User Profiles

Delirium – A Useful Bag of Tricks for Film FX

Interview with Roger Nall
VFX Supervisor, Owner at 11:11 MediaWorks

Tell me about 11:11 MediaWorks.

11:11 MediaWorks is a boutique visual effects studio that specializes in feature film, television, commercial, music video, and interactive multimedia projects for special presentations and events. We’re located in sunny Van Nuys, California where I started the business in July of 2001.

Some of our recent credits include MGM's wild comedy Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, Warner Borthers' Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Columbia's Wayens Brothers film, Little Man as well as the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal. Our talented staff has worked on a variety of projects including: Planet of the Apes, Exit Wounds, Swordfish, The Tuxedo, and The Core.

When did you start using Delirium?

I’ve been using Delirium since it first came to market in the late 90’s. In fact, I teamed up with developer Chris Athanas to write and design the Muzzle Flash filter specifically for us.

Why did you need a Muzzle Flash filter?

Muzzle Flash is the visible light emitted by superheated gases and flame produced by the burning gunpowder when a firearm is discharged. The size and shape of the muzzle flash is dependent on the type of ammunition being used and the individual characteristics of the muzzle of the gun being fired.

In movies people aren’t actually shooting each other so this effect has to be created in post. We found ourselves wasting time keying and compositing the desired result by hand. Chris was able to develop a tool to generate this automatically. Now all we do is input where the end of the gun is located, the direction of the flash, and on which frame(s) the flash should appear. Muzzle Flash is truly a plug-in-play solution. We use it on big budget films and direct to DVD projects. It works for both automatic weapons and pistols.

 

What are your other favorite filters in Delirium?

We used Loose Sprockets for a scene where a movie being projected on a wall got caught up and burned out the projector. Loose Sprockets helped to convey the effect of the busted camera bouncing around.

Video Malfunction helped us transmit an electromagnetic pulse screwing up the reception on computer monitors for a SciFi show. We’d created the video sequence and composited in the footage on the screens.Video Malfunction helped us to create bars and stretch the clips to make them look like the monitors had stopped working.

Sparks are great for simulating the flashes generated by a welding torch. We used this filter on a malfunctioning robot squirting sparks off its head. It also worked well on a scene where two chainsaws were banging against each other.

Turbulent Noise is a fractal particle generator that creates random patterns of color or black and white. We apply Turbulent Noise to matte channels for an ultra organic fade out that has weird shapes and density. This way the fade out is not even across the frame.

Rainfall came in handy for a scene where we needed to merge two different sources of footage, one being wider. In the wider shot, we added rain to the foreground and created different layers for to set where the rain would hit in the alpha channels. This was a lot easier and cheaper than creating 3D rain.

Would you recommend Delirium to a friend?

Yes, the Delirium package includes nearly 50 special effects plug-ins some of which you can find in other packages. The Delirium advantage is that these filters are usable right out the box. This is because many of the plug-ins AutoAnimate, meaning that they animate as soon as they are applied to an image. Getting quick results is crucial in tight deadlines. With Delirium, all you have to do is click the preset pop-up. You can then save, load, and modify them to just what you need.