Hamm previously won a Best of Fest honor at Big Muddy Film Festival for the animated short No Hat, No Mask, No Service.
| GUARDIAN ANGEL PUDDIES |
|
| Guardian Angel Puddies, a live action short comedy by Gene Hamm, tells
the story of an accident prone man who ignores the warnings of his talking
cats, gets struck by lightning, and becomes a human magnet. The film is
like a live action Tex Avery cartoon. Pictured is Harley, the feline femme
fatale of the film. Hamm previously won a Best of Fest honor at Big Muddy Film Festival for the animated short No Hat, No Mask, No Service. |
Guardian Angel Puddies is a seven minute film. Please give it time to load.
EFFECTS FOR GUARDIAN ANGEL PUDDIES
Making The Cats Talk
Making the cats talk was achieved with a program called Super Goo. It's a tool that manipulates still photographs. It can also export a Quicktime Movie so a normal photo can morph to a distorted photo. I shot lots of movies of the cats to find likely shots for them appearing to talk. I would choose a frame where the cat's mouth was slightly open. With the warping tool, I could stretch the mouth into a wide open vowel sound. I made a Quicktime morph for the letters E, A, M, and O. That was enough to make it believable. Then I imported the Quicktime Movies into iMovie and by playing with speed and reverse, I jockeyes the clips around until it seemed to be in sync. Zorro didn't walk and talk at the same time. I made a freeze frame, made him talk, and then returned to the movie of him walking.
Garage Door Gag
That was done with still photography. With the video camera on a tripod, I shot a picture of the garage door with me spreadeagled against it. Then I opened the garage door and took a picture. I imported the two photos into Flash. The photo of me against the garage door, I turned into two pictures. One had just the garage door and one had just the brick door frame with the door cut out. So now I had three layers. The top layer was the door frame. The middle layer was the door with me pressed against it. The bottom layer was the open door so you could see in the garage. The middle layer, I turned into a symbol in Flash and used the motion tween tool to make the door appear to raise. I'm pretty happy with this gag. Most people are too busy laughing to figure out how it was done,
Airplane Gag
This was a combination of live action and still photography. The shot of me rising off the ground was two stills: one of the driveway with the car in it and one of me that was cut out of a shot of me standing atop a hill in a local park. These stills were imported into Flash and the photo of me was on the top layer and made into a symbol so it could be motion tweened. What sells the shot is that I hand painted a shadow frame by frame onto the car. I turned the shadow into a symbol and made it 50% transparent. Unconsciously you look for shadows to tell you if objects live in the real world.
The shot where I fly up and attach myself to the plane consisted of two elements. The plane was a Quicktime Movie brought into Flash. The photo of me was on another layer and motion tweened. There were scores of key frames to keep me attached to the plane.
The pilot was on the ground gassing his plane. I flipped the shot to keep screen direction straight.
The close shot of me being dragged by the plane was me on the hill in the park. Eric Marlow shot that scene. To achieve the illusion he turned the camera 90º. In iMovie, we added clouds blowing by.
Tree Smashing
When I let go of the door knob and went hurtling into the tree, I was safe from harm. It was all shot in reverse. I posed with a dazed look on my face wrapped around the tree. Then I pushed off and ran up the steps. In iMovie using reverse and increasing the speed made it look like a dangerous stunt. I added "earthquake" effect to make the tree shake on impact. The sound effect completed the illusion.
Garden Tool Chase
Being chased by garden tools was achieved by iStopMotion that allowed me to move the tools frame by frame. It's the same way the trowel slide across the picnic table (and the pie slid out of the oven). When the trowel jumped in my hand, it was acted in reverse. I looked surprised, then threw the trowel away as I relaxed my face. Then in iMovie I reversed the shot.
Silverware
I threw silverware into the dishwasher and iMovie played it in reverse so it appeared to jump out of the dishwasher. The shot where I am covered with silverware was achieved by plastic silverware bought at a party store and strategically taped all over me with double stick tape by Eric Marlow
Cats at the Door
The one effect nobody ever notices is how I used Chromakey. Every shot of Harley or Kibby at the door used the Chromakey packaged with Slick Transitions 4 from Gee Three. The cats love to sit by the door, but every time I tried to film them there, they got up and walked over to the camera to see what I was doing and get petted. They also love to sleep on the bed, so I got a big blue sheet and covered the bed with it. Then I shot the cats against the blue sheet in the compostion I wanted and then with the Chromakey, I could place them anywhere I wanted.