Australian Air Attack

Done on a Saturday evening from basically nothing.

The finished shot- Click to play

Introduction

This is a shot I did entirely for fun on a Saturday evening and was definitely not being paid for by anyone. There’s nothing technically impressive about this shot; it was just to see if I could do it, and I think it came out looking pretty cool. It definitely shows how much can be done with basically nothing.

I had seen the trailer for the film “Australia”, and it had a great shot of a ship burning during the Japanese attack on Darwin, Australia (I assume that’s what it was- the film hasn’t come out yet!) I thought the shot looked fantastic and, since I’d fried my brain working on a shot that wasn’t really progressing, I decided to give this a go as a diversion.

Straight-forward AfterEffects

I started with a left-over plate from a recent project I had worked on for Second Wind Films in Rhode Island- I highly recommend them if you need a project shot in New England, they were great to work with. All I wanted out of the plate was just the dock on the left and some of the moving water on the right- obviously, everything else in the shot would be stripped out.

Location plate- Click to play

I replaced the sky with a photograph of some clouds, which I corner pinned and animated to make the top, closer clouds move faster than the lower, further-away clouds. This helped give it a feeling of being film instead of a photograph, and added a bit of depth and parallax.

The water was replaced with some old stock footage I had of an ocean- it’s actually really small, but once it’s in the shot you really can’t tell- especially since there will be a ship and smoke over top of it.

The final background plate- Click to Play

The ship itself was another stock photograph which I rotoscoped to extract from the background.

The flames and smoke are stock footage from FinalLight FX and Detonation Films HD. I absolutely love this stuff- it makes you look very professional, and I’ve found dozens of projects to use it in- definitely worth the price. Unless you are an absolute expert, I never recommend attempting to create your own flames or smoke in AfterEffects. Use some real footage and your project will benefit for it. I simply picked out a few elements that matched the scene and luma keyed them off the background. This is done easily in AfterEffects by duplicating the element, placing it above itself, then setting the lower copy to be luma masked by the upper copy. Then just use Levels on the upper copy to get the opacity and alpha you’d like.

There are two things I’ve learned to making smoke and flames look real- with smoke, it’s not just obscuring the background. It’s also distorting and blurring the background. This can be accomplished by using the smoke as a mask for an adjustment layer with a blur on it, and by using a Displacement Map driven by the smoke. Additionally, never multiply your smoke- that doesn’t really match how smoke behaves. With flames, it’s important to use masks and color corrections to add light and color changes to the environment around the flames- remember that the flames should be illuminating their surroundings! Also, if you’re close enough, you’ll want to distort and blur the background as with the smoke. Additionally, if you’re close enough, you’ll want to use a blurred copy of the flames to drive a Displacement Map that distorts the air above the fire, creating that wavy heat distortion effect. Most of that wasn’t necessary here, since the flames are too far away to be clearly visible.

The Japanese Zero fighter is the weakest part of the shot, I feel. It’s simply a photograph of a Zero that I quickly rotoscoped and animated into the shot with some motion blurring.

The flag is a photograph of an Australian flag mappen onto cloth-tagged geometry in Cinema4D and animated. It is the only 3D model in the shot.

The reflections in the water are created by using the water itself to drive a Displacement Map effect that distorts the image based on the water’s motion. It’s a technique that works great for things like this, and I also used it for cast shadows over grass on “Dragon Hunter”

Conclusion

A high quality version of the finished shot- Click to Play

Ultimately, there’s really nothing too complicated about this shot. It only took a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, and was done entirely for fun and for a challenge. I think it came out fantastic, considering the total lack of resources, and shows how much can be done with even the simplest location footage and photographs! It also shows the benefit of using real effects footage for flames and smoke rather than faking your own.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing “behind the scenes” of a really simple effect!

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