Oh that’s got to hurt !

Great fun - if you know what your doing

So this weekend we did an incredible stunt shoot for fxphd.

We were incredibly lucky to get Tony Lynch and a great team of professional stunt guys to work with us. These guy’s film credits are an amazing body of international work in films such as Star Wars and The Matrix – but a nicer, more professional, relaxed bunch of guys you could not find !

We also were joined by a bunch of fxphd PostGrad who not only came and helped out- but shot sequences of their own and helped by doubling as oil rigging extras against green screen.

The day was very relaxed and friendly but we got a heap done at the Carnival Studios sound stages. I will write some more on stunts and how to pull them off but today i just wanted to explain what we were filming.

We had 3 objectives:

1. Firstly it was to film some great stunts – including high free falls and fights. Plus we got a bunch of green screen shots done for the oil rig sequence. So we filmed both professional stunt guys and our Post-grads in front of green screen.

2. We also wanted to film something for our Background fundamentals so we could explain how to incorporate stunts into your film – how to work with stunts and dispell some of the myths involved. We also will use footage in the matte painting and roto classes this term.

3. To film material for one of next term’s courses. This is a new course and the Post-Grads spent a few hours filming material for that. It included a shoot out between say mini-dv, Hdv, and DVC-Pro – and some really fun ‘tricks’ of the trade.

It is tricky when your not just filming to get get a shot but get a shot about getting the shot – if that makes sense (!) and as always Pete our DOP did us proud, aided this time with Second unit cameraman Jimmy Shen.

More on stunts tomorrow, but again a great big thanks to those who attended and those who literally risked their necks for us to have some great footage to work with.

Mike