Gee Three Slick Transitions 9

I designed a special effect that is on Slick Transitions 9 for Gee Three. They make plug-ins for Apple's iMovie. The effect is a combination split screen and adjustable wipe that allows you to do some interesting cartoon effects in live action. When you get on the Gee Three site click on Slick Transitions 9, then look at Fusion Factory. Click on "Overlay" and look for "Fusion Overlay Movies". You will see a funny old effect I stole from old Warner Brothers cartoons. Gee Three will have a booth at MacWorld in San Francisco in January where they will be demoing Slick Transitions 9 and 10. Check out the booth and ask to see the Fusion Factory Overlay demo. They are good people. I've used a lot of their effects in my films, especially Guardian Angel Puddies. Check out Slick Transitions 4 which has Chromakey and Luminance Key. Slick Transitions turns your iMovie into Final Cut Pro at a fraction of the cost.

How The Stop Sign Gag Was Achieved

I was inspired by the effect in the Howard Hawk's comedy Bringing Up Baby where Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn shared the screen with a leopard. So the movie stars wouldn't get mauled by a wild animal, the leopard never shared the same same room as the actors. They used a moving split screen. First the leopard would walk across the screen. WIth a carefully manipulated wipe, Katherine Hepburn would walk across the screen holding a leash. When the two pieces of film were married, she appeared to be holding the leopard on a leash. I asked Bruce Gee if he could make a tool that would give me that capability. The result was Slick Transitions Fusion Factory Overlay. This wonderful tool combines the best elements of a split screen and a wipe. Like a split screen, it can act as a stationary mask for part of the screen. Plus it can serve as a wipe with variable control over the speed. It saves a lot of work. Instead of several small edits to mask off different parts of the screen, you can do an intricate effect all in one shot, practically in real time.
For the stop sign shot, we combined two elements. The first element was of my friend Eric Marlow and I doing all our acting in one continuous shot. The second element was just the background before we walked into the picture. In fact, in this case, the second element was a captured still of the background. We shot from across the street with the camcorder on a tripod to keep the shot steady. We framed the shot, pressed record, walked into the shot, did our acting, and walked out of the shot and turned off the camera. After we imported the footage into iMovie, we trimmed off the beginning and end so we just had the footage of Eric waiting for the bus by the stop sign. We created a still with just the background and adjusted the time on it so it was the same length as the first element. With Fusion Factor, we chose a vertical wipe and placed the split screen directly on the middle of the stop sign. The split screen was set for soft edge, so the matte line wouldn't be as easily detected. So now anything to the left of the stop sign was live footage, and anything to the right of the stop sign was the overlaid still, acting as a mask. You could only see the part of my body that reached out from the sign to grab Eric's hat. The rest of my body was hidden by the split screen. As soon as I grabbed the hat, I ran off screen right until I was completely out of the shot. As Eric was walking around the stop sign, we moved the split screen over to the right out of his way. When he made his way back to the left side of the screen, we once again placed the split screen directly in the middle of the stop sign. Then I ran back in and put his hat back on and again ran off screen right so I was out of the picture. Again we adjusted Fusion Factor so the split screen was way over on the right to give Eric room to walk around the stop sign disgusted.
One rule of special effects is to keep the shot brief, so people don't have time figure out how they were done. Another is to do it in a long shot if possible. That cuts down on detail. What made the effect work was Eric walking around the sign. He seemed to walk "through" where there should have been a matte. So that disorients the viewer. He also did some good acting. This is classic misdirection that magicians do all the time. Your eye was on Eric, when the trick was really happening a little to the right of him. If you look very close at the leaves between the house and the stop sign, after watching this clip several times, you can see a ripple go from left to right and then from right to left (When you look very close at Bringing Up Baby, you can see the same ripple). That's okay. The audience generally doesn't look that close. If I had used movie mask instead of a still image, that ripple would have been harder to see. Another way to make it better is to shoot against walls or other objects that don't blow in the wind.
All in all, I am very happy with this tool. I always loved cartoons where the Big Bad Wolf hid behind a skinny tree. Now with Fusion Factory, you can do those cartoon effects in live action.
Happy filmmaking,
Gene Hamm

How I Straightened Out The World

This was shot on a steep hill. I imported the clip into iMovie and ran it through the new MultTrack filter in Slick Transitions 10 from Gee Three. The clip was actually Track 2. Track 1 underneath it was a black clip the same length. The frame where I pushed on the telephone pole was where I inserted a keyframe. When I let go, I inserted another keyframe. At the end of the clip, I inserted another keyframe. I rotated the clip between the two keyframes. That's basically it.

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