So in this section, we're going to talk about how to shoot smartly for the effects. And the first thing I want to teach you is try to not use the effects as much as you can. For example, on temple we had this arm that we need to tear off, we were thinking of using the effects for it, but onset, we decided to actually use a fixed arm. And, you know, using lt techniques shooting really closely, we ripped up the arm onset, which made for a very gruesome and realistic scene that we couldn't have achieved using VFX either way. So things like that will always be better than trying to do something with effects that are not going to look that great anyway. So first, if you can avoid camera movements, try to avoid them, especially with cameras nowadays that can shoot 4k 60 or 8k.

You don't really need to have a dolly in or zoom in on the VFX shots especially. You can always reframe or add a camera with impulse and nobody's going to notice it's a lot easier. To rotoscope something on a still shot than on a moving shot, your VFX artists are going to love you for it. Try to make your actors cross the axis of your VFX assets on Akira was starting out using VFX. And I had the actor do these actions in front of a bike and we forgot to put a green screen behind him. So we had to roll scope his hair out to in order to comp the bike in which needed a lot of work.

And I advise you not to do that. The other thing you need to remember is that VFX only works if the environment around it is affected by the VFX. For example, on the camera, we had this big explosion from a bike and what we needed to do was light the whole scene strike the light in and out as the bike was exploding, so that everything felt real and the explosion felt part of the shot things like when on the bikers face when he's riding a bike. We'll sell the shot and we'll sell the reality of the VFX To place tracking markers enough so that the software can read the markers either on your actors on the green screen. So it can be done automatically rather than you having to do it manually. It's going to save you a lot of time in post on temple, we did place some tracking markers on a actors arm, we managed to do some of it via software, but some of it did not work and we had to rotoscope everything by hand.

It took a lot of time to actually get this to work. So I advise you again not to do this simple mistake. One thing you can do is also save yourself time and money by buying 3d assets online on websites such as turbosquid comm they have really good 3d assets that you can modify later on to make it look customized to your project. It's going to be very good for you to use because you don't necessarily have thousands of dollars to pay a 3d modeler to do this thing for you. On hyperlight for example, we spent thousands have dollars doing a 3d concept for a spaceship. One thing that you need to know is that if you're going to head down this route of creating a blockbuster look with VFX, you need to know what the post workflow until what it can or cannot do.

For example, if you're gonna be onset and there's a light, a house light that can be turned off, it's very easy to change as the color temperature imposed, so that you don't waste time trying to access that light and try to find a way for it to shut down. Or if you have something you need to remove in the background. And if it's a still shot, it's very easy to move something on the steel frame. So you can you can just you know, get the actors to shoot the their scene, remove them, shoot a steel plate, and then you can use the steel plate to come out whatever you need to remove from the shop. It's what's going to make you efficient onset knowing how you use the FX and how not to use VFX