Category: Blog Posts

ARE GREEN SCREENS KILLING THE MOVIES?

It’s easy to be cynical about green screen work and computer graphics; to say that they’ve made movies increasingly artificial and soulless.  Many, myself included, are quick to bemoan the loss of practical effects, in-camera tricks, and techniques like matte painting and stop-motion.  However, what makes a given movie good or bad is seldom the specific tools that were used in its creation – a movie’s quality is determined by how those tools are used.  The reality is that you see much more green screen work and CG compositing than you realize.  Projects that we don’t immediately think of as effects-heavy, like network TV shows, use green screens all the time for things like background replacement and vehicle insertion.

The following video is the 2014 showreel for an effects company called Stargate.  They do a lot of compositing work that simply blends away into the background, unnoticed by the viewer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2l3scv5Gj8

The next video is an essay from Rocket Jump Film School.  It’s a very thoughtful look at why CG special effects work – or don’t – along with how effects change how we think of films.

Green screens, compositing, and computer effects are not going anywhere soon.  Film has been continuously evolving since its inception and new tools will continue to be invented.  It’s up to the filmmakers to use these tools in effective, compelling ways.

Here’s one more video from Mark Vargo, a visual effects artist who was working at ILM during the production of The Empire Strikes Back.  It’s a fascinating, detailed look at the way compositing was done before software streamlined the process.  It’ll definitely make you appreciate how far we’ve come.

COOL, WEIRD STUFF

Last week’s sound design project utilized royalty-free archival media from Internet Archive, a non-profit library containing video clips, music, stills, and more – all available to the public for free.  Included in the archive are fascinating collections of vintage film.

This is a great resource if you need some unusual older footage for a project.  Clips for the sound assignment were taken from the collection of drive-in movie ads.  The Prelinger Archives (hosted by Internet Archive) is a great place to start randomly browsing ephemeral films if it all seems overwhelming.  You can find short or feature-length silent films, educational films, home movies, war propaganda, newsreels, and just about everything in between.

Here’s a music video by Winston Hacking, created using footage from the Archive.

SOUNDS LIKE . . . 

Any time Tony Zhou puts out a new video essay, it’s worth watching.  His latest videos look at how blockbuster films are scored and why the current trend in Hollywood has created a lot of surprisingly forgettable movie music.

If there’s a single takeaway from these videos, I’d say it’s this: don’t be afraid to experiment with your film’s score.  You may have very specific music in mind when you start a project, but try not to get so wrapped up in that music that you ignore other choices.  The music you choose can completely transform your project – play around with different options and take some risks.

FIXING BAD AUDIO

One of the great things about Premiere Pro is how seamlessly it integrates with other Adobe programs.  With just a few clicks, you can send your entire project to SpeedGrade for color work or replace a series of clips with an After Effects composition.  It’s also very easy to send audio clips to Adobe’s sound editing program, Audition.

We won’t be spending a lot of time using Audition in this class – there’s just too much to cover full and it’s not installed on all of the editing workstations.  There’s one technique using Audition that I think is absolutely worth knowing, though.  You will sometimes come across clips with audio that has a persistent hiss or buzz underneath, especially if the levels weren’t set properly during recording.  Fortunately, Audition lets you filter out specific areas of an audio spectrum, which often allows you to clean up this issue.

This technique works best on clips where there is at least a small section with only the unwanted sound audible (without speaking or other noises).  Right-click on the clip in the Timeline and choose “Edit Clip in Adobe Audition” from the menu.  As long as Audition is installed on the machine you’re using, it should open up with the audio from your clip.  Back in Premiere, the audio in the clip should change color.

In Audition, you should see the waveform of your audio.  Find a section where only the unwanted sound is present – you can use the “plus” and “minus” keys on the keyboard to zoom in and out.  Either by clicking and dragging with the mouse or using the “I” and “O” keys (in-point and out-point), highlight that section.  With the noise selection highlighted, go to the Effects dropdown, to Noise Reduction/Restoration, and select Capture Noise Print.  This stores the audio from only that area in the program’s memory.

Next, double-click on the waveform – the entire clip should become highlighted.  Go back to Noise Reduction/Restoration in the Effects menu and choose Noise Reduction (process)… to bring up a new menu.  This allows you filter the previously captured noise out of the entire clip.  Use the “Noise Reduction” and “Reduce By” sliders to adjust the intensity of the effect.  You can make fine adjustments by adding curves to the line in the graph, but this usually isn’t necessary.  You can preview the results with the play arrow.  It can also be useful to toggle the “Output Noise Only” switch on and off so that you can tell exactly what you’re taking out.  When you’re happy with the sound, click Apply.  The Noise Reduction menu will close and the original waveform will alter slightly to reflect the new effect.  Hit Command-S to save your work and the clip in Premiere will automatically update with your newly repaired audio track.

While you can get great results using this technique, it does have its limits.  Filtering out certain tones can result in vocals that sound robot or hollow.  As always, you’ll need to experiment to get the best out of the program.

MAKE SOME NOISE

In preparation for our unit on audio mixing and sound design, here’s a lovely inspirational short about foley – the craft of creating sound effects for films.

https://vimeo.com/170948796