fxguide: Here at fxguide we don’t always get the opportunity to discuss the incredible advancements in practical special effects, but lately we’ve come across a number of innovations in special fx that interested us. Here’s a look at just a few – from the practical rain in Noah that was controlled by an iPad app, to how New Deal Studios incorporates 3D printing for its miniature work, to the ‘rise’ of inflatable greenscreens, and award winning car flipping tech.
15 comments:
This is a great article that highlights and breaks down the relationship between some of the latest practical effects and computer generated effects. For Noah, Burt Dalton’s practical rain effects were – mouth open – controlled by an iPad app! I especially liked learning how the team was able to block out sections of background they did not want seen on-site (as opposed to digital post) by choosing smaller mist heads on the rain rig and then backlighting the rain to produce a visually impenetrable fog. Sweet! I also like that the article addresses the issue of draining and reusing the enormous amount of water used during the shoot. In profiling New Deal’s workflow, we see how the use of 3D printers opens up a new world for miniature sets. (While this does not relate to the content of the article, I could not help but notice that the concept for the Vizio commercial rips off Ridley Scott’s epic 1984 Apple commercial. Perhaps that was the point, but even with the 3D-printed miniatures, it is not nearly as cool as Scott’s 1984.) The Airwall inflatable greenscreen is valuable for its ability to provide more location options for erecting screens. And while I am sure the pneumatic car flipper is awesome by some standards, if I never see another car flip or car chase in a movie, I will be the opposite of sad.
The complexity and thoroughness the rain scene required is mind blowing. I'm really impressed with how big the rig was and that it was all controlled by an iPad. I can certainly see why the inflatable green walls could be useful.
Some of these effects are mind boggling-ly massive, and I really hope I get to work on one. One of my favorite things about modern effects making is the melding of technologies that makes an extremely difficult or massive task actually very easy to control and manage. We see a lot of crazy tablet adaptations in he effects world all the time, and really in the entertainment industry as a whole. People use apps to control lighting consoles, rain rigs, automation, animation, and a whole host of other effects.
This is a really cool article. I had no idea that so much thought would go into designing a system for realistic rain. It makes perfect sense because I imagine the camera is very sensitive when it comes to rain and how it is lit. The rig was really impressive, although I thought the part about the Ipad was a bit anti-climatic. I would be really like to be on set for one of these effects to experience the true feeling of the rain they have created.
The section about the rain effect is just insane. Coming from a theatre perspective, we expect to give the feeling of rain with effects like a rain curtain or even just using lighting and sound effects but no actual water. Using 3 giant cranes and over a million gallons of water is just unimaginable to me. I'm really glad the end of the article explained a little bit about drainage- as I was watching the video all I could think was "that's really awesome but now where does the water GO?" It seems like something that would be a real challenge to do without flooding the surrounding areas, messing up a lot of the environment nearby, and wrecking a lot of the set. Muddy ground is horrible to deal with in terms of structures built on it, difficult to drive over, and wrecks costumes. I wonder if they had a team of people who's only job was to ensure that proper drainage would happen.
This was an incredible article. It is crazy how much time, effort, and money, go into making one simple thing like "making it rain" happen on a movie set. I eventually want to go into production design for film and its truly daunting thinking about the process to make a film gorgeous. Its also really easy for movie goers to take little things like making it rain for granted, but this article really opened my eyes, showing me that nothing is easy when it comes to movie magic. The bottom half of the article was amazing too! I love little models (sometimes I think I could just make little models for a living) and the fact that these intense models are used to film famous movie sequences is so fascinating! I would love to one day design and build models for movies like this!
I would love to work on a movie that had enough money for effects as massive as these. Being able to make it rain for extended periods of time in an area that large is very impressive. I really like the giant light balloons that they had floating above the scene to evenly light the scene like it was moonlit. It seems a little unnecessary to have everything controlled by an iPad but I suppose it would be convenient to be able to use something that you are already familiar with.
The amount of engineering that goes into movie making is incredible. All this time I thought cgi was just getting better, but instead it's just the technicians who are absolutely mastering their job. Why bother trying to fke a flipping car when you can just have a flipping car?
This is crazy. 5k GPM to cover the entire set. I don’t know a lot about film, but I can imagine that a 20 minute scene is about 4 hours of camera time total. Thats 1.2 million gallons of water. Obviously they reused the water on set, but still, it’s a lot.
How would TAIT do this?
I agree with Ruben, the sheer scale of some of these effects is actually mind blowing. It's so interesting to see where technology is taking us, especially in the world of entertainment, and if these types of innovative and creative ways of accomplishing effects can happen in the entertainment world, how else can we incorporate them into our daily lives by another means. I can only hope that someday I'll be able to take part in these amazing advancements in the entertainment world.
Ba-dum Ba-dum BA BA BA!!! SFX! As I always say: "I LOVE SPECIAL EFFECTS!!!" They're so cool. I always wondered how they made it look like it was raining and this is pretty intense. It's really cool how many aspects of sfx there are! I mean, I am more into the makeup sfx because what is cooler than manipulating the human body just using a spray brush? But this is pretty awesome too. I actually really found it interesting to see the whole car flipping mechanism and it's funny, I didn't know that they used to use cannons but I now that I think about it, it totally makes sense!
As a thorough fan of live special effects, I really liked this article in general, but I found the car flipping particularly interesting. Its interesting how simple the flipper mechanism is. When watching this though I think of a few questions. First, why use nitrogen in the tank? Is it just cheaper or is there chemically something special that made them choose it over another gas? Also, what is the control mechanism for these flipping devices? and the sfx in general? I know films often use a system like navigator to control the cameras during scenes like this but would they use the same type of system to control these carefully timed effects and pyro?
Wow. This article went really indepth in to each of the four topics it discussed. To start with, the rain rig was really cool. I can't believe that they used a practical rig for something so huge. The amount of water they had to use is staggering, which left me wondering how they got all of the water to the site in the first place. The modeling and car flipping articles were both cool and showed off neat uses of technology, some newer and some older. It was the inflatable green screen article that was really neat to me though, it has the potential to allow for even better blendings of practical and computer generated effects on a grand scale.
It's so cool to see what sort of special effects go into making a movie. I thought that the first example with the rain was really cool, and it was interesting that the director decided to switch from having digital rain to actual rain. The scale of the rig was incredible, and I think the fact that it was controlled by an iPad was interesting. I would have figured that something like that would require something much more than a tablet to run. Also, the way that they used lighting in conjunction with the rain was pretty interesting, and how they had some rain look more misty than other areas of rain.
I love that something this complex was able to be controlled on an Ipad. I think the fact that it all boils down to one dude holding an Ipad is also just really metaphoric if you think about the whole Noah bible story. I like thinking of god as some dude with an Ipad in his hands making everything happen. Its comical but also really impressive.
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