GAUNTLET - AN IMPROVISATIONAL HORROR FILM
A little over a year ago (summer 2016) I went back to my home town of Santa Fe, New Mexico for a visit. It wasn't for a good reason, it was because one of my best friends from high school had passed away unexpectedly one day before his 30th birthday. But as do most tragedies this event brought many old and mutual friends together. One of those friends whom I spent time with that summer was my oldest and first filmmaking buddy. We spent most of our pre-teen and teen years running around around with VHS and 8mm video cameras making improvised in-camera-edit shorts about drunks, drug addicts, bums, and sleazy 70's cops.
One day we were hanging out in the small country town where he grew up and we decided to get back to our roots as improv filmmakers. I happened to have a 7D and a couple lenses with me and he had a couple props at his house. So we wandered into an abandon house we knew of and made up a little story with what we had. We shot for probably less than an hour.
Once I got back to LA I got a new job, and another close friend passed away. My life was filled with complication and turmoil, and as a result I never did anything with what we shot. Honestly I forgot about it. But then last weekend I was talking to that friend (Rhome) and he reminded me of that day, and I realized that I was on hiatus from work and I actually had the time to do something with what we shot. So I sat down and powered through the edit. Also luckily I happened to have some music laying around that my friend Rhuss had given me for a short that never materializeed several years ago, it happened to fit perfectly with this piece.
This little experiment has been very motivating and inspirational. And We are hoping to do a more elaborate and structured project sometime soon. Given the circumstances I'm actually very proud of this little short.
And I hope you'll enjoy watching it even half as much as much as we enjoyed making it.
this amazing man! great work!
Thanks dude!
That's nice! Did you use some special filter for this twisting face effect? I'm curious how did you achieve it?
Thank you! I used a trick i learned from Andrew Kramer ( www.videocopilot.net ) many years ago. He explains how to do it in a tutorial called "demon face warp". Basically you use the motion tracker in after effects to stabilize the face of your subject. Then you precompose that footage, and use an expression to remove the visual effects of the stabilization. This somehow makes the "liquify" filter stick to the tracking data so that it follows along with the facial features.
Wow! Thank you for the detailed answer, it is a great trick, I'm glad you shared it:)
Nice! How fun to have a creative friendship like this. I enjoyed it, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching!
Yeah it was cool. Following you.
Twirble LOVES it!!!
Thanks!