Feature
Big VFX on a budgetAfter Effects plugin developer and
an artist who has worked on JJ
Abrams films like Star Trek and
Super 8, Kramer certainly didn’t
need the exposure. But even the
most celebrated artists can have
their arms twisted for the right
project, it seems.
“Originally, when Ryan first
told me about the short, I offered
to help with the design of the ship,”
Kramer recalls. “At Video Copilot
we’d been developing a new 3D
model kit of objects that can be
built into various sci-fi vehicles,
Element 3D, so I thought it would
be a good challenge to make
something for a real short. Then,
the day before Ryan planned to
shoot, his long-time VFX guy took
off unexpectedly and he was left
trying to figure out a plan. I decided
not to leave a friend hanging!”
With the help of two colleagues,
Dustin Hudson and Taylor Ellis,
Kramer did the 3D ship design
and compositing, along with all
of the explosion impacts – which
equates to over 25 total shots – in
a little over two weeks. “Seeing
how everything came together
was really satisfying,” he says.
“Constraints on time can really
help you solve interesting problems
in a positive way, like using heat
distortion instead of FumeFX.
The key is to make an impact with
the shots and I think it added a
cool look as well. And for me as
the developer of Element 3D, it’s“One of the special techniques we used
on SENTiNEL was frame stitching,”
says Andrew Kramer. “This means that
when the camera pans the ship flyby, I
extended the plate to the right in order to
pan the camera quickly and demonstrate
the speed of the craft. The initial plate
was shot from a static camera. I stabilised
it to remove the shake and then painted
an extra-wide frame. We then used a 3D
camera move to follow the ship's flight.
Sometimes it is good to capture plates
without any motion so that it is easier to
do dynamic shots with a CG camera.“Tracking was very tricky on many
shots and we realised the shutter angle
was not 180 degrees but more like 90
degrees, so this creates shorter motion
blur streaks. In After Effects, we were
able to set the shutter angle to 90 and
match the look.”FraMe stitChing
how anDrew kramer gave the Drone in sentinel a sense of speeD anD Dynamism
The team used a
3D camera move
to follow the
ship’s flightrewarding to see the kind of VFX
that can come out of a simple plugin
right inside After Effects in only a
couple of weeks.
And his advice for anyone
wanting to emulate their success?
“Even when the budget’s low, you
always want to do a good job,”
he stresses. “I knew going into it
that we’d get inspired and that is
a difficult place to try and fight
against your own ambitions –
especially when there is a deadline
and limited resources. So having a
good, solid plan and sticking to it as
best you can is necessary. The more
projects you work on, the better
you understand what is possible
and how well you can scale projects
with additional help.” •