Making Extinction Event: Alan Atkinson explains how he made the movie which won an IAC International Award and a UNICA Gold Medal.

Getting Started

As some of you will know, Extinction Event is our third film featuring the ingenious amateur inventor, farmer Walter Ruddles. Making a 'series' like this may sound rather unadventurous but we had a good character, with plenty of potential for being placed in interesting situations, so why not make the most of him? It also helps a little to have an established personality that some of the audience will already know; this works very well in TV comedy series.

As for the story-line, we once again went for a topic that was already familiar to audiences and that had been the subject of Hollywood movies. One previous film, Flight of Fancy was a light-hearted take on genetic engineering, as in Jurassic Park, and the other, P.E.T., which involved alien visitors, poked fun at Spielberg's E.T. In Extinction Event it was to be an impending impact from a comet, as featured in Armageddon and Deep Impact. Hopefully, this meant that valuable screen time would not have to be spent filling in background to the story.

I am a great admirer of the film Airplane, with its endless wacky jokes - too many to take in at one viewing. Wouldn't it be great to make a movie aiming to do the same? Assembling that many gags takes some time however; almost three years in this case. The storyline must come first, of course, and scripting began by deciding on the main scenes and then dropping in gags wherever possible. A rough initial storyboard is very helpful at this stage and a more-detailed version was produced later. Inevitably, storyboards need to be modified as filming progresses, when locations prove to be rather different than expected or new ideas are added. They are very valuable, however, for planning shots; without them we would have ended up with many scenes that needed re-shooting to achieve continuity.

Locations

Extinction Event involved many locations, some real and others created artificially, as we shall see later. It's surprising how helpful people can be when approached, an example being The Coventry Council House, who readily offered use of the Mayor's meeting room to stand as the Cabinet Office in Downing Street. Our only problem, with an otherwise perfect location, was the many portraits of past mayors lining the walls. We had to choose camera angles very carefully and eagle-eyed viewers may still spot the odd civic dignitary where only members of the Her Majesty's Cabinet should be.

Some high-tech locations were called for and one obvious choice was the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. An enquiry met with an immediate invitation to call in and I was able to get many useful shots that added authenticity to the film. Our contact there, Tim O'Brian, even volunteered to play himself as of one of the scientists - you don't get much more authentic than that!

In many cases it would have been impossible to film in real locations and, as described below, we had to use special effects to create 'virtual sets.'

Special Effects

I thought that it would be nice to make a film with fairly high 'production values' - big scenes and out-of-this-world action. Having dabbled in special effects for some time, I had come to realise that, with enough effort, almost anything is possible. If you can think of it - and want it badly enough to put in the hours of work - you can have it. All this was going to need models, elaborate blue-screen effects and making mischief with Adobe Premiere and Photoshop. There are too many special effects scenes to describe them all but this is how some of them were done.

We needed several scenes located in busy offices, control centres and other places that were difficult to arrange. The answer, as with many recent Hollywood films, was to film actors in front of a blue screen and then place them into 'virtual sets.'

	One scene involved a presentation to an audience in a meeting room. Fortunately, I already had some footage of just such a presentation but, unfortunately, it was the wrong person talking about the wrong subject. No problem; using the Photoshop 'cloning' tool, on a single frame from the live scene, the area where the original presenter had been standing was replaced with empty background. Taking care not to include any parts of the picture where audience members were located, this cleaned-up region was next put back into the original shot, along with a sign.
	We now had a meeting room and an audience but no speaker. The new speaker was next filmed in front of a blue screen ready to be inserted into the scene. The problem, though, was that he would now be in front of the meeting room furniture. This meant making a blue mask (again in Photoshop) that would cover just the furniture that lay in front of the new speaker.

Putting it all together gave a scene that, so far, no one has questioned.

Other scenes were based on shots taken in libraries, colleges, etc that were then 'dressed-up' by adding signs and TV screen messages.

An even greater location problem occurred with scenes in Whitehall and Westminster. Filming there would have been very difficult, especially with someone dressed as a policeman in body armour. For these shots, the backgrounds were shot unobtrusively, alongside other tourists, and the actors then performed in front of a blue screen. By matching the lighting, perspectives, etc, it was possible to achieve fairly convincing composited scenes.

A point worth making about filming with such virtual sets is the need for a rock-steady tripod. Any relative movement between the background and foreground parts of the final image will completely destroy the illusion. And, of course, camera movements are quite impossible without the incredibly expensive computer-controlled systems used by the makers of feature films.

Another lesson learnt was the difficulty with matching sound. The blue screen shots, to go with outdoor backgrounds, were filmed indoors and, despite using a directional mike, as close as possible to the actors, there was still a reverberant 'indoor' quality to the recording. Fairly major adjustment was needed in post-production to get a half-reasonable result. Next time, we will aim to film such blue screen shots outdoors.

Blue Screens

We are fortunate, at Nuneaton Moviemakers, in having a fairly large, home made blue screen (constructed from blue Lycra stretched over a collapsible frame.) Sometimes, though, a screen is not available and, on such occasions, it's worth trying to use just the blue sky.

This is an original shot.	This is what it looked like after adding the background scene and some seagulls.

Continue on the next page...

Next Page...

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

Free JavaScripts provided
by The JavaScript Source