Neo
..... N. T. BULLOCK
Morpheus ..... ANTHONY
WASHINGTON
Agent Smith ..... SCOTT BULLOCK
Agent ..... ERIC KOHN
Fat Guy with Honeybun ..... BOBBY G. BULLOCK
"Where's Hooters" Guy .....
JASON MAXWELL
Written and Directed ..... N. T. BULLOCK
Camera ..... SCOTT BULLOCK, ERIC KOHN,
N. T. BULLOCK
Editor / Cinematographer ..... N. T. BULLOCK
Graphics ..... ERIC KOHN, N. T. BULLOCK
"A
Glitch in the Making"
Bloopers
/// 6 Megs |
3.7
Megs |
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Well,
this has been an interesting project for me. There
were hurdles like the rest, but this one posed some
real brain twisters. I had shied away from doing a
Matrix parody back when it was originally released
because I was involved with other projects and no
ideas struck me and said, "You HAVE to do this."
So, I let it pass and actually didn't see that many
parodies crop up - maybe I missed a couple, who knows?
Anyway, Reloaded was about to be released and I revisited
the original. For some reason I got quite a few ideas
that time around. Shortly afterwards I caught Reloaded
and it solidified my plot. What was the first version
of the Matrix like? What were the predecessors of
"The One" like? It's easiest to write about
the production broken down into its five respective
scenes.
The
Office
I traveled about an hour to where my brother works
to get these shots. I needed a typical office. I wanted
sterile - you've seen the movie. The beauty of this
is that the interrogation scene was shot in the same
building. I had my brother scout around the office
and snap some pictures. It took about 5 or 6 hours
to shoot that Saturday. The air conditioning proved
quite a problem. It was rather cranked up and my shotgun
microphone is especially sensitive. I redubbed the
office dialogue. The cell phone drop was most likely
the thorn of that scene. I even had to go all the
way back another weekend to get some pick-up shots
and one of those was a background plate for the cell
graphic shot. Sometimes you just forget things after
6 hours, maybe it's just me.
The
Alley Behind Hooooters
This is a swank little location downtown that I've
used before. I dig it. The problem here was the amount
of outside air units. Sound again was a major problem.
A good bit of redubbing later eased the pain. It's
a great looking location and I just happened to pick
up some lizard footage that I ended up using creatively.
You never know.
The
Interrogation
As I stated before it was in the same building as
the office scene. The room worked out very well. I
rearranged it to meet the needs of the composition.
The air conditioning was even louder in that room.
It sounded horrible in the headphones, but not as
bad later. It still needed cleaning up a bit. All
in all the scene came together nicely on the timeline.
The
Fight
Anthony and I choreographed this for a few weeks.
We would come up with "bits" and try to
string them together. I would write out this awful
heiroglyphic code of the action that was quite useful
to me (because I could read it - most of the time).
Now, you must also bear in mind that this scene took
place OUTSIDE in the middle of SUMMER down in good
ole southern MISSISSIPPI. For three days over two
weekends we got the footage. It was the most grueling
to date. The "sweat was hard to keep from your
eyes" kind of hot. The heat doesn't show up that
much on the screen, but believe me it was harsh -
trenchcoats didn't help combat the inferno. I think
some people would have said, "Screw this!"
and gone home. I know we all thought it, but we didn't
verbalize. I'm pleased with our modest kung fu action
extravaganza. Did I mention it was hot? I did, ok.
End
We shot at Eddie Kalil's building downtown for the
sequence. He has a knack for clutter and it worked
out perfectly. I was glad that he didn't have a monster
AC unit but that sentiment was not shared by those
in costume. It was still quite humid there. This is
also where the two cutaways of the agents "informing"
Neo during the fight scene came from.
Well,
that's a basic breakdown of the scenes. Now, a brief
write up about what I lovingly dubbed "Budget
Time." We are all very familiar with the Matrix,
its special effects, and more importantly John Gaeta's
work entitled "Bullet Time." It captured
us all - one of the most spectacular special effects
of contemporary cinema. How do you capture that magic
with ONE camera? Well, the answer is "You Don't,"
but you can make a full-assed attempt at it.
Budget
Time
I presented Eric with a few ideas of how to recreate
the effect and the problems I was coming up against.
We had numerous lengthy conversations about this.
We would go back and forth on different techniques
and eventually end up eating our own words having
come full circle and reinventing square one. I had
already chosen the action of the shot and the basic
camera movement. We would eventually go out twice
to do test shots of these techniques. These test shots
added many hours to the conversation's time log. Eventually,
we had something that could work based on what was
available. It all started with this semi-elaborate
array of lasers for lining up elements and a system
for measuring tripod movement. We got rid of the lasers,
but wouldn't that have been cool? Lasers, man, lasers.
Anyway, to set up the camera we had a rope that I
held in position and used that as the centerpoint
for our circumference. Using that we labeled the ground
with an almost 180 degree arc. To create the Crane
Kick shot I had to stand on a stool, which we had
an arched piece of wood for the foot, and self-animate
the rise frame by frame as the camera was moved along
28 equidistant positions on the arc. There are two
plates - an actor plate and a background plate. There
was a tennis ball that hung behind my head in the
actor plate that was used to stabilize the background
plate. There was quite a bit of Photoshop work done
by Eric Kohn and I'll let him divulge that aspect
below. I'm pleased with our Budget Time. For only
having one camera I think it turned out quite well.
Hell, it only took countless hours for less than two
seconds. The other two "Budget Time" shots
were done using a steadicam.
The
Look
I have a green filter, but didn't use it for the entire
shoot. The 3-Way Color Corrector with a Color balance
filter was used in FCP3. I desaturated the image and
not only tinted it green, but also pulled out a little
of the red and blue.
That's
it. Hope you enjoy it. It was grueling, but worth
it. Read on for more on the "Budget Time"
shot from Eric.
Thanks,
NTBullock
Eric's Write-Up on his
experience with "Budget-Time"
Okay, so we didn’t have bluescreens, motion-control
cameras, support wire harnesses, and an array of 30
individual stationary cameras. BUT, we did have some
fishing wire, a tennis ball, some duct tape, and a
piece of rope. Instead of “Budget Time”
we probably should have dubbed the effect “MacGuyver
Time.” Let me tell you, I haven’t studied
this hard on a problem in years. Our first discussion
on how to tackle the shot happened on the interstate
as Todd and I drove down to Scott’s place for
the Office/Interrogation shots. He presented me with
his initial plan. It was some elaborate Dr. Evil thing
involving “lasers.” During the 40 minutes
that followed, we continued to complicate the method,
strip it down, complicate it again, strip it down-etc.
Problems were solved by solutions that only caused
different problems. You get the idea. Long story short
(too late, I know), we chewed on the mechanics of
this shot for a while longer, shot some test footage,
and began to get a better feel for what needed to
be done. Finally, like Todd said in his write-up,
we landed back at square one with only slight modifications
and minus the lasers. Todd gave you a basic outline
of how the final footage was shot in his write-up.
I’ll tell you a little about the post-production
on it.
Basically, I had two source elements to work with.
The actor plate, in which I had shot the frame-by-frame
arc around Todd and Anthony, frozen in place. (For
laughs, ask Todd sometime how it felt to hold the
“Crane Position” while the camera tediously
filmed him from 28 separate positions. He gets a personal
“hats-off” from me.) And the background
plate, in which I simply shot a tennis ball hanging
at Todd’s height along the same 28 point path
as I had the actors. The idea of the tennis ball was
so that not only would I be able to align the camera
to the same position every time I moved it, but that
it would also provide a visual anchor for compositing
Todd over the clean plate. Despite all our careful
measurements and calculations, the 28 frame background
plate looked too jittery when viewed in motion. So
the first thing I did was stabilize the background
plate in Photoshop. This was done simply enough by
superimposing each frame over the previous one, reducing
the opacity of the top frame so I could see the frame
beneath, and “nudging” the image until
the tennis balls were precisely aligned. This smoothed
things out considerably. Once I had a stabilized background
plate to work with, it was time to start compositing
the actors over it. This consisted of cutting Todd
and Anthony out of each of their frames and laying
them over the corresponding background frame, MINUS
the stool Todd was standing on. Then I would anchor
the actors’ positions each time by aligning
Todd with the tennis ball. Again, I reduced the opacity
of the actor layer and nudged things around until
Todd’s ear was perfectly aligned with the tennis
ball. Bring the opacity back up, and VOILA! Anthony
and Todd are perfectly placed in relation to the background
and the tennis ball is conveniently hidden behind
Todd’s head. You may be asking - “Why
didn’t you just leave Todd and Anthony where
they were and paste a piece of the background plate
over the stool each frame???” Yeah, well…
we tried that in the test shots. The big problem with
that is that we were working in an outdoor environment,
and the slight variations in sunlight, cloud cover,
etc., add up. Sure you can manipulate the brightness,
contrast, and even color balance of an image or layer
in Photoshop, but it’s very difficult to match
it perfectly to the lighting conditions of another
shot. There are shadows to contend with and all kinds
of other little things that you may be able to hide
in a still frame. But once you put all those frames
into motion, the sum of all those little imperfections
create a kind of “ghost image” at the
spot where you did all your tinkering. Had we been
shooting in a more controlled environment, say indoors
where the lighting is always consistent, that might
have been an easier way to eliminate the stool. But
in the end, we also wanted the freedom of having the
actors separated from the background in case we needed
to make adjustments in position, etc. This leads me
to the next point in the story. After viewing the
finished shot, Todd and I agreed that it would look
cooler to have him actually rise into the air as the
camera swung around, instead of hovering at the same
height for the duration. Because Todd was already
a separate element of the image, it didn’t take
much to change his position against the background
plate for each frame. Had I been pasting pieces to
simply cover the stool, this wouldn’t have worked.
I’ve
got to say, I’m pretty happy with the finished
product, considering how limited our resources were.
Budget Time indeed. It actually turned out better
than I expected it to. I still personally believe
that there is another and probably better way of achieving
this shot with only one camera, but we weren’t
able to come up with it. And don’t think we
didn’t spend hours studying on it. Maybe some
of you out there have had success on your own with
this effect using different means (but still only
one camera). If so and you want to reveal your secrets,
drop us a line in the SP Forum. I know Todd and I
would both be interested in hearing about some different
methods that work.
That’s about it. I will say that all of the
stabilizing and compositing work on this shot was
done entirely with Photoshop. For the final shot as
it appears in the film, Todd did some slight modifications
within Final Cut Pro to add motion blur and color
correction.
Thanks
and enjoy,
Eric Kohn
