COVERING OUR TRACKS AUGUST 2001
by John
Mantzefield
copyright 2001
The
idea for this cover came from years of reading articles
about how movie special effects are shot in two
magazines, American Cinematographer and Cinefex. The
first one covers the equipment and concepts of film
production, while the other contains stories on the
behind-the-scenes details of movie special effects.
When
we see special effects shots in movies it is rarely
apparent how they are done, but the process of creating
an effects shot is fundamentally simple - visualize
what the final scene should look like and then move
back through the necessary steps to figure out what
kinds of lights, cameras and props or models you’ll
need. In order to make the “ghost” in my office scene
look realistic it’s radiant illumination needed to cast
shadows around the room that were geometrically
correct. The first light that was placed in the office
scene was the lighting effects rig shown in the photo
to the left.
The
mounting clamp in the lower right of that photo was
tightened down on the edge of a shelf and the two black
tubular arms were adjusted to hold the light bulbs
fixture at a point that was at the center of the
ghostly figure. The elongated shadow patterns on the
ceiling (in the office scene) were cast by the long
pieces of plastic diffusion material that were taped to
the wires on the lighting effects rig. See the enhanced
copy of the original office photo to the left for a
close up view of the shelf mounted lighting effects
rig.
The 8X10/folder photo was shot using a piece of brushed aluminum Formica for a background and an “aged” file folder. The label on the folders edge was a blank Post-It note that had it’s text added in Photoshop v6. The weathered edges of the file folder were created by distressing it with coarse sandpaper. The curvature of the edges of the 8X10’s were adjusted by placing a couple of large steel nuts at just the right spots on the photos.
The 8X10/folder photo was shot using a piece of brushed aluminum Formica for a background and an “aged” file folder. The label on the folders edge was a blank Post-It note that had it’s text added in Photoshop v6. The weathered edges of the file folder were created by distressing it with coarse sandpaper. The curvature of the edges of the 8X10’s were adjusted by placing a couple of large steel nuts at just the right spots on the photos.
Additional
photo lights were added to the office scene using a
Lowel lighting kit. The intensity of two of these
lights were controlled with inline AC dimmers. The
image of the 8X10’s on the open file folder was also
lit using lights from the Lowel kit, but here a large
silver surfaced photographic umbrella was used as a
reflector to yield a soft diffused light source. Both
images were shot with a Nikon 990 digital camera that
was set to save color JPG images that were 2048 X
1536pi (in Photoshop they are 28.4” X 21.3” image @
72dpi).
The ghostly aberration in the office photo was created by first using Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool to remove all traces of the lighting effects rig from the original digital image. Next a slightly oval area was Selected surrounding the spot where the lighting rig was located. After several test runs a series of Photoshop’s filters were applied to this Selection area. The filters used were the Distort/Twirl, Distort/Ripple and the Radial Blur/Spin filters.
The spirit manifestation was painted on eleven Layers where the primary tool was the Airbrush. All of the different elements of the spirits body and the surrounding emanations, rays and luminous spheres were all kept on separate Layers so that each objects level of Opacity could be adjusted separately. Each of the curvilinear rays that have a glowing sphere at the end were created by first making a new Path. Each of the Paths shapes were adjusted with it’s control handles and then the Stoke Path with Foreground Color button was clicked. The key to getting this Stroke/Path effect to work is to have the Airbrush Tool (or another painting tool) selected and pull down it’s Brush Dynamics menu and enter settings for the Fade Size, Pressure and Color in Steps of about 80 to 120 (experiment with each Step setting until you get the right width, length, etc.). The glowing rings around the little spheres were created by dragging out a round Selection area, setting Select/Feather to about 10 pixels and then selecting Edit/Stroke with the Location set to Inside.
To complete the cover image Genuine Fractals was used to resize the office photo prior to it being composited into the 8X10/folder image. The edges of the file folder were then sharpened with a Photoshop plug-in called Nik Sharpener. Finally the composited RGB images were converted to a Grayscale file and resized with Genuine Fractals to the correct dimensions for the Mouse Tracks cover.
The ghostly aberration in the office photo was created by first using Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool to remove all traces of the lighting effects rig from the original digital image. Next a slightly oval area was Selected surrounding the spot where the lighting rig was located. After several test runs a series of Photoshop’s filters were applied to this Selection area. The filters used were the Distort/Twirl, Distort/Ripple and the Radial Blur/Spin filters.
The spirit manifestation was painted on eleven Layers where the primary tool was the Airbrush. All of the different elements of the spirits body and the surrounding emanations, rays and luminous spheres were all kept on separate Layers so that each objects level of Opacity could be adjusted separately. Each of the curvilinear rays that have a glowing sphere at the end were created by first making a new Path. Each of the Paths shapes were adjusted with it’s control handles and then the Stoke Path with Foreground Color button was clicked. The key to getting this Stroke/Path effect to work is to have the Airbrush Tool (or another painting tool) selected and pull down it’s Brush Dynamics menu and enter settings for the Fade Size, Pressure and Color in Steps of about 80 to 120 (experiment with each Step setting until you get the right width, length, etc.). The glowing rings around the little spheres were created by dragging out a round Selection area, setting Select/Feather to about 10 pixels and then selecting Edit/Stroke with the Location set to Inside.
To complete the cover image Genuine Fractals was used to resize the office photo prior to it being composited into the 8X10/folder image. The edges of the file folder were then sharpened with a Photoshop plug-in called Nik Sharpener. Finally the composited RGB images were converted to a Grayscale file and resized with Genuine Fractals to the correct dimensions for the Mouse Tracks cover.
