special effects please

[Supertrunks65]

Ive been making movies for a while but i dont know any special effects or tricks of the trade can sombody help me?

[bretoncrackers]

well, in terms of computer generated effects, a lot depends on the programs you have. What editor are you using? As far as "special effects" and "tricks of the trade" you have to be a bit more specific in terms of what you want to know, because it's a wide topic. Im not one to usually give the "your creativity is your limit" but beyond a lot of the forums the you can find here or elsewhere on the net, if you can come up with something and it looks good on camera, then it's a special effect. In short, you creativity is your limit. If you want some cool tips and tricks and ideas, check out some of the other forums, there's posts on everything from bluescreening/greenscreening and explosives, to wire fighting, using miniatures, making realistic props, computer generated effects like making someone dissappear, or adding "force" bolts and lightning, and all that jazz. I really dont know what you're looking for, but i hope that helps, cuz you posted a very, and i mean VERY, general question.

[Supertrunks65]

I did not mean for it to be such a broad topic but you did help me out im kinda new at this.
thanks

[DEDFX]

Could you point us in the direction of what you want in Special FX?

[Supertrunks65]

Im looking into more of gunshots and explosions for my action movie.

[DEDFX]

Search this forum for some threads of explosions and gunshots, theres many of them.

[rep22]

Like bretoncrackers said, what you're capable of acheiving relies on the software you have to work with. Could you possibly supply us witht the names of the software that you currently have? That would be much easier for us to direct you in the way of Special FX that you would be able to do.

[Supertrunks65]

Well i dont really have any software. I have windows movie maker but thats about it. What should I get?

[rep22]

Well, it's very very unlikely you would find a way to do some effects in WMM. Granted there's some "video effects" built in to the program, it's nothing impressive. I know somewhere on the site there's a tutorial for doing muzzel flashes in WMM. I'll try to find it real quick.

[SammyJim]

well, i'm planning to use wmm for an upcoming film. I think it seems ok. but when you bought a camera did it come with any software? Editing, photo albums etc? You could use that.
But with special effects in the real not cgi, i always use models for explosions and car chases. The bad thing about miniatures is they go boom and thats it for one take, the good thing is, they're REAL. I find cgi extremely tiring and hardly ever use it.

[Supertrunks65]

I never thought about using models thanks for the tip.

[Raptor]

Check out the zwei-stein editor from thugsatbay.com freeware with chromakey in it at least, They have a new release out which is supposed to be a bit smoother interface.

[DEDFX]

I was thinking of making a model then greenscreening it too.

[jcdenton]

Problem with models is the scale. The smaller a model is, the higher the speed of the camera should be. So you need a high speed camera to film a model scaled explosion and then play it back at 60HZ-i. You may try to film it with normal speed and then create fake-slowmotion with a tool like "motion-perfect". It's using morphing to interpolate the frames. Won't work for everything, but explosions may look good.

Alternatively you may rip some existing real explosion scenes (not from cinema movies, rather documentation material)