Chris built a forest environment for an Element 3D forest tutorial, then posted the project files for others to use. He only asked that people let him know, if they made use of the project files, to show him what they came up with. Tur Ner from Tokyo made this music video. It's neat to know that people on the other side of the world are using the same software to build cool things.
-Elisa
Chris came up with a idea featuring a realistic-looking wizard lighting up a town. He had several tricks he wanted to use to achieve an expensive cinematic look using only footage taken in front of the green screen in our basement. One shot I found particularly impressive was a fake crane swoop around our wizard on top of a building. To pull this off, Chris simply had our wizard, Aaron, slowly turn in a circle while the camera was locked off. Chris then built the moving environment around him. Watch the behind-the-scenes portion of the video linked above to see what I mean!
To plan the lighting and angles, we storyboarded, then Chris created a pre-visualized sequence.
When we started putting the pieces together for this video, we couldn't find a pre-made robe we liked, so I sewed one myself using dimly-remembered home ec skills from junior high and Simplicity pattern 9887 (sadly it's discontinued, but you can still find the pattern on ebay).
After building the robe, we started testing makeup.
Beard test on me (because Chris didn't want to get spirit gum in his actual facial hair), then old age test on Chris, then both techniques combined on our actor, Aaron.
A friend of ours, Aaron Fransen, volunteered to be the wizard. We aged him with old man makeup techniques using a Youtube tutorial by Petrilude, and we stuck a crepe hair beard on him. When using crepe hair and spirit gum, spend a few extra bucks for good supplies. We used cheap Halloween shop stuff, and while we we got an acceptable result, it would have been a lot easier with higher quality gum. The crepe hair, at least, was decent: Graftobian, from The Costume Shoppe in Calgary.
This was different from our usual horror stuff, and a lot of work, but still a lot of fun.
-Elisa
In July 2013, we made a few ads for a friend, Ryan Chute, out on the East Coast. So far these ads aren't in full circulation yet, but hopefully that's coming soon.
Here's one where Chris took a 3D model car and had it spin around me.
And here's a quick breakdown on how Chris did the effect:
We put a lav mike on my lapel to pick up my voice. We don't have a wireless mic; the lav is plugged into a Zoom H4N, which is safety-pinned to the back of my suit jacket. The Zoom is a bit too big for the average pocket. Following making this video, we picked up a Rode SmartLav, which works with iPhone, so the setup will be lighter and easier next time.
-Elisa
