The Dots My girlfriend's roommates decided, several months ago, that they were going to decorate the apartment with construction paper polka-dots in order to "Bounce into spring." This happened about three days before our scheduled first day of production, which naturally created a problem. In an effort to compromise, I wrote the dots into the script, though later decided to drop it when it played out poorly. However, I did decide to keep the first scene we shot, (the "What the fuck is this?" scene, named after the first line), and we thought it would be funny to make the dots dance around during the scene. I compromised with myself and decided to shoot a still shot and animate it from there. The resulting shot, about six seconds in duration, took about four hours to execute and days to figure out how to execute. The first thing I did was go through the entire image and draw masks around every single one of the dots. I then importing a still image into Adobe Photoshop, where I used the cloning tool to remove the dots. This method resulted in very uneven coloring along the walls, so I used an artistic filter to paint over it, making the image somewhat distorted, which made the unevenness in color an interesting effect instead of a gross error. I then used my original source image and the eyedropper tool to create large blobs of each color dot, before going through with a grain filter to make the coloring more realistic. I then imported both of these images into After Effects, where I animated every mask individually so that they moved within the confines of the blobs on the background, so that when the one second file was played, they all moved simultaneously in one direction and then back again. From there it was a simple matter of copying the mask animations so that the sequence repeats several times, before finally exporting a five second clip that I used once. The "What the fuck is this?" scene All of the editing for this scene, including special effects, was done in Final Cut Pro. Louis' spinning frame was an effect called "radial blur", and by changing the amplitude over the course of the shot, it spun him around like that. The devil shot was simply slow motion with a red tint, and the transition was just a dissolve with a ripple/wave. Ducks If you blink, you might miss it, but after Louis walks down Congress Avenue Bridge he looks at the water and stares at the ducks. The ducks were all extremely small, so I decided to have a large duck swim by, more or less as a joke. I cut out the first one (that swims by) and decided there wasn't enough action, so I then found a picture of a mallard in flight, which I then animated. I created masks of it's body and each wing, and then used a 3D effect to tilt the wings in either direction, with the near wing on the top layer and the far wing in the back layer. In order to do this, I once again had to import the file into Photoshop so that I could create the rest of the duck's body, for when the foreground wing was down. I then had them all cross the screen at the same rate, alternating the 3D effect so that it looked like the wings were moving. As I said, if you blink, you might miss it - it only lasts a fraction of a second, but it took about four hours. Pavement/Leather This was one of the last effects I implemented, so it took almost no time to do. I created several masks tracing the cracks in the pavement and/or creases in the leather, and then had them leave the frame individually, with the next layer underneath and ready to go. Leaves The first thing I did here was to use the mirror effect in Final Cut to make the leaves look like some sort of demon being. I then traced a mask around the leaves and imported a picture of a marijuana leaf from the internet, which I masked as well. I copied the marijuana mask onto the other image so that the impression was mapped out, and I then animated them so the masks moved to accommodate the patterns, creating the cross-over effect in the process. After I did this, something was missing, as there was nothing in the background. As a general rule throughout the project, whenever I needed to fill some space I would insert itunes footage, so here I decided to used it as a background, the result of which is what I find the most visually beautiful sequence in the movie. Waterfall This effect was very last-minute, though I still find it very effective. What I wanted was to get rid of the wall entirely so Laura's dialogue would played behind nothing other than water. This proved to be impossible, though, since the water blended in with the colors enough that any attempted key-coloring would eliminate the water with the wall. I therefore kept the outlines of the brick, which I honestly think adds to the image, which is much more interesting, though less impressive. Note that Louis' presence there was a still image brought in from another clip. Had this not been a last-minute scene, I would have taken the time to mask him out over several frames, so that he, at the very least, would have been moving in slow motion instead of standing there lifeless in a picture. Pee fountain One of my favorite effects, in spite of the vulgar nature of it. There was a person sitting next to me at one point who had a giant turd sitting in a toilet bowl, which she thought was the funniest thing. Though I didn't find it nearly as funny, the humor rubbed off on me and I decided to make a water fountain that looked like urine was coming out of it. Figuring out how to alter the color was rather easy - I simply added a color hue filter, that adjusted the color levels of anything inside the mask. The masking, on the other hand, took a great deal of time. Since the water level varies slightly from frame to frame, I went through every frame for four seconds (that's 120 frames) and changed each and every mask so that it covered the water just right. This shot took me six hours, and it lasted four seconds. And though there may be other shots that I enjoy more, though there may be other shots that look cooler, and though every other shot is more cooth, this is the shot I am most proud of, simply because it actually looks real. Guitar choke One of the first effects I achieved through animating masks, it may look extremely cheesy, but it still means a lot to me. All I had was a blue background and a long, thin, rectangular mask, which I turned into a curved mask that ends up choking Louis. Much to my surprise (and enjoyment), the easiest part was getting rid of the guitar string that was there, which took nothing more than a well-placed cloning tool in Photoshop, which let me pump out the image in less than sixty seconds. Regarding the actual choking shot, this was done in-camera, simply by changing the shutter speed to 1/8 sec, which created a very effective motion blur. Queen Nefretete This was the first time I used a mask. I had almost no idea what I was doing, and originally ended up creating a shot where Nefretete spun around behind the cloud and then spun in front of the cloud. Unfortunately, with all the work that took me, it looked lousy in terms of what the scene was about, so I did another version in which I have the image zoom and move into frame. All I do then is change the mask to accommodate the nose being either chipped off or chopped off, before spinning to nothing in the center. Closing Credits And finally, the film has come to an end, and I decide to insert my name at the end of the Blow trailer. This shot is surprisingly difficult, when you think about the logistics of it. In the first shot, one image is on top. This image then disappears as another image appears. While I could think of several ways of doing this shot, the easiest, I felt, would be to have the image slide underneath or out from a small black mask. I.e., "David Fried" slides left underneath a black image, while "A David Fried Film", which had been covered by black, now has to slide on top. Layers don't work like this. Though I'm sure there is an easier way to do this, probably using nesting, what I did was create two separate files: one in which the end of the trailer scrolls right to reveal the name, which then disappears under black, and the second in which nothing happens for several seconds, before "A David Fried Film" appears, scrolling left. I exported both these movie files independently, and then composted the two clips in a separate track, thus making the image appear fluid. And finally, the scrolling credits, an uncommon feature in student films, was done by having one large black solid with a huge path of text, which I then moved from the bottom to the top of the screen.