How I Faked a $200M Movie Scene (In my DRIVEWAY!) #vfx #digital #digitaleffect

Hey guys, in this video I'm going to be pulling back the curtain on how I created this medieval Templar cinematic that looks like it belongs in the movie, but really was just shot in a snowy driveway. Many people think that the secret to achieving blockbuster visuals is just unlimited resources. Now don't get me wrong, big studios are known for throwing money at their problems, but how can independent filmmakers achieve the same results? I'm going to show you my approach to how I planned, filmed, and composited this VFX set extension together. Watch to the end if you want to see the full sequence. So guys, I gotta clear something up. On one of the last videos on this channel, we used a barn and a green screen to kind of do something similar. We were doing more cost-effective filmmaking and visual effects. Somebody called me out in the comments and said, hey, all I need is a gigantic barn and, you know, that's how you did it. And, you know, fair enough, but I really believe that if there is a will to create, there's a way to do it, and I want to prove it in this video. So here's the challenge. No green screen, no set, no big lights. All we're going to do is shoot in a driveway using a camera and a drone, as well as using Blender and Nuke paired together. And the most important part here is careful planning of your visual effects, which can help reduce your cost. So hopefully this goes well. So since we're doing a Templar sequence, before we even think about visual effects, I need to get some armor. Now that means I need to find a blacksmith. Let's do it. Let's see what we got. So if you notice what's good about this, well, first of all, it's heavy. This is like a real metal, but it's also not a perfect mirror. So we're not going to have all the reflections of the environment that we're replacing. So this is totally going to work. So we've got the biggest piece, which is the helmet, but we need to go to the fabric store to get the cape. And this is not my specialty. My wife specializes in fashion design. So she's going to help me out here. Now, one thing we've learned about finding fabric is you can't cheap out on this part. If you try to cheap out on the fabric, you'll be able to tell that the thickness and the weight and the way that fabric drapes is not high quality. In addition, higher quality fabrics reflect light differently, which is going to be apparent in the final filmed composite. So while she's going and starting on the costume, I'm going First, I'm going to start my CG bill with some simple props, basic models like columns and background architecture with some kid bashing and layout can build the composition. Keep it simple, but effective. I need to maintain cost constraints, which means simple textures, repeated objects, and controlled lighting. One key theme to remember here is we don't need infinite complexity to make a high budget looking shot. Even in movies like Dune, some of the most cinematic shots are created in scenes that are essentially concrete blocks or simple forms. The difference is the director as well as the VFX team and cinematographers know how to control level detail as well as using camera angles and lighting to their advantage. So as I started building out the CG scene, I was keeping a very specific aesthetic in mind, but one scene that's always stuck in my head was a scene from Star Wars The Last Jedi, the scene with the white planet and the red dirt underneath. Another scene with a similar color palette was this scene from Star Trek where the color palette was these red, white, and a little bit of yellow. So with these colors in mind, it went with red, white, black, and an accent of gold. Operating as an independent filmmaker here, I know one thing that's really going to help is previs. If I plan my camera angles beforehand against the CG environment, I'll know where to place myself when I film. This is going to be especially useful for the drone shot, which needs to be precisely measured. Here I'm using measurements to know where to place the drone when I film. I also know the focal length of the real lenses I'm shooting with and the drone, so I can plug this data directly into the blender cameras when I'm preparing. So before we go out to film, I want to remind you of the premise of this video, how can we control costs? The drone shot, if we actually shoot it at the right angle, we can reduce the cost and not have to do any rotoscoping at all. Essentially from the drone, we project a rectangle roto shape down onto the ground of the snow. What we're trying to do is cut out the walking actor and keep the surrounding real ground that we can blend into the CG environment. If the drone was just a few meters lower and the person's silhouette breaks the horizon, now you have to get into rotoscoping, which increases your cost. So this is where if you're directing your own visual effects shots, you can control costs and still get the same effect. Final touches on our CG, we need to add a bit of motion to the scene. So I'm going to use flags, snow particles, a bit of subtle animation on the background characters, and the rest will come from the real film plate of the actress. Without a green screen, we can still film a person to extract later. This avoids green reflections and a windy environment. I threw down a few tracking markers for the drone shot placed along the walking path. Using the measurements from Blender, comparing against the altitude and a laser distance measurement, I shot the footage. I shot the handheld shots with my FX3 and a gimbal. Now onto the last part to bring it all together, compositing. Compositing is essential to making your shots look cinematic. Here there are hundreds of small color corrections to direct your eye and to do 3D color grades on your CG environment. You can also do things like simulate lens characteristics or boost highlights on the real footage to enhance the look. So let's check out the final result. If you're somebody who's trying to combine virtual with real or you're trying to get into visual effects studios, we have the most extensive new course available in the description below. So check it out if you're interested. This is based on my years of experience working in the film industry on films like Avengers, Star Wars, Spider-Verse, and more. Make sure to hit thumbs up guys on the video if you want to see more videos like this and thanks for checking it out.