Is this special effects guy the write guy for the job?

I

ironpony

Carbonite Member
I have a short film I want to make that will require some heavy duty after effects. I asked a special effects guy and he says he can do it. I was impressed with some of his work. The thing is though, he wants me to shoot my movie at 60p with a fast shutter speed. The reason being is that it makes it easier to add the effects in. I really would like to shoot at 24p at 1/50 though. Just the classic movie look, nothing fancy. He says he cannot put the effects in though unless it's 60p. It's the reason why Peter Jackson shot The Hobbit at 48fps.

Now this guy's previous work was shot at 60p before. But do I have to shoot at that? I mean their are other special effects movies that look like they were shot at 24p. Iron Man as a random example? But he says he doesn't think he can do it at 24p. He says 60p is no problem cause you can just convert it to 24p at 1/50th afterwards. Is that true? Why didn't Peter Jackson do that then? Or does he just like the 48 fps look? Is this guy write or should I keep looking for someone else?

Thanks.
 
For the most part, the desire for a faster shutter is to make Rotoscoping easier. The more motion blur, the more difficult roto will be. It is partly true that you can add motion blur back in after the fact, for example if an element is roto'd then AE has motion information it can use to add the proper blur. But AE cannot just magically add motion blur to video footage by itself, that requires some good plug-ins (some are better than others).

I hope that helps. Oh, and that is not why The Hobbit was shot at 48fps. The use of higher frame rates is part of a movement started largely by Doug Trumbull and picked up by James Cameron. 48fps was chosen for the final delivery of the film and I imagine (but I don't know) that a lot of that film was shot with a 180 deg shutter. So long story short, frames per second really does not affect the ability to "put the effects in", but shutter angle does.
 
Actually you can put motion blur to video footage by itself. I can't recall exactly which stock effect it is, believe it has the word warp in it, but there's way to add motion blur to footage similar to the shutter settings in Apple Motion. I did it with some graphics in a project last year to mitigate strobing issues (graphics were created in motion, rendered to video files, brought into AE so basically counts as "video footage". Now, I'm not saying it looks great, but it can be done. There's a video tutorial about it somewhere online.
 
Do you want him to do your effects, or not? He rtells you he can do what you want, but requires a specific shooting format to assist him. If you cannot do this, then you are making it difficult for him and he may consider it too much for the fee negotiated. If your reluctance to shoot at the faster frame rate means it increases his workload - he could just walk. If it's SFX heavy, then surely you want the best he can give you, and if he wants 48, he must have a reason.

The blend of live and effects footage suggests that you need to provide him the right format. It does strike me that if he's adding stuff to scenes, then any benefit from the slower frame rate could be invisible when blended with the SFX?
 
does this guy generally work in gaming, as I think that is the only area that 60p is the norm. Most narrative is still 24, and 2k for effects as 4k is too expensive, more frames means more expense as well, due to render time. I would suggest that 60p is what he is used to, if you want to work with him perhaps it would be work converting a test and see what happens.
 
Well if the motion blur can be put back in and 60p can be cut to 24p then I guess that's cool. As long as it can be. I tried adding in motion blur in a couple of things myself but it looked kind of fake to me. The scene is outdoors at night though and the faster the shutter speed, the less exposure you get, and at night I already have enough trouble getting light as it is. I will ask him to do a test before hiring.
 
As a VFX artist myself I cannot really think of a specific situation where one could only work in 60p and would not be able to work with 24p. Like has been mentioned perhaps certain things may be easier but almost all VFX are done at 24p, even the cheesy stuff on TV.

If all his samples are at 60p it is likely the camera he uses only shoots 60p and that is all he has experience with. Any great FX artists however should have no problem working with 24p.

Perhaps if you gave us more details on what needs to be done for the scene we may better figure out the rationale for the 60p.
 
Josh Bass said:
Actually you can put motion blur to video footage by itself. I can't recall exactly which stock effect it is, believe it has the word warp in it, but there's way to add motion blur to footage similar to the shutter settings in Apple Motion. I did it with some graphics in a project last year to mitigate strobing issues (graphics were created in motion, rendered to video files, brought into AE so basically counts as "video footage". Now, I'm not saying it looks great, but it can be done. There's a video tutorial about it somewhere online.
Click to expand...

The effect you are thinking of is TIMEWARP. And yes, it can add fake motion blur onto footage. Personally, I think it tends to look like fake motion blur added to footage. One of the most common paid plugins for adding motion blur is RSMB. RSMB does a better job, but I find it tends to blur the entire frame much more than a proper shutter angle would. I know some artists that swear by it, but it's not my cup of tea.
 
Okay thanks. Is it possible to do the special effects with motion blur already in camera? Should I look for someone else if I want natural looking blur, and don't want anything that will distract the audience potentially?
 
At the least I would do some tests and see if you like the final motion rendering.

But "I only do 60p"?? That guy isn't going to go very far in his after effects career. I'm no AE master, but I think of roto as a last resort and would much rather rely on keying. If you have a codec that renders motion well and plan your shots, do some color storyboards for lighting reference, do some tests - you'll be doing it the way a lot of hollywood does it.

I've never been happy with using a faster shutter to get tighter motion for effects work - even keylight handles motion blur quite well, if the blur itself is nicely rendered by the codec.
 
The only reason the hobbit was 48fps was because it was 3D and the added frame rate helped removed artifacting from movement in 24fps 3D. That's it. I shot quite a bit VFX heavy stuff, and the only thing that concerned the VFX artist was resolution, and when I tell them RED. They always say perfect. Frame rates shouldn't matter at all, as long as you talk to the artist about the shots you want, you should be able to do any frame rate you need in the shot. The only thing that should matter for VFX shooting is resolution and color bit depth of the camera beside the frame rate PER vfx shot. Let him on set to do his own camera reports and do a quick lens mapping and any tracking points he wants.
 
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