Stock effects footage stories from ActionVFX
We sometimes hear about visual effects supervisors doing separate element shoots on large productions to get things like sparks, fire, blood hits, and water effects that can be composited into final VFX shots.
But that’s not always something that can be done, even on the biggest films, let alone much smaller indie productions. A place you can source those kinds of stock effects elements and more is ActionVFX, a specialist asset provider. We’re going to take a look at just two of the kinds of effects elements they provide: muzzle flashes and wall and ceiling fire.
On fire
Ceiling and wall fire – that’s the kind of effect designed to be comp’d into your shots of someone trying to escape a raging inferno-filled corridor.
“The look of fire changes drastically based on the surface it’s covering,” noted Rodolphe Pierre-Louis, CEO & Founder, ActionVFX. “The problem our users were running into is they would need to burn down a building or a house, but only have access to ground fires. You can edit a ground fire element all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to look like it belongs strictly on the ground. So with our Wall Fire collections, we burned real vertical structures at different intensities, widths, and shapes in order to provide users with all they need to pull off a realistic result.”
ActionVFX has a large range of clips available. The ‘Wall & Ceiling Fire’ collection features fire shot in 5K resolution at 96 fps on the RED Epic-W Helium. Most of the flames are 100% in the frame and not cut off at the edges. The footage is available in 4K or 2K, and is delivered also with the original 5K unkeyed .R3D files.
You can find that collection right here.
Getting the…shot
Now, if you need someone to fire a gun in your film, it’s likely you’re going to be adding the muzzle flash in post. ActionVFX has gone and filmed a whole bunch of muzzle flashes for you, so you don’t have to. Just one of their gun FX collections – Muzzle Flashes Vol. 2 – for example, includes 116 real muzzle flash elements. It’s made up of 88 video clips and 28 still images, featuring 12 different guns.
The elements were shot on the RED GEMINI 5K, and can be delivered in 2K or 4K in 12-Bit ProRes 4444 at 23.98fps. There’s also a pre-keyed alpha channel in the element.
Take a muzzle flash for one of the Colt .45 handgun elements, for instance. Here’s some specs about that FX element (which is a real element, not a sim):
Name: Colt 45 Angled 1
Resolution: 2K (2048×1080) and 4K (4096×2160).
Frame Rate: 23.98fps
Formats: 12-Bit ProRes 4444 (2K and 4K).
Color Space: Rec.709 – Gamma Curve: BT.1886
Output Tone Map: Medium Contrast – Highlight Roll-off: Soft
Camera: RED GEMINI 5K
Check out all the muzzle flashes available – both as single purchases or as a collection – in ‘Muzzle Flashes Vol. 2’ here.
And that’s just muzzle flashes and wall fire. There’s of course a lot more available on ActionVFX’s website, including blood and gore, explosions, smoke, water, sparks and, yep, even lens dirt. Check out their overview below for more details.
Sponsored by ActionVFX:
This is a sponsored article and part of the befores & afters VFX Insight series. If you’d like to promote your VFX/animation/CG tech or service, you can find out more about the VFX Insight series right here.
