Editing: Adobe After Effects

As our thriller is a political action thriller (similar to the Bourne trilogy or Taken), it required a certain amount of special effects in order to add an element of excitement to it, as there types of films are known for their action, shooting and fight sequences. The one that really required the use of after effects the most was the shooting of Simon's 'deemed expendable' step-daughter Georgia. After Maggie, the real daughter is kidnapped, Georgia is left and attempts to escape but is picked off by a sniper from range, as no witnesses are desired and these guys need to send a message that will still leave them with a bargaining chip. For the sniper clip, we needed to do a few things to make it obvious to the audience that they were looking down the sight of a sniper rifle, and of course to kill Georgia. This meant that we had to create the boundries of the scope, a crosshairs (one long range and then a transition to the zoom optic), the sight recoil as the gun fires and of course, the blood as the bullet hits Georgia square in the chest. In order to create the sight boundries, we first had to create a background mask on the shot, then cut out a circle where we need the sight to be, center it on the target and blur the edges so that the target is in focus. Because we had two separate shots of Georgia stepping out of the car, it meant that we had to come up with a way to justify the sudden jump-zoom, so we added an optics change in to cover it up and enhance the shot. This was done with the use of more masking. Next, we added the crosshairs to both sets of optics, simply taking one from the internet, removing the white background in photoshop and placing it over the required shot. The recoil was done exactly the same way as the optic change, simply moving the mask where and when needed. The blood was an animated spatter effect that we put into the shot, centered on the target. In the final cut, there were two separate ones used to acheive the desired spread and volume.



The Zoom Optic. Note the boundries and blurred edges.

The Long Range Sight

 

 

We used a wide spread splatter like this one, only animated to digitally re-create the effects of having a high velocity round punch through one's vital internal organs.