Indiana Jones INVISIBLE BRIDGE Tutorial | Miniature model & After Effects!

- Hey guys, Steve Ramsden here, and today we're going to try and recreate one of my favorite visual and practical effects from the Indiana Jones films. We are doing the 'invisible bridge' effect from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade! Industrial lights and Magic or ILM created some amazing effects shots in this film. And this is one of my favorites because it combines practical and visual effects. Basically in this scene, Indie must take a leap of faith to get across a seemingly impossible ravine. And the camera then reveals that there is a hidden bridge to get to the other side, camouflaged through forced perspective. Now, of course, in real life, this would only work if you viewed it from one particular angle and with one eye shut, but it is a really clever method that the filmmakers use to show that the bridge was there the whole time, he just couldn't see it. It is a beautiful optical illusion and it was done practically. The filmmakers built a miniature set of the bridge and the cliff face and the bridge was delicately painted so that from one specific angle, it would look invisible. They filmed Harrison Ford against a blue screen separately and then composited it him in and they must've done some really clever matching of the camera movement on the full-scale element to match it with the model. So this was a pretty ambitious effect to have a go out but we thought we would give it our best shot. And if you like filmmaking and practical and visual effects and you're enjoying these DIY Hollywood effects and tutorials, then hit that subscribe button and you'll get to see lots more. So we decided to film the full-scale element first and that way we could build a model that would match whatever movement we were able to do. Now, ILM would have filmed this part against a blue screen but we chose green because our green screen is longer and it gives us enough room to shoot a full length shot of a character. ILM would have also been able to do a longer camera move than we had because looking at the original clip they probably used a track and dolly or a crane. Now we only have a regular slider so that meant we couldn't do as long a steady camera move as they could. So I started off by standing on the green screen and facing away from the camera and just off slightly to one side, performed the action of looking down and around my feet, just like in the original film and the camera moved sideways and then back to its starting position this gave us our full length shot of the character and we could use this to try and work out how to make the model. So it was important that we got this shot into the computer straight away so that we could use it to test the model and figure out what angle we would need to film at. We were building this shot in After Effects and we could remove the background using Keylight and then draw a mask around our figure. This then left our character against the transparent background and we could now drop in model shots behind to see what would work. So based on the photos of the original model, we set up a flat wooden board to be the cave wall and built a small cardboard bridge heading out towards the camera. We then used this to do a couple of test shots and work out or what would look correct. This is because we had to work out exactly where the camera would be before painting the bridge. So we were able to drop these shots in behind our figure and work out the angle. And you can see here that the perspective doesn't quite as to where the figure is looking. In the end we brought the camera down a little lower and angled it at less of a tilt but this was mostly a lot of guesswork and it was a lot of trial and error. Next, It was time to get the paints out and to have some fun trying to copy that original painting of the cave wall. Now, clearly I am not an ILM-quality matte painter who can do photorealistic paintings so I knew this was never going to look like a photo but I still thought it would be more fun to do it the old school way and demonstrate how they would've done it originally with real painting. Once the painting was taking shape and I was praying I'd put the doorway in the right place, I was then able to add the cardboard bridge and support it using a magic arm. So now it was time to paint the bridge. And of course, to do this, I had to set up the camera and see what it was seeing and use that as my guide for painting the forced perspective onto the bridge. So using the camera and my monitor to get a better view I was able to slowly start painting onto the bridge and try and match the perspective of the wall behind. This meant mostly drawing lines that reached right down to the camera and gradually got narrower as they got closer to the lens. I tried to include several different colors and paint parts of it on the bridge and parts of it on the wall behind. And that way it would fool the eye into thinking that you were just seeing one flat surface. I also used a lot of light and dark colors next to each other to try and make it look like there was light hitting a surface, and there were pools of shadow and light. And the real trick of course was to not knock the camera while I was doing this. Finally, when I thought I'd got the painting as good as I probably could and decided that life was too short to spend any longer on it, it was time to start filming. So because this was a miniature and part of it was really close to the lens as usual, I tried to get as deep a focus as possible so that it wouldn't look too small. So this meant really cranking up the F-stop number and getting as much of the model and focus as I could. The downside was I lost a load of light. So we also really needed to crank up the ISO to compensate for losing all that light. It was a balancing act between lighting the model as brightly as I could without making it look too shiny. I also had to eliminate any hard shadows because those would give away the game of where the secret bridge was. So I moved around another light underneath the bridge until I could balance this out. And I used bits of card on light stands to try and get rid of excess light around the edges, which would have looked really shiny in the black areas which after all are supposed to be shadows. So now it was time to have a go at sliding the camera along the rail and filming an approximation of what I thought the camera move probably would be. And again, this was a case of real trial and error because I was just trying to guess how long that move would be if it had happened at that scale. Another thing I realized was I was never going to be able to time this move exactly with what we had originally done. So I just filmed at double the frame rate which for me was 50 instead of 25 and decided to use time remapping later to much the movement with what we had done at full scale. I also realized I was never going to hit the same mark to move the camera back to the beginning. So I decided to shoot it in one direction only and then reverse the footage for the move back. So eventually I got to move which when played back at half speed I thought would work pretty well for the effect. And it was now time to bring it into the computer and see if I had guessed everything correctly. So the miniature shot could be dropped into After Effects behind our figure. And immediately I did some color work using the Lumetri Color Effect, just to see if the model colors would actually match and to use the time remapping to match the movement and reverse the shot to get it back to its starting point. Once the timings of the camera move were accurate the next challenge was to line up the figure on top of the bridge and make it look like it was all moving as part of one shot. And if you look closely at Harrison Ford's feet in the original film, this is the thing that gives away that it's been filmed as two separate elements. And I never noticed this in all the years of watching it because you're looking at such an amazing optical illusion. Getting the figure to stick to the bridge was pretty difficult because both shots are moving. So I stabilized the motion of the figure layer and traps the motion of the bridge layer and parented one layer to the other. This did a pretty good job of doing about 80% of the work. And then I just did some manual repositioning to try and really get those feet to stay in one place on the bridge. Next I wanted to create a slight shadow and I think they did the shadows with puppets in the original film which must've been a real headache! For this version though I was able to duplicate the figure layer, manipulate it in 3D and with the opacity turned down a bit and some blur added, I was able to use that as a shadow that sticks pretty well to the feet and hopefully you won't even be looking at that anyway. I did some finishing color correction and added some cinematic black bars to the top and bottom of the frame so that I could do a very subtle vertical camera movement as well. And then we were pretty much done and it was time to look back at the finished effect. Well guys, if you enjoyed this and you want to make the best film you can on a budget using all of our regular techniques, you can sign up for my new course over at diymoviemaking.com. It will cover everything you need to make a passion project without breaking the bank. Budget lighting, affordable camera and sound suggestions lots of visual and practical effects ideas of course. And it will also include my in-depth After Effects training with downloadable footage for you to practice with. So definitely consider signing up using the link below. Happy movie-making and I'll see you next time.

Channel: Steve Ramsden

Views: 519,185

Keywords: indiana jones, last crusade, special effects, visual effects, vfx, steve ramsden, diy movie making, matte painting after effects, matte painting, miniatures, indiana jones path of god, indiana jones leap of faith, forced perspective photography, forced perspective model, ilm, industrial light and magic, harrison ford, steven spielberg, time remapping, motion tracking, movie effects recreated, trick videos, compositing in after effects, last crusade ending, tutorial, how to

Id: wDDYd74cg4Y

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021