. Remember, a green screen just gives a compositor the ability to create a moving matte around an area that they need to effects so that people appear to pass in front of, or behind the CG. And even in this scenario, it’s often better to rotoscope this kind of work, since the motion of the actor passing in front of the clocks would have been so short, and often times rotoscoping gives cleaner results than a chromakey would.
In an attempt to make a long story short, I’m going to sum up with this. Bringing in someone who knows what they’re doing in the visual effects arena; someone who understands all of the compositing concepts regardless of the software or tools available, can save you tons of money and time, by getting the job done right the first time. Whenever you wait until after production to start looking for VFX people you are only inhibiting the overall quality of your film. Bring in the right people from the very beginning. The big studios know this, which is why they do it. When independent filmmakers start getting on board with this, they’ll have one more tool in their belt to compete all the more with the big budget films. You wouldn’t start production without a director or a producer. You wouldn’t start a production without your actors. Do yourself a favor; do your film a favor. Don’t start your next production without bringing on your Visual Effects supervisor first.
Happy filmmaking.

Adam Benson
www.SleepDeprivedFilms.com
www.SleepDeprivedProductions.com

[Steve Wargo]

We're on set right now. The sound guy just said "Fix it in post" and the key grip killed him with a sandbag. It took a while. My question is this: Should we call the police or should we hide the body and say nothing? Anxiously awaiting your reply. Hurry, he is starting to smell bad.

[Julie Ann Clark]

Hi Adam,
Thanks for all of this useful information.....:)

[Jon Bonnell]

Great post.