Independent Light & Magic

Our movie has visual effects. It’s kind of amazing, given that we’re extremely low-budget, but the technology has gotten to a point where it’s unbelievably cheap and easy to do these shots.

It also doesn’t hurt that our good friend Hashi volunteered to do the VFX, and he is A: incredibly talented; B: incredibly quick; and C: incredibly deferring his pay. Here’s how awesome Hashi is: when we first met with him, we pitched an idea about seeing the blood vessels in someone’s eyes burst. By the time we ran a few errands and got home, he'd already sent us a video of himself bleeding from the eyes.



Once we saw that, we realized we could probably do ANYTHING. It wasn’t until we were in post, for example, that we got the idea to have our ghost fade in like the Cheshire Cat when she first appears. Hashi was able to get in there and, without plate shots, or motion tracking cameras, or anything besides a woman sitting at a piano, he was erase her, fuzz her edges, and have her vanish. It’s a great place to be for independent films.

However, there can also be too much of a good thing. When you can add anything anywhere, that gives you a rather large list of Things You Can Do that may (or may not) make the movie better. When we first started compiling idea for FX shots, we had plans to do tons of little digital things – add some blood here, a little spooky flare there –but we found that the more VFX we put in, the less punch they had. We ended up cutting the shot list way down, and the 10 or 15 shots we now have play much stronger.

For us, it all came back to the story. Even if you CAN add blood oozing from the walls, or green blobs square-dancing through the backyard, if it doesn’t make sense, it’s going to detract from the mood. The first time we see the ghost, she’s just a fuzzy outline. The second time, she’s more solid, but has a blank featureless face (my favorite visual effect in the film). The movie continues in this way, until we reveal her true identity. If we suddenly had rats jump out of her eye sockets or something, it would be random and distracting instead of scary.

So while it’s great that technology can literally create anything, we have to remember it’s just another tool we’re using to tell a story. And the things people respond to are the things they’ve responded to for 10,000 years: character, emotion, narrative.

Though it’s still pretty cool we can erase someone’s face.