Pixelkicker (2004) - The most comprehensive of my videos in terms of the use of special effects and masking techniques, Pixelkicker was an attempt to push the limits of fast, no budget special effects in a limited timeframe.

Every scene in Pixelkicker features some use of masking and special effects. In the opening scene, when the sorcerer is looking at the pixelated image, a mask with a blur effect had to be put on the image because it was originally too distinct.

The sorcery-book camera move was completely fabricated. The title "Sorcery" was added to a digital photograph of an artbook that Torgie (the actor who plays the sorcerer/pixelkicker) had on hand. Then a zoom effect and digital grain were added in After Effects to give the appearance of regular motion to match the rest of the video. Towards the end of the zoom some artificial jerky motion was added to make it appear that the camera man had jogged the camera to help make it seem more authentic.

The effect of the blue light emanating from the sorcerer was created by shooting video of a small, quickly flowing stream that was reflecting the blue sky. Using After Effects, a larger video format was built at about 1200p x 900p. Using this larger video, I used the clips of the stream, duplicating it multiple times ringing it around the center so that is was always flowing outward, using feathered edges to make it mesh together. By using clips from different times, the eddies in the water kept the flow from appearing too uniform and the rush of whitewater where the stream flowed into a basin was used for the center. This was then shrunken to standard NTSC video format (720 x 480) and was introduced with a level of transparency and masked around the sorcerer character. Taking advantage of the lighting used during the shooting of the scene, After Effects was used to blow out the color.

The disjointed effect as the sorcerer looks from side to side was created by reversing the clip so that it played backwards and then speeding it up. If you look closely, you can see his hair move slightly just before his head does.

Kicking the pixel was a delicate process. Markers were laid down in the shooting for the exact locations of where the pixel would start, stop and move to as it was kicked. When plotting the pixel's motion after being kicked, it was necessary to make it cartoony, but not too much so that it would mesh with the live action elements. Masking was also used for the impacts, especially the last one, where Torgie's foot actually crosses in front of the pixel to kick it away from the camera; wherever Torgie's foot is infront of the pixel had to be masked out frame by frame, as did his whole body in the blue and orange light scenes.

The multiple pixels that show up had to be masked around Torgie as he swayed from side to side after having so savagely kicked one into submission.

For the finale, where Torgie removes a baseball bat from nowhere and screams, the same blue light effects were used, but the blue was changed to orange to give it a fiery quality, and another mask was placed over Torgie to make him disappear into the epicenter of the flames.

Most of the sound in Pixelkicker was added after the video was shot. The chanting during the sorcery montage was made by both Torgie and myself, and yelling was produced by Torgie before the blue light scene was filmed. The sound of the pixels being kicked (which Torgie calls the "derf" sound) was a sound I made with my mouth and then altered in Soundforge.

When the yells change in the final scene, they become yelling and screaming that I produced myself. I went out into the middle of a rugby field and yelled and screamed as long as I could. The final scream as the orange burns into white is two of those screams mixed together and raised an octave in Soundforge (the program I used most of the musical effects to modify for the final production). Then I took the sounds (and some Aditional Dialogue Recording for the Pixelkicker's inner monologue, spoken by Torgie) and added them to the soundtrack mix in Final Cut Pro.

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