I wanted to try and keep the magic of the Beasts reveal as much as possible, but when your budget is £0 that becomes quite challenging!
I had seen some illustrations by an IA colleague - Shaun Duke - which were fabulous, and having had conversations with Isaac Priestley (also and IA colleague) regarding using projection for special effects, I decided to approach the problem from an animation viewpoint and get both chaps involved in the process.
Although I already had the initial concept in my head, I allowed the boys to give their input and we worked well as a team. I arranged a venue, equipment, cast and costume for early January and collected them to start the filming. We had agreed on filming the movement of the Beast in full costume, from above, in a fluid motion from a lying down fetal position, up into the air, arms outstretched and facing the front as if suspended on a cross.
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| Setting an elevated filming position so the action was done safely on the floor |
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| Raising the actors head so his face etc could be seen clearly |
Once in that final position we filmed removal of fur from each leg and arm one by one, then finally his headpiece.
The footage was then edited together into a final single piece and run through rota-scoping software so that the image went from real to animation. Then Shaun added effects so that each limb would magically change from Beast to human in time with some dramatic incidental music until he became entirely human again and drifted back down into a standing position.
The finished product is as the video below:
I was really pleased with the end result but none of us had envisaged the extent of problems that would follow!
I had made a gauze from butter muslin and dyed it black with pen ink...
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| The gauze having been dip-dyed, drip drying on my washing line 8) |
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| Black pen ink - £2.85 cheap as chips! |
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| 8ft square wood edged black gauze screen |
The Beast would supposedly die on rear stage left and whilst the audiences attention was drawn elsewhere, the projection would start on top of the actor and the black screen (As above - which can't be seen when there is no white light) would be slid on just in front of him so he was then free to exit and get changed whilst the scene continued with the projected image taking his place.
The initial image used was a real photo of the start position lying down on the floor so looked very realistic. When the audiences attention was brought back to the screen there was now only a small follow spot on Beauty so in the darkness the projection looked amazing.
Once the animated character was revealed and came back down to a standing position, the real actor would be positioned directly behind it and then with an explosion of white light the screen would be slid off and the projection would dissipate directly onto the actor and therefore effecting he had gone through the transformation.
Although we had measured the distance from where the projector would sit to where the screen onto which it would be projected would be placed, what none of us had considered was the distance the image would travel from the lying down position up to the mid-air position and then back down to standing whilst being the life size of the actor - which was a huge six foot seven inches!.
Therefore when we came to test it the week of the show it became apparent that in order to keep it at that scale we had a serious problem because we either cut his head off once the image was in mid-air so it could start on the floor - or to fit the mid-air image on he would end up looking like he was on his knees instead of standing at the end.
The last resort was to reduce the size of the character so the entire video would fit on the 8ft screen....
... but when the actor stood behind it, the top of the image of himself only came upto his chest!
Plan G! 8) next we tried repositioning the projector - very limited on options - not one worked, so
Plan H! next we tried repositioning the gauze screen - we had it all over the place - we even tried closing the curtains and then opening them to reveal the screen immediately behind but it just wasn't working at all.
Time for a brew.....
...several in fact ..... 8 /
.... and a good coat of looking at!
Eventually with the start of the first show looming ever closer we had to make a huge compromise - we had to project it onto the main curtains.
This was not the best practice by far but considering the circumstances we weren't left with many other options.
We tested the curtains to ensure we got as flat a surface as possible - I quickly reset the cast and the lighting plot for the last scene (People were beginning to arrive for the first show!)
We ran two test runs and it seemed okay so that was that - done and dusted!
The end result was sufficient, the last petal of the rose falling (look on the left) and Beautys excellent acting helped sell the scene massively!.....
- I learned a lot through this saga but can't wait to take it forward to the next venture in SFX projection!
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