Match moving.  That darkest of visual FX arts.  Well, apart from rigging and those boffins that code in Python, but I digress.

To my mind, one of the best ways to increase the production value of your project is to take advantage of the power of match moving for set extensions, integration of FX elements and insertion of your 3D CG.  It seems to me that the first primary “go to” for newcomers is greenscreen.  Students can’t wait to get the green bedsheets up or spraypaint some plywood and get some bad actors, or classmates at a pinch and shoot some truly horrible footage.

Why not use greenscreen? I am not saying don’t use it, but it’s not the be all and end all, and when you are at the low-budget end of things, frankly they can cause more issues than they solve.  Apart from people thinking that greenscreen is some magic panacea that can solve anything, you have to light them well.  Even then, you are probably shooting with a low-end handy-cam which is going to give you rubbish results.  Keying badly lit DV shot greenscreen is a guaranteed way for you to want to stab a pencil into your ear.

So why would you consider matchmoving.  Well, as with a lot of visual effects, less is often more.  As you probably know, creating photo-real environments is a tall ask, even for high-end studios let alone individuals.  Matchmoving or tracking to the rescue!  Why not consider shooting some cool locations for your short and then extending the backgrounds to give more depth/sci-fi buildings etc?  Being further away you can get away with less detail and more atmospherics.  Check out The Purchase Brothers fantastic “Escape from City 17″, a Half-Life 2 fan film.  I recall reading that the budget for this short was around $600 and that was mainly for costumes and props.  Checking out their website shows their other projects are equally impressive with regards to matchmoving.

Staying with the Half-Life 2 them, “What’s in the Box” was an amazing short shot live-action through a European city with some excellent match-moving of effects and heads up displays.

So where can you get software to practice?  As it happens, you can still get a copy of Icarus, the pre-cursor to PFTrack  on the net.  Colin Levy has a donwload link on his website and has kind made several video tutorials to get you started.

Films to check out: District 9 (love the mother ship shots), Cloverfield

SLASH!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! FIGHTO!!

He should imagine some kittens in a bucket

Okay, there’s my summary  I kid, I kid!  I will say that this is great action flick.  Grab your candy and coke (obviously not bought at the outrageous candy bar prices) and slide into a chair for a big-screen movie. 

As you probably know, and as was discussed on this site here, there was an awful lot of hype surrounding the film, possibly due to a leak of a full workprint of the film.  Insanely bone-headed career ending move or marketing genius?  I will let you decide.  Either way it certainly didn’t hurt the box office with Wolverine hosing it in.

One thing I will say about the film that a lot of people have mentioned is that the VFX are quite patchy.  Some quite excellent stuff next to some quite dodgy stuff.  The entire scene in the countryside and the helicopter/motorcycle fight had an awful lot of dodgy greenscreen shots and soft looking CG and there was some insanely average stuff at the end when the children were walking towards the helicopter to escape.  We were also confused when Wolverine was checking out his new claws at the old couples homestead as they looked very flat and unconvincing.
The only other thing that left me a bit unfulfilled was the lack of Gambit action.  I will admit right now that I haven’t read the comics and don’t really know all the characters that well, but even I know that Gambit is hella cool and the trailer led me to believe that we would see more of him in the movie.  Oh well, I am sure he will get his own deal, seeing that Deadpool has just been given his own movie!

There is a very nice, if brief, production focus with Luma pictures over at CGTalk at the moment that is well worth a read.  It is interesting to note that Luma, and others, have noted that the time for completing their shots was quite limited, which possibly resulted in the dodgy FX.

I can only assume that lack of time was the reason as the budget was somewhere around $130million which is not exactly chump change.  This is another in a long line of similar complaints about movie productions with studios wanting AAA VFX in ridiculous timeframes.  I recall reading an interview with the guys at ILM who did the car escape destruction sequence for the War of the Worlds trailer.  They pulled out all stops for Spielberg and after they actually managed to pull it off, it somehow become expected that VFX studios could do that kind of work in those kind of time frames as a matter of course.

Overall, I give it 7/10.  It is what it is, an enjoyable big blockbuster action movie.

Stay tuned!!!!!

More exclamation points makes it more interesting.