CGI and visual effects for your film on a budget - By: Britney Simpson

Effects and Animation in Film
Want to add blockbuster visual effects (VFX) to your short or low budget movie, but don`t have the blockbuster budget? Recent advances in quality and reduction in cost of 3d animation and post production have brought high quality CGI within reach of filmmakers and video producers on a modest budget, but how do you commission 3d animation and visual effects for movies?

This article is designed to give you a few answers.

CGI and Video Effects tips
Don`t be afraid to approach a post production/ 3d animation studio with your idea even if you`ve not fully developed the script. Animators can often give you advice on the most effective way to make your video production work, and will instantly be able to answer a lot of your questions on how to develop the visual effects to your timescales and budget.

FX, Time and money: The more time you can give your visual effects team, the more detail and quality they can add.

The team: CGI/special effects artists don`t work in a vacuum – even if the animator or VFX artist you approach doesn’t have all the skills needed, they`ll know who to bring in and should be able to do it seamlessly to get the job done.

Formats: FX artists create their animations as sequences of still images – usually TIFF files – From there, they will be able to provide you with your visual effects in any format you want.

A few common visual effects techniques:

Background or matte painting – take an establishing shot (a locked off tripod shot is cheapest) and your visual effects artists can use 3d animation to add to and change the landscape to replace parts of the image, or place your shot somewhere else.

3d Character animation: probably the toughest thing you can do in CGI – but the most rewarding – is character animation - adding live creatures and characters to your film. It`s quite possible, even on a modest budget to include 3d animated characters, but you have to count your shots – and your on-screen seconds carefully.

Blue screen or chromakey effects: It`s quite possible to turn a crowd of five people into an army, place your hero into a 3d animation of a landscape or make them fly using bluescreen filming.

Pyrotechnics, and explosion effects: Adding muzzle flash, smoke, sparks or fairy dust to a shot can be done relatively inexpensively. Realistic explosions, fire and rain VFX are tougher and need to be well set up in the live action portion of the shot.

Out of this world effects: in space, everything is CGI – few of your audience will have actually been there, so visual effects artists get away with a lot of artistic licence.

Battles between orc warriors: There`s a trend nowadays towards having lots of stuff going on - swarms, crowds and huge epic CGI battles – primarily because it`s difficult to achieve. These kind of special effects are one of the few ways you can still show off a really big budget because while there are ways to economise, you`re still looking at a considerable job.

How to reduce your video FX costs
The best way to reduce your visual effects and 3d animation budget is to avoid assuming that you can fix everything in post production. Get the shots your FX artist needs at the quality they need them and you`ll spend less time trying to get a good composite.

About the Author

Want to add blockbuster visual effects (VFX) to your short or low budget movie, but don`t have the blockbuster budget? Recent advances in quality and reduction in cost of 3d animation and post production have brought high quality CGI within reach of filmmakers and video producers on a modest budget, but how do you commission .

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