Pop!

Time for another blog about F&T effects! This one is a simple teleport. The director was really specific about what he wanted and even did one of the other teleports in the first episode so there was unfortunatly not much creativity with this one.

Basicly the teleporting is the result of an edit. Selvig(Tom Lockman) is holding a bow, the director yells "FREEZE". Everyone in frame doesn't move and some grabs the bow from him. Then the director yells "GO!" and everyone continues with the scene as if the bow just disappeared from Selvig's hand. Seems pretty simple yes?

(Here's the two frames that make up the edit.)

Well it would be.... if the wind and leaves would also freeze and everyone could actually stay perfectly still. But the truth is, people move even when they are trying not to and leaves are always moving.

The area away from the bow could be masked out, but a combo of leaves and Tom being a human being makes the effect rather noticable. My job was to add an effect over it that not only looked magical, but also obscured the changes between edits.  The director wanted a warpy effect, so I simply animated a ripple effect on the edited footage big enough to mask the differences.

 I masked out Selvig's hand as good as possible to give some depth. That's all there is too it really. (tee-hee, silly faces)

The schedule says this episode is to be released before the end of the week, and I still have a couple more effects from the episode to share so stay tuned!