Gillys: the darkness looks back and glowing doorways
one of the more intersting aspects of this project are the visual effects for this project, as the director had asked of me to look into glowing demon eyes. In our project, the main antagonist is the demon lucifer transforms from his cloaked form into a suited and booted human form with demon eyes glowing red.
Her example image for me to look at is lucifer from the tv series supernatural. in which the effect was done digitally. in tv and film media there are plenty of similar examples i can look at for future reference. from comparing the script for gilly to lucifer, i saw that the director had wanted the demons eyes to glow when furious or when becoming angry, in which the directors example did not do. so i decided to look to a very different source; Homelander from the boys.
Homelander is a morally corrupt superhero on par with that on superman. The characters main super power is his laser eyes, however in instances when he either starts to get angry or threatening, his eyes starts to glow in a indimidating manner, much like the child in Brightburn.
My method for creating the effect is actually very simple, as the effect can be made in after effects by duplicating the video and masking the duplicate video, finally using motion tracking on the iris i can have the effect follow the eyes and then finally changing the colour of the layer, creating the effect for the project.
The other effect for this project sounds easy in practice, however its more time consuming than imagined. In the final scene of the void, gilly is thrown into a white doorway in which she is found on a beach dead. for reference my director had found this image to base the design on the door, however i could not find a film reference for this effect. However since this id a flat object the idea for me is to create the door through after effects as a solid object, but much like the eyes effect, duplicate the clip and mask around the actors and rotoscope around the actors.
Rotoscoping is a practice done even since the early 30s of animation in which artists will draw over film reels of a persons movements creating hyper realsistic motion; for example in the 1930s fleischer studios short "Minnie the moocher" in which jazz singer cab calloway was rotoscoped whilst performing the titles song. Comparing this to the FMP project, the idea is to cut out the actors infront of the doorway but sucsessfully rotascoping around the actor so it looks like the effect is pulled off seemlessly