HD makes me wet my pants. A little. Peter Frintrup, myself, Jack and Christina met to talk HD and special effects in general. Amidst the refined west Hollywood ambiance of Basix, and over a table much too small, Peter filled us in on a little detail that had honestly alluded me. Shooting HD is a process. Is it cheaper than film? Sometimes. Does it look as good? Depends. But doesn’t it take less time to do the post? Maybe…Christina seemed to understand most of what Peter was so patiently explaining to us – and that’s what’s important – because a lot of it went right over my head. It’s all a bit daunting to be honest, and more expensive sounding then I expected. Going on sites like http://www.hdforindies.com/ helped little, as I felt I was wading a pool of indecipherable tech talk – but I think I’m starting to get it.
We basically need to pick the format, weighing the pros and cons – the ratio going something like quality and film similarity vs. cost. And then we need to figure out what to edit on and for. Both decisions traditionally coming with a cost. More on all of that later.
The one thing we all seemed to grasp and agree on is the process by which to do the special effects shots – which are intended to give the illusion that Eddie can levitate a ball in the air. We all ex-nayed CGI – both because of its cost and the fact that it will look like CGI. Instead we’re looking to adopt the old fashioned approach of compositing. Floating the ball with say a string, and plugging in a rotating surface onto the ball in after effects.
The ever connected Christina has an idea of someone who might be able to figure out how to do just that. Here’s hoping he’s interested.
