5 Overlooked Tips for VFX

vfx can be a crucial part of your project especially as technology advances and we rely on visual effects more and more it is a powerful tool to add some production value to your no budget film if you know how to use those tools effectively and the best teacher is failing constantly trying new things failing and learning from that we are always trying to improve and haven't always followed the tips that we're about to talk about ourselves but we learn from each project that we do and we wanted to talk about some of those things that we learned along the way so here are five simple tips to help you improve your visual effects first is practical lighting to match your visual effect element with vfx we are always trying to glue the effect into the scene meaning sync that effect into the shot in a very realistic way and a great way to do that is lighting interactions having the light interact with the scene can really help solidify and affect being in that environment for instance if you have a bright effect like an explosion gunfire or magic think of how that light would actually act if it was physically within that scene lightsabers are a great example of this if you don't have a practical light hitting your actor then the visual effect of the saber looks like it's just plopped on top compare it to this shot here where we did use a practical light and you can see the difference it grounds the effect in reality and it is giving correct lighting on josh's face also in this instance because the light that we're using already looks similar to a lightsaber we're getting that linear reflection in the eyes too and this lighting idea is one that we use all the time especially for guns of course you can digitally add light or enhance but it will never look as good as the real thing and won't work at all if the scene is too dark we also use this for fire a good example of that is from our short film ghost house or this war scene episode that we made a while back we used bigger gear for that lighting but there are ways that you can create that fire light effect very cheaply we did this episode back in 2011 where we show a fire light effect just using a homemade hand squeezer and a can light links for that below but it's also a great technique for green screen shots using lights in the same direction or color as your background to help ground your actor in the environment this can be a very simple and easy thing to do and it really makes a difference with your vfx shots next up is physical interaction similar to lighting this is fusing something physically into your scene to help glue what you're to eventually do in post for instance think of a scene where a digital character is moving through an environment touching or bumping into props and interacting with other characters or when elements are physically affecting things inside of a scene a very common and effective example of that is wind along with a physical light we used a wind machine in our short ufo yeah for josh's hair and costume to look like he's being physically affected by the digital ufo this does a lot to make it feel like our character is actually sharing that same space without it you would definitely have felt something missing even if you couldn't have placed your finger on it this effect can be done more subtly and simply like we did with emily super speed effect years ago using wind on the hair props and other actors to simulate the force of her movement this was just done using a leaf blower quickly pointed in the direction we needed and then tilted away again you can even use a hair dryer like we did with this shot for our infinity pack promo but this isn't just limited to win if you're adding rain in post then it's great to get the actor wet first we've also used practical blood and slime on our actors to tie into a specific visual effect as well it always comes back to thinking of what effect the visual effect will have on the real world if it was actually there in your scene next up with compositing is matching your footage this means blending your visual effects layers to best match the footage and settings for instance if you are putting a 3d character or object into a scene like this you want to add digital lights and move them to a similar location in your 3d scene as if they were in the actual shoot and if you have any reflective surfaces you can either use your footage as an environment map or even better is to have a 360 hdri taken on location to get more accurate reflections and lighting matching lighting and reflections to your scene really does make a difference as you can see right here then there's matching that visual look of your footage you want to try to match your black levels to the footage which often we do just by eye though you can look at the color values and try to match the numbers as well with flat and log footage being common now we often really have to lift those shadows to match the footage before it's graded otherwise you can see how much the vfx stand out leaving it looking again slapped on matching color is a similar process and a common technique there is to use a curve effects and go through each of the rgb channels and tweak the respective channels with the curves until you have a more cohesive image adding noise or grain to your visual effect is also necessary unless your original footage was very clean but even subtle grain can help glue in that effect more one question we've been asked throughout the years is do you grade before or after the effects and usually grading would want to be the last thing you do for two reasons one because it gives you control to change the grade after without needing to re-render your visual effect and two because you are treating the visual effect as if it is a part of your actual footage you want your grade to be equally effective across the entire image including the visual effect and speaking of color grading make sure you check out our new blog post color grading 101 which is the first of a series on grading all written by the amazing colorist colin kelly the first covers the incredibly important fundamentals of how we actually see light and color and it's the first official post of our brand new film riot blog i'm crazy excited about this blog we have amazing contributors lined up all working pros with insane talent so definitely check out the first blog and our second blog which is up now all in the links below and keep an eye for more to come we'll be posting mondays and wednesdays to start with but moving into our next tip we have using assets correctly vfx assets and stock footage can be really useful in your shots especially for practical effects that you might not have the means to do for yourself like pyrotechnics however there are a couple common mistakes that you'll see often which will affect the final look of your shot a lot of times you'll find assets with a black background so you'll need to change that to a blending mode something like screen or add other times you'll have footage that has an alpha channel so there is no background behind that asset at all but with things like fire lightning and sometimes smoke you'll still want to change that blending mode to screen or add otherwise there can be a dark halo around the element instantly making it obvious that it does not belong in the scene simply changing that blending mode gets rid of this outer edge and improves the effect a lot another common issue is when you slow down your stock footage or use it in a comp with a different frame rate this can make the added layers look steppy and out of sync with the footage below breaking the illusion and making it obvious that they are separate layers sometimes if you've slowed down an asset you can turn on frame blending and that fixes the issue but it just depends on the asset itself and our last tip is organizing your comp players it sounds stupid and obvious but so many don't take the time to organize often thinking that it doesn't matter since they're the only ones that will ever use this project but naming all your layers is a great habit to create and stick to it's useful for any project but especially ones with a lot of layers and eventually you will find yourself working with collaborators so lock in those good habits now and when the time comes you can easily slip into that workflow plus it just speeds up your own workflow right now and you know just looks better and of course when working with visual effects the more you plan out the shot before time knowing what you're going to need knowing what that end result is going to be how those digital things will affect that physical world and how much you can bring that physical into your shot to help sell the digital is really gonna help you more than almost anything else so just like anything with filmmaking make sure you're putting in as much thought as possible so you can get the best end result as possible so that's it for today again don't forget to check out the blog and we also have a new podcast coming this time with the director of greyhound the new tom hanks film that's on apple tv he has really amazing things to say about working with actors especially someone to the level of tom hanks and just piecing together a very complex film like that so definitely check that out on tuesday wherever you listen to podcasts and actually i am curious post in the comments below where you like to listen to podcasts the most i find myself listening to them more and more on spotify but i'm curious where you guys listen but until next time don't forget to write shoot edit repeat you

Channel: Film Riot

Views: 136,250

Rating: 4.9818583 out of 5

Keywords: film riot, triune films, ryan connolly, filmmaking, tutorial, how to, adobe, film school, vfx, visual effects, movies, film, filmmaker, filmmakers, after effects, AE, 5 tips, overlooked tips, overlooked vfx, tips for vfx, physical interaction, practical lighting

Id: y3Kt1XfUHAo

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020