The Game (A Short Film/Special Fx Test Shoot)

For the past few weeks, I’ve found myself devouring any information I could find concerning editing & post production techniques, special effects and shooting using a green screen.

The reason being that I have a lot of ideas for scripts, particularly some action movie style shorts, but I wasn’t sure I could pull them off, given that they would require certain effects. I wanted to do some test shoots, the first of which resulted in the above improvised short film of sorts; ‘The Game‘.

Over the course of the past month; I’ve slowly taken over a corner in our kitchen, gathering bottles and containers, funnels, hoses and lots of red food dye. Most recipes for fake blood require corn syrup and as of yet I still can’t find a place that sells it. So I did a few experiments and despite a couple of failed attempts, I finally made a batch that looked realistic enough, at least for a quick head-shot which is one of the first things I wanted to test out.

With everything ready to go for the effect, all I needed was a victim and with nothing better to do on a Sunday evening, I asked Daw if he wanted to drive me out to Jenkinstown Woods and get shot in the head!? How could he refuse!? We drove to Jenkinstown, picked a suitable location and spent the next two hours being devoured by flies!

I wanted to try out some other effects as well, namely shooting ‘day for night’ but unfortunately I picked the longest day of the year to give it a try. The sun was shining late into the evening meaning the effect wouldn’t work properly, and the darker I made it in post production the more I lost my head-shot effect, which was the primary goal of the test shoot.

Instead of just shooting the effects, I wanted to piece it together into some sort of short film, not just a static shot with blood flying. The fun part was that it was only a test shoot, it didn’t have to make any sense whatsoever and there was no point in going for more than one take.

So we started with some running shots, I also wanted to try a sort of visual delay effect but it didn’t quite work out for me so I scrapped it in this case, it needs more planning. Shooting on a Canon HG10 on a miniDv steadycam, we shot the running stuff; the long grass proved quite tricky to run through, if I wasn’t falling over then Daw was, or something as simple as a long blade of grass could push the counter-weight and ruin the shot. Once the two of us were truly sick of running we moved onto the dialogue.

Given that there was no script, we quickly made up two lines of dialogue to help explain the preceding effects; not that they make any sense but that was kind of the point of them in the first place!? I shot Daw’s closeup and then he shot my closeup. For the two shot I simply put the camera on a tripod. Then we shot the C/U of my hand as the gun, I did bring a fake gun but thought it was funnier if we didn’t use it. And finally we shot the head-shot effect.

With the camera on the tripod and Daw in position, I hit record then moved in place kneeling just out of frame beside Daw; counting “3,2,1,BANG”; he let his head fly back and I sprayed the fake blood onto the tree behind him. After reviewing the shot, we didn’t even bother going for a second take, I had what I needed.

Once I had the footage roughly assembled in Final Cut Express 4, I added three pre-generated digital effects; the muzzle flash from my “handgun”, a burst of blood from Daw’s forehead for the initial impact just before his brains ejected out the back of his head onto the tree and if you look really close at my fingers after the headshot you’ll see some whisps of smoke before I throw the weapon away.

With the effects in place, the next step was colour correction; given that I spent no time worrying about lighting during the shoot there was some noticeable differences in shots, beams of sun light were constantly coming and going through the trees. I cleaned it up as best I could then transferred the rough cut to my editing mentor Alan Slattery; who showed me the wonders of Magic Bullet; general post production techniques & colour grading.

Losing the idea of “day-for-night” and instead playing with the levels of green in the footage for a “House Of Flying Daggers” style of colour grading. To top it off and give it a more film like feeling, we added letterboxing to 2:35 and changed the frame rate from progressive to inter-lacing.

Following that, I found suitable music, using the royalty-free jingles that come with iLife and before I knew it the test shoot was looking more like a short film than I ever expected it to. It’s my first successful SpecialFx test shoot and given that this was shot on a budget of say… maybe €20 for blood ingredients and materials, it certainly won’t be my last. I get the feeling things are going to get very gorey over the next few months.

As usual comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

For best results watch ‘The Game‘ in HD.