MY: I thought it was interesting that you mentioned that it was originally in German and dubbed to English, yet my guess is that it was shot in English (or you're the master of lip-sync!) Can you talk about the decision to mention that it was in German originally?
AV: Hahaha, thank you, but it was shot in English. Initially we had this grand idea to emulate 'The Hunt for Red October'. After trimming and trimming the film on paper, on set, then while editing there were only two German lines before the transition into English. That is how the "German and dubbed to English" came about. In retrospect, I should have shot this film from an American's point-of-view OR had money to hire German speaking actors. Again, hindsight.
MY: It is 20:20, they say. We noticed in the beginning that you used a lot of old footage then matched in with the style. Were there any special lighting considerations or anything else in the shoot that you needed to take into account in pre or post production to match that look?
AV: Everything was shot using available light except for the campfire scene because of the lack of power. Once I got everything on the timeline I made a simple "color correcting" pass adjusting my levels to broadcast safe.
Funny enough the opening stock footage came pretty late in the editing process, we knew there was going to be opening footage but we hadn't found it. When my producer and I got back from the National Archives I realized how gray the whites were from the historical footage. Taking a cue from that I dropped the whites giving the film a flatter look.
When I got closer to finishing the film I used a test clip to compare film grains from After Effects and Shake. A small group of us watched a looping DVD silently casting votes for what grain structure we liked the most, and in the end After Effects won which surprised even myself. I thought Shake was going to be the winner but even I picked an AE filter. With a nice layer of grain over the historical footage combined with our footage the two pieces came together nicely.
MY: Can you talk a bit about the visual effects? Did you use plug-ins? Stock footage? Homemade effects?
Let me break this up a bit.
Stock Footage: I used stock footage from Detonation Films and NoControl Cinema, each offer HD libraries - gravity of dirt explosions, fire, bullet hits, blood gushes, smoke, and all sorts of destruction goodness.
Bob from Detonation Films is one heck of a guy, in my mind he made it possible for us little guys to make a film with big time effects. Perhaps lesser known but equally as great is Marco von Moos from NoControl Cinema, his footage is fantastic. And Andrew Kramer, After Effects God of Video Copilot offers Action Movie Essentials. At least once a week I tell a new filmmaker about these guys.
Plug-ins: (in no particular order)
Trapcode Shine: Trapcode's Shine is amazing, I wanted to have light rays in the film, but without power for lighting and fog it just wasn't going to happen. Shine has fooled every film person I have shown the film to, it is absolutely beautiful.
RE:Vision Effects DE:Noise: Unfortunately I shot part of one scene using camera gain (+18 db!) because we were running out of light... I tried the filters in Final Cut but DE:Noise is way better, the difference is staggering, in fact.
MuzzlePlug from FXHome: This plug-in creates muzzle flashes in a 3D environment for After Effects, this combined with muzzle smoke stock footage looks pretty darn slick.
Trapcode Particular: I created the shell casings using Particular. I knew they had to be generated in '3D' so I could angle them correctly. I was doing tests with Apple's Motion adding behaviors like gravity but it didn't want to play nice. My anger drove me to buy this awesome plug-in.
Wondertouch particleillusion 3: While Particular is more sophisticated nothing beats the huge preset libraries and Pro Emitters from particleillusion. I used Eclectic 1 and 2 and the Pyro 1 and Pyro 2 Pro Emitter packs for extra debris.
RE:Vision Effects ReelSmart Motion Blur: I used ReelSmart motion blur inside Shake to add motion blur to my particles. First off I think it looks better and second I could change the amount of motion blur in Shake without having to reexport an After Effects project (versus using an AE blur).
Red Giant Magic Bullet Frames: The 'film' was shot in 60i, knowing that it was going to be converted into 24p. So, it was much better than the XL1s' frame mode!
Red Giant Magic Bullet Instant HD: When I transfer Panzer Corps to digibeta I think I'm going to uprez the footage to HD. I haven't tested this out yet.
Compositing:
I wanted to composite in Shake. The node tree made it a lot easier to envision in what order the effects would be introduced into the shot versus using precomp after precomp. I did a few tests before starting the film but this was my first real try at composting, so if this makes you gag I apologize.
MY: Are you kidding? You can't even tell that you used effects for the majority of the film.
AV: This was my effects pipeline:
- Export an uncompressed shot from Final Cut Pro.
- Generate the muzzle flashes using MuzzlePlug and shell casings with Particular in After Effects using the shot from Final Cut as reference.
- Export the muzzle flash and casings each in their own Quicktime with an alpha channel.
- Make a Shake project.
- Track the footage using a DAMN pixel tracker (I wish I had mocha then)
- Rough composite the Muzzle Flash After Effects with stock footage
- Rough composite the shell casings
- Add any rotomasks
- Start tweaking
- Hours later export an uncompressed file, import into FCP
- Smoke a cigarette.
- Move to the next shot.
- Week later hate the shot, spend more hours tweaking.
