VFX Showreel 2008

[PackmanML]

my favorite part of this video has to be the car crash/explosion and the mechanical head at the very beginning.

[TrigFX]

I should add here that the explosion was NOT a visual effect - it was real. My only involvement in this segment was to replace an old-style "brick" phone with a more up-to-date smaller mobile phone...

Glad ya liked it though!

[TrigFX]

Oh - and glad ya liked the mechanical head too - that was MY personal fave!! I plan on doing the breakdown for it in my next showreel, so stay tuned! :-)

[PackmanML]

ah ok i was a bit confused. nicely done i couldn't even tell that the phone wasn't real. haha

[TrigFX]

Oh the phone was real - it was just composited in at a later date...and thank you: that is the best compliment you could have paid me. :-D

I always strive to achieve VFX in such a way that hopefully the audience won't even realise that they're looking at a VFX shot - so again, thanks! :-D

[POPARTPRODUCTlONS]

SUPERB stuff as always!

[TrigFX]

Many thanks, my friend! :-)

[POPARTPRODUCTlONS]

No problem man, this is the real deal! You are a one man ILM! Keep rocking! Pops

[TrigFX]

Thanks!! Never been called that before...!! LOL

I wish...!!! :-D

[DearestBecky]

Great job on the editing and the video.

[TrigFX]

Much appreciated - thanks! :-)

[soulrunner66]

Great stuff. Big improvement over your last reel. Looking forward to your future VFX!

[TrigFX]

Thank you!! I hope my next showreel (coming soon) is just as big an improvement over THIS one - if not more!  ;-)

[jptthreedee]

Excellent !

[TrigFX]

Thanks! :-)

[AOSfilms]

love watchin this kinda stuff

[TrigFX]

Yeah - me too! :-)

[GreatVFX]

Cool VFX.

[TrigFX]

Thanks! Always welcome people who appreciate VFX! :-)

[DeusWatcher]

Nice work Nick!

[TrigFX]

Thanks! :-)

[JorgeFnl]

You have some nice jobs in there, but I still can't understand why you decided to put the mobile phone digital in the shot. Wouldn't it be easier just to lay the phone on the ground while shooting?

[TrigFX]

That's because that part of the reel was shot TEN YEARS AGO - and I only met the stunt guy last year!!

He wanted the phone upgraded cos it made the clip look dated: in his words, "It looks like I haven't worked in ten years!"

Hope this clears that up! :-)

[JorgeFnl]

Okay, now I understand ;).

Anyways, great job about the phone. Looks really good!

[TrigFX]

Thanks! I appreciate that! :-)

[PlayernetMovies]

ph@nt@$t1c@l

[TrigFX]

Cheers!! :-D

(Took me a while to decipher that...lol!)

[PlayernetMovies]

hehe :P i like to write that way

[tgdrake10]

woah.... if i had even half the skills you did I could take over Lucas Films.

[TrigFX]

Why, do you have a stack of cash stashed away somewhere...?? lol

And my second answer (prob shoulda been my first...!), is THANKS!!! :-D

[christopher9usa]

Fantastic Nick.....Sound and vision are awesome!!! Stay gold

[TrigFX]

Cheers Chris! Good to have ya back on the scene!  :-)

[DelisaProductions]

You are amazing!

What an incredible journey to see all your work, I don't know if you do this for a living, but I sure hope you get well paid if you do.

The Star Wars bits were so fantastic, is there any way for you to contact George Lucas? You should be working out in Hollywood.

Nick, I just watched all your videos, and I'm just blown away by you.

[TrigFX]

Wow! Thanks! That means a LOT to me - especially coming from a talented film-maker such as yourself. To me, a story is the be-all and end-all of a good film - not the FX. They're there just to help things along - and you have me beat on that score! So far... ;-)

I'm freelancing - but haven't worked on a paid job since Nov - damn this recession. I rely on film extra work , and even that is dry at the mo, sadly.

[paterczm]

Hey Nick, a lot is happening inside your head! Another fine example of how interesting the howto/behind the scenes kind of films are, often more than the films themselves ;)

[TrigFX]

Glad ya liked it! :-)

I HAD actually considered naming this reel "Inside the Head of TrigFX" - but will save that for another time... ;-)

[petercoster]

Nice work Nick,

[TrigFX]

Thanks Peter!

Nice work on the short you sent me - I hope you'll be able to "air" it one day soon: it's very worthy! Thanks for asking me to work on it!

:-)

[rifleman0007]

now that was freaking awesome :) needed a lot of time to render the inside of head huh :) awesome

[TrigFX]

You have NO idea...!!

Actually, second thought, you probably do...lol!

I started rendering the 3D fly throughs in segments - two days in, I realised it could've been better, so had to start again!

The open head shot was re-rendered THREE TIMES....!! :-s

Each 3 to 4 second segment took between 12 to 14 hours - on average - to render (although the final segment took about 20 hours)...Overall, I spent a week and a half just on rendering....! I hope people think it was worth while! :-)

[rifleman0007]

of course it was worth it :) hey how do you make the particle system, and the original video footage to shake in the same way? f.e. 3:10 . the fumefx shakes with the camera. did you do this with post processing?

[TrigFX]

I created all the FumeFX stuff first, using a still shot of the building as a reference guide - then rendered it without the building image but with an alpha channel. I then took it into After Effects, where I did LOT ot work on it - the last thing was the camerashake - so yeah, all in post.

[rifleman0007]

OR how did you do the 0:10 ? :)

[TrigFX]

You'll have to wait til my next showreel to see how that was done! :-p

Clue: I used max, boujou and After Effects to make it happen...

[rifleman0007]

well max to create particles, boujou for camera tracking..? ir boujou hard to learn? i mean compared to max? :)

[TrigFX]

Well, it kinda depends on the shot! I've tried to track shots before that I REALLY struggled with. This one was doddle though! But, as you will see in my next showreel in a few months' time, I had PLENTY of tracking markers! lol

Booujou has a VERY useful wizard for when yer first starting out - but there are still things you will need to know. Nothing that can't be found in online tutorials or within the help pages though! ;-)

[rifleman0007]

so i guess boujou is a video editing software? or its more like a 3d associated app?

and, did you color matched the layer videos with boujou too?

[TrigFX]

No no no no no! Boujou is a 3d and 2d tracking software - I use Premiere for editing.

The layers were colour corrected within After Effects...

[petercertik]

Very good.

[danny998cc]

YEAH MATE!!! ROCKIN!!! ;-)

[TrigFX]

Cheers dude! And thanks for providing the music for this: YOU rock!! :-)

[TheSnailsMovies]

Really cool, my fav is the Future War Test (because I saw it ages before!! hehe)

Keep up the great effects!

[TrigFX]

Cheers dude! Yeah - but you ALSO saw the Phones Can Kill one before - on Stage6!!!! It was on there about a year and a half ago, before they shut that site down... :-(

[BenMcEwan]

This sucks balls... is what I would say if it sucked balls =)

Really nice work man, keep it up!

[TrigFX]

Dude, you've seen the original: is it my imagination, or has this come out really dark on here...??

This is what happens when ya fall asleep (cos you've been up all night) before YouTube has fully processed the vid...! D'OH!!

[BenMcEwan]

Hehe yeh.. YouTube has some crazy compression thingo that alters the gamma slightly. Normally the video gets brighter though, so that's really weird.

Think of it like the H.264 compression..

[TrigFX]

That's the compression I used...! I DID darken it a bit to compensate, knowing this: seems this is the one and only time that Youtube did NOT brighten the gamma...Grrrr...

[TrigFX]

Oh, and by the way - thanks! lol :-)

You just HAD to get that in there, didn't ya...?? :-p

lol

[BenMcEwan]

Sure did =)

[iggy35]

Great work sir, you have been a busy lad :)

Love the band in the head :D

[TrigFX]

Thank you Iggy! That was actually my FIRST paid job! I did the VFX for the whole video, but this was by far my fave shot in the whole vid!

If ya wanna see the whole thing, type "Gender Bender" and UglyMother into the search engine...

Beware though - it also has some FX in it that I am NOT happy with, hence me never having posted it on MY page...! lol