F R O M    T H E    T R E N C H E S Post-Production Report: Visual Effects Revealed   continued...

Little Details: Smoke from Gunshots, Flashback Treatment, Color Correction

There were lots of little things. And a few more not-so-little. First of all, ALL of the flashback sequences (which probably total more than a half-hour of running time) were treated with After Effects' Glow filter. Each individual cut was keyframed to wash into and out of brightness... That's a heck of a lot of keyframes. (These ran overnight; sometimes over several nights.) If anything was wrong or timing was off, that was another long night of rendering.

In some sequences (especially in the flashbacks) we didn't have squibs and pyrotechnics. Instead, the smoke or blood spray is digital. There aren't many of these, and they're quick, but just for completeness I added smoke and spray in the digital finish.

A few sequences didn't get fully disclosed here. We removed a rope (not a wire, a rope) from one of our stuntmen in a jump-off-a-balcony shot (thanks to both Commotion and compositing). We pulled that same actor off of one background plate and dropped him into a whole other shot. We painted out dirt and dust. We replaced blown-out skies with blue ones. We added clouds into cloudless skies and removed some clouds from overly cloudy skies. We made lush green fields yellow and brown and dead. We dropped a summer sunset into a cloudy grey fall sky and painted new shadows into the landscape. We cheated reality, shooting conditions, changes of season.

(Whew.)

We did a lot. We learned a lot.

Well, maybe you have too. I hope this has been useful, enlightening. And hopefully you'll share your low-budget epic with the rest of us...someday soon.