PRACTICAL FX
SOUND MIX AT CHAINSAW
VISUAL FX
behind the scenes
POST production!
Here's Director Dawn Brown having our movie's sound mixed. Our thanks to Andrew Williams at Chainsaw who gave us top notch 2 Channel and Dolby 5.1 surround sound mixes. Click the pics to visit their site.
Who doesn't love the melting Nazi heads from Raiders? We thought we'd try the same gag on our micro-micro-budget. It was 2AM, it took a while to get our victim set up. Dawn was shooting all day. We were running on adrenaline at this point. It took quite a while to get that clay to melt, but the effect is just what we wanted. We just needed a store bought Halloween skeleton, multicolored clay, a heat gun, and a lot of fun!
Since we were shooting the shorts using stop-motion, I wanted to make the visual effects look as hand made as possible even though we used quite a bit of tech. That meant they should be charming and simple, while still aiming for quality and detail. I made a 3D model of Count Christoph's Castle in Z-Brush and rendered still frames in Keyshot. I digitally painted ivy and stone textures on each element, to give them more of a more hand made look than a full 3D render. Each Castle element had progressively more light, as if the sun was rising. This way I could create a sequence of frames in Final Cut that was similar to the stop Motion technique.
I used an old animation technique called multi-plane for the tree elements, to give the shots some life, but keeping with our low tech look. Conversely, the artificial sun was a Pixel Film Studios effect, and it worked perfectly to give the shot that time lapse feel. I actually shot the background plate from my backyard using time lapse on my iPhone. We had a lucky streak of clouds - rare for Southern California, so I grabbed as many shots as I could.
WARNING: Zombie gore may be unsuitable for very young children