Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/298092
C G W M a r ch / A p r i l 2 014 ■ 29 V-Ray. G. Nussbaum used Premiere for editing, then trans- ferred the assets to After Effects, where Maschwitz did the final compositing, coloring, and finishing. "The comp of the final spaceship is deep and elaborate, involving 3D, 2.5D, and a lot of lens distortion," says Mas- chwitz. "And, I did it all on my iMac at home. It look about two minutes a frame to render." Quite a few Red Giant products also were used in the making of the short, including Colorista II from the Red Giant Color Suite for color correction. "That was a very elaborate process," says Maschwitz. "This let me start off with all this beautiful footage you see that's colorful and pops. Then, when the spaceship is revealed, it transitions into more of a stylized, Michael Bay action-movie look." Red Giant's Trapcode and Effects Suite were used for the visual effects, particularly the atmospheric smoke and fire, as well as stock footage from Digital Juice, Video Copilot, and Detonation Films. "The smoke elements from Detonation Films are awesome but flat, and usually that works fine – you put them on a flat card in front of the CG camera. But that didn't work well with the GoPro's wide-angle field of view. In some of my early takes when I would tilt up, you could see the edges of the smoke elements because you are covering more than 180 degrees of the field of view. It revealed all our usual tricks of using smoke elements, and those processes were failing me," says Maschwitz. "We couldn't use motion blur, either. I had a panic moment when I realized that doing visual effects with the GoPro footage would be really hard. Then I realized that Trapcode had this plug-in called Horizon, which is designed for creating skies but can texture-map a piece of footage onto a dome that is wrapped around the camera. So, I took the smoke elements and other sources and texture- mapped them onto the inside of a sphere using Horizon, and when we tilted it up and down, the smoke seemed to be wrapped around the sphere 360 degrees." Maschwitz continues: "I honestly do not know what I would have done without that as an option. There was a terrifying mo- ment when I realized that all my dirty tricks were going to be a lot harder to pull off in the GoPro world." And then there were times when some of the "little things" made all the difference. For days, Maschwitz stared at the shots of the house blown to bits, wondering how to make them look more realistic. "The matte painting looked good and I was happy with it, but I thought if the house just blew up, some part of it would still be moving," he says. So, he pulled out a little strip of insulation from a pile of debris left by contractors renovating his house, and clamped that onto a C-stand and shot it with the EOS camera and composited the element into the 3D scene. "I picked up that kind of little detail from people like Dennis Muren, who talked about how the rancor monster in Return of the Jedi never looked quite right until they gave it that little piece of drool hanging off its chin, giving it scale. That little flappy piece of insulation hanging off the house in the short is my rancor monster drool, that one detail that makes the shot." Perfect Pitch Previously, Red Giant's films were used to draw focus to one of the company's products. This began in 2011, when the company developed the short film "Plot Device," which tested the video filters in the company's software, specifically Magic Bullet Looks 2. In 2012, Red Giant produced "Tempo" and used tools from its Trapcode Suite to generate the visual effects; "Order Up," which incorporated Knoll Light Factory effects; and "Form 17, " for syncing the audio using PluralEyes. Earlier this year, Red Giant created "Spy vs Guy," using BulletProof to prepare the footage. This time around, however, the endeavor was not about a prod- uct, but rather the process and the overall experience. "Sometimes we do this and come up with a solution to a problem that doesn't exist or we try to advertise a product or two. But in this case, I just wanted to make a film with Stu," says Rabinowitz. For Maschwitz, this is the first time he has publicly pitched a film. He has made video pitch reels, but none with this produc- tion value. "The sad thing is, no one gets to see them. You just make them for the audience of the producers in the room, who own the materials, so you cannot show them anywhere else. I was excited that Adrian Askarieh and the film producer were game to releasing this publicly. It stands on its own as a fun thing, and it is nice for me to have something out there that expresses my voice as a filmmaker." So far, there has been some feedback since the short was released in November, though nothing solid has come of it… yet. Nevertheless, Maschwitz was happy that he finally had the opportunity to make a film for Red Giant. "I design tools for Red Giant based on my needs as a filmmaker. I will be off making films, and that is the inspiration for the next generation of products. So, I was happy to intermingle those two worlds more closely than ever by working on 'Run Like Hell.'" Will new tools result from the making of "Run Like Hell?" "Our products are born out of the challenges we come up against during the processes. So, who knows. New tools might come out of this film too," says Rabinowitz. ■ CGW Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW. ■ MASCHWITZ GETS creative with the GoPro camera.