VFXhack

I’m always on the lookout for a new way to simultaneously do something productive and keep from getting bored while I’m on set waiting for a VFX shot to come up. My latest arts and crafts project involves creating the ultimate LED tracking marker. Now you may ask “Why LEDs? Why not a triangle inside a circle, or newspaper, or a tennis ball for god’s sake!” Well those methods are still valid but the in the right situation and LED tracking marker can really do the trick. Here are some reasons why you might want to go the LED route.

1. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. As the name suggests you don’t need to light them because hey are a tiny light source onto themselves. This is perfect for areas of the frame that don’t have enough exposure for your common variety tracking marker.

2. LEDs hold up better when they are out of focus. When you shot a greenscreen with a long lens and an open F-stop, the background of your shot is gonna go way out of focus. Regular tracking markers turn to mush in this situation causing more a problem for clean-up than helping with the tracking process. The LED will bloom but tends to hold it’s intensity and not break-up as much.

3. The are small. LEDs are compact and light. A little bit of snot tape on the back and the can be affixed to anything from a patch of skin to a set wall. Ball up in some strong tape (sticky side out of course) and you can even throw them up on a wall that’s too high to reach. No more asking that grumpy grip if you can borrow his ladder.

4. Power is not an issue. A single battery can keep an LED running strong for days depending on the temperature. Battery life deteriorates rapidly in the cold so if you are shooting outside in the winter, make sure you grab a few packs of extra batteries for your kit bag.

There some things to watch out for with LEDs though. Their biggest strength (the fact that they emit light) is also their biggest weakness. LEDs can spill unwanted light all over the place if they are to close to (or on) the subject they are shooting. Fortunately, LEDs come in different flavors that include color variations and frosted plastic casings. The frosted casing cast a lot less spill but also need to be aligned to point at the lens for maximum effect. Try and find some samples and try out some color and casing combos before you head out. You never know how things could change on set, so it’s important to carry a bunch of LED options with you in your kit bag.

At this point you may be asking yourself “Wow, LEDs sound great. Where can I buy some?”. Well, the short answer is you can’t. You have to build LED tracking markers yourself. But never fear intrepid VFX explorer! Here’s a step by step on on how to create your very own set of LED tracking markers.

Step 1: Buy some LEDs

You can get these babies on-line or at your local electronics supply store. The come in different colors and you can also find them with frosted plastic. You can frost clear ones yourself with some dulling spray or spray mount. You can also file off the top of the plastic to expose the diode if you want them to be even brighter.

Step 2: Buy Some Heat Shrink Tubing

This is a great trick. Heat shrink tubing is a strip of vinyl that shrinks down to 1/2 it’s original size when exposed to heat. You can get it in all different kinds of colors including green which makes it almost invisible when affixed to green screen.

Step 3: Buy Some 3 Volt Batteries

These are the kinds of batteries that most cameras use. You can buy them from a store but it’s much cheeper to buy them in bulk on-lne.

Step 4: Cut the Tubing, Slide in the Battery Apply Heat

Cut the tubing so that is just a little bit larger than the battery, then just slip the battery inside the tubing. Apply heat with a heat gun and “Viola!”, the tubing makes a nice tight jacket around the battery. Make sure when you are applying heat that you hold the battery and tubing with a pair of pliers so you don’t burn yourself.

Step 5: Insert LED

All that’s left to do now is slip the wires of the LED between the battery and jacket and you’ve got yourself a tracking marker. You can stick these to surfaces using double sided tape, stick them to people with a Band-Aid or just rest them on flat surface. Happy shooting!

LINK to a del.icio.us tag with places to buy the stuff you need to make your own.

Tired of all the Oscar rehash? Head on over to Superpunch and check out there collection of classic movie posters from the winners of the best visual effects Oscars from 1940-1979. The images are great and the site also includes handy links to purchase replicas of these cinematic milestones. Good luck getting your significant other’s permission to hang them in your living room.

LINK to Superpunch the blog

After working as both an Artist and Supervisor in the VFX industry for over a quite some time, I’ve found that in order for a shot or a show to turn out right, everybody involved must communicate. As simple as that sounds it can be quite hard to get right. Often times everything from schedules to egos seem to conspire to keep the people who really need to talk to eachother apart. The following are some hopefully helpful tips on how to keep the dialog moving.

Show and tell

As an Artist, part of your job is keeping up on the latest techniques and tricks in VFX. If you come across a cool little deal that saves time or makes stuff look a whole lot better (sometimes both) let someone know. Got a new traking marker setup that will make matchmoving a snap? Take your Supe aside for a few seconds to run by him or her. The same goes for when the best laid plans go astray. There are times that the plates that come back from set don’t quite match up to the original methodology. Instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, call the Supe over, go over the plates togther, regroup and think of a new stradegy.

Keep it civil

One inevitable consiquence of increased contact is increased friction. The time and money involved on creating VFX conspire to create pressures that can stymie the lines of communication. And nothing brings the process to a more abrupt halt than a good old fashioned blow up. I’ve seen my fair share of Artist/Supe throwdowns and they always turn out the same way (except for one extreme case where the authorities got involved). After the screaming match is over, everyone has to make nice and get back to work anyway, and aside from being a tremendous waste of time, blow-ups hamper communication for the duration of the process. If you check your ego at the door, keep the voice volume to a reasonable level and stay away from the blame game, you’ll help keep your show moving forward even under the most difficult circumstances.

Get on the bus

Nobody likes to hear comments at the end of a project like “Yeah, I knew that wasn’t gonna work”. You need to stay as involved as you can in the project from start to finish. Checking Out is not an option. If you do you will lose any sway that you ever had over the direction of the final project. If you are engaged with your Supe the whole time you will have a better chance of being listened to. Have strong opinions or concerns? Let them be heard (in a normal tone of voice of course). A good Supervisor will always listen carefully to an Artist that has the best interests of the show at heart. If they don’t, maybe your at the wrong facility.

Timing is everything

Just as you don’t want to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, you don’t want to yell “This shot looks like ass!” during a review session with a client. There is a time and place for every comment. If you want your thoughts to be taken seriously choose the best time to present your ideas and opinions to a Supe. Cornering someone and demanding action before they get to the coffee urn first thing in the morning will guarantee a negative result. Instead, wait for a relative clam in the daily storm and ask for a face to face when time permits. That way a Supe can come to you feeling much more receptive and a lot less defensive.

If you haven’t checked out the talks from TED (Technology Entertainment Design) do yourself a favor and head over post haste. You could waste hours of your employers valuable time listening to what some of the brightest minds have to say on a variety of subjects. J.J. Abrahms’ talk is of particular note for his praise of VFXhacks like the makers of 405:The Movie and Rustboy. The whole talk is quite good and shows that J.J. is one of the few guys out there who really gets it.

LINK to the TED website

io9 has posted list with video clips of some the great spaceship destructions in film and television history. There are some great ones in here with some especially good examples of models being blasted with pyro. I have to say, the most exhilarating thing VFX is building something t hat looks really cool then packing it full of explosives and watching it get consumed in a ball of fiery oblivion. The only thing I take issue with on this list is the clip from Vanilla Sky which is a car stunt for cryin’ out loud and also the glaring omission of the Rodger Young destruction sequence from Starship Troopers.

LINK to full post on io9 (thanks to Nyarlathotep) for the link

Kevin Kouch over at SynchroLux has written a great post about how a lowly animator tasked with forgotten background characters can add that certain something to their work in spit of “shallow storytelling and empty, superficial characters”. It’s a great read and all of Kevin’s advice can be applied to VFX work as well. I love the idea of “doing more than your job”. Heck, if all I get to do on a shot is far-off smoke plumes, by golly I’m gonna make em the best far-off smoke plumes ever!

LINK to the full atricle (via Cartoon Brew)

Last night I attended the 6th annual VES Awards where geeks from around the globe throw on a Monkey Suit to pat each other on the back. Of course this mutual admiration is will deserved and all in all I had a fantastic time. I’m big on community and the best part of the evening for me was re-conecting with old friends and colleges and getting a chance to reflect over the VFX accomplishments of the last year and think about where our industry is heading in the future. Now, while everyone is gonna report on the winners and losers today, I thought I’d give you my favorite moments from the ceremony last night.

Eric Roth’s Opening Address

Eric Roth (Exec Director of the VES) opened the evening by making a few proclamations. First, there will be a VES handbook published this year which is sure to be a page turner. He also busted out with some industry predictions claiming that this will be the year that a studio will try to make a fully un-uncanny valley actor for a major motion picture. Roth also foretold the death of roto-scoping and other labor heavy compositing tasks due to advances in software. This prophesy brought a slight chill over the room, I guess some people were shaken by the idea that things as they are might change in the future.

Patton Oswald Presents

OK, everyone knows that I am a sick fanboy for Patton’s work as a stand-up comic. But he really brought the house down last night giving everyone a welcome break from the monotonous droning of the other presenters. He started off with a fake story about working with Steven Spielberg as a snake wrangler on Deul. His yarn began with an all night tequila binge with Lee Marvin and Karen Back and ended with Patton and S.S. tied together in a shirtless knife fight. During the fight Oswald suggests changing Steve’s original idea for villain in Jaws from a Grouper to Great White just before having is trapezius sliced. Patton ended the bit by looking at Spielberg and shouting “And you didn’t even take me with you!” Hilarious.

Everyone Thanks Their Wife

Every winner thanked there wives (or significant others) for putting up with the crap hours that it takes to do VFX. The wives looked a little uncomfortable during this public pseudo-appology, looking like inside they were thinking “Whatever dude, don’t think your getting out of hot water next time just cuz’ you thanked me at an awards ceremony”. It also brought into focus that there are way to few female artists and supervisors in VFX. Looking at the nominees and winners from last night, it seems to me that the VFX world is still an old boys club.

Spielberg Accepts and Comments

Steven Spielberg accepted a lifetime achievement award from the VES last night. He was gracious and articulate, recounting stories from his childhood of making VFX in his bedroom with just some black poster board, a Revell model spaceship and Super-8 camera. I thought is was great that he focused on the passion and creativity of making VFX and loved his suggestion that the VES start a new category for student work to recognize talent on it’s way up. His acceptance speech really brought everyone in the room back that that place that got them into VFX in the first place. That made the whole evening worth it for me.

Michael Bay Kinda Acts Like A Tool

After Spielberg’s stirring speech, Michael Bay came out to present. He told a story about working with Steven as a young turk. The 15 year old Bay had caught wind that his mentor was making a movie call Raiders Of The Lost Arc. After reading the script Bay promptly called all his friends claiming “This movie’s gonna suck!”. Obviously, he thought this was a funny anecdote and played it for laughs. But it just came off as kind of a jerky move right after the guy got a lifetime achievement award. It just shows you that success does not equate with good taste.

LINK to PDF of the 6th annual VES Awards Winners

Say you want to recreate the famous bullet-time sequence from the matrix for the DVD of your daughter’s ballet recital. You can

1. Rent the real rig from a vendor for $100,000 or…
2. Build your own rig in two days for $8,000

This is no joke! A couple of guys actually did this and best of all, posted a detailed how-to on Instructables. It’s a brilliant set-up that includes 24 pro-sumer digital cameras (with shutter cables), some components readily available from radio shack for a controller box, a few random pieces of hardware and some plywood. The resulting images were used to create the VFX for a low-budg rap video and amazingly close to the real deal. These guys really went the extra mile an included cameras with a Bulb setting so they could incorporate light streaks into the shots.

LINK to full tutorial

Remember the guys from the BBC who re-enacted the D-day invasion on shoe string budget with just 3 guys, a greenscreen and enough chutzpah to fill container ship? Well, the Brits are at it again this time with Attila The Hun, but now it’s 250 VFX shots all done by one guy in his bedroon. Oh, and did I mention that guy is also the director of the show? FXGuide has put together an amazing article on how Gareth Edwards (the aforementioned director) pulled off ths Herculean VFX feat. Make sure you check out the podcast and quicktime how to to get the full low down on this incredible project.

LINK to the full FXGuide article (via strongmocha and vfxblog)

In case you haven’t heard, things seem to be looking up on the WGA negotiations lately. An extremely rosey picture was painted on the LA Times front page yesterday. Since then the story has been picked up all over the place and the mood seems to be very positive. Deadline Hollywood reported that Peter Chernin told to good old boys in the sky box at the Super Bowl that ” the strike is over “. But before we pop open the bubbly and start giving non-ironic high-fives left and right, it wouldn’t be a real Hollywood cock-up without a coupla turds in the proverbial punch bowl.

Michael Russnow throws up this gem on The Huffington Post called The WGA Strike For Dummies: It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over. He describes his woes thusly

I’d like the Writers Guild strike to end. I’m tired of getting up earlier than I prefer to every morning to go picketing at CBS Television City in Hollywood most days of every week. Even though I don’t have a job to immediately go back to, like most other unemployed or underemployed writers I have a stake in the strike’s conclusion, because I have several projects which I’d like to pursue, and I can’t until we cross the finish line.

We in the VFX industry would also like the strike to end, more than that, we need it to end. We would all get up earlier than we prefer every morning to pursue the several projects that we have going on namely paying our bills and supporting our families.

Larry Gelbart, longtime tinsel-town writer and WGA member, has lent his voice to this automated phone message sent out members on Sunday urging fellow members to

set aside all the rumors, all the second-guessing, I ask you to set these aside and pick up a picket sign instead.

I get it. I mean it would be a terrible negotiating tactic for the WGA to simply roll up the picket lines and go home when their leardship is trying to finalize a deal. But please guys. We in the VFX community are all for a fair deal for creative folks but we need both parties to sit down without the theatrics and hammer this thing out. There was great piece in Friday’s LA Times about the trickle-down effect of the strike on other people working in the industry. It centers around the thought of set dress Michael O’Donnel a set dresser for TV shows. He sums up the situation nicely, claiming to

understand the principle behind the WGA strike, the need to fight for a fair share of whatever revenue streams emerge from new media. “The sons and daughters of the idle rich,” was what O’Donnell called the people who run the studios. Mostly, though, they just want to get back to work

I think we can all agree with Michael on that last bit.