A few years ago I worked on a project where I got to try my hand at creating some cool magic special effects. There was a variety of different effects needed, in a short film project about a Princess who rescues a boy from a witch's tower, instead of being the one needing rescuing. I primarily made the effects in After Effects with Trapcode, all except the Witch's portal which was sourced from online.

This shot didn't have a working plate shot, as it was filmed at a slightly different angle to the plate. In the take, the Witch is in the shot the whole time. To show a blank wall before the Witch arrived, I had to take a section of the intended plate shot and distort it, placing it over this one, although the distortion of the rocks is somewhat visible at the edges. The overlayed plate fades with the portal, so to hide what is happening.

If I could, I would go back and change this shot so the portal is larger, and the bottom of it is off screen, conceivably at foot height. It's my one regret about this shot.

A light was used on set to highlight the character's face when she uses this power, but unfortunately it was simply switched from off to on to off again, not dimmed, which gives a sudden snap in lighting I couldn't make up for.

This shot had been filmed against a green screen, with a decent amount of green spill on the characters, hence the difference from the earlier shots.

I built this shot from three other images, and placed them on different layers in After Effects to move them separately and at different rates, to give the illusion of a camera moving around 3D objects. I also added a smoky mist in too, to add to the intended feel.

This was an effect I made for a 48 Hours Film Festival entry I did with some classmates a few years ago. I was the editor for this, and also in charge of the special effects. I instructed the actors on what to do for the effect, which was achieved very simply. I had our actress, Holly, wait off screen to the left, and once our actor, Angus, had moved away from the bench, I froze that section of the screen with a plate shot. Then Holly would just walk over and hop up on the counter, settling down into her pose. Angus would wait for Holly to she let us know she was ready by giving her line, at which point he would turn around and look shocked. All I had to do was drop the plate shot to give the impression of her appearing out of nowhere, and add some purple magic clouds, for the look.

This was from the same 48 Hour film. The effect is basically the same as before, but now in reverse, with Angus walking off screen covered by a plate shot.

Here I was playing around in Nuke, and thought I would try to recreate Star Trek: The Next Generation's style of transporter effect.

When I was learning Nuke, one task we were given to practise with the software was to make a superhero take-off or landing.

This was from a short film I made with my friends in high school. I was short on time, and didn't have much experience, but I made this little graphic in Illustrator and Flash in my Computer Science lab, and used a bright orange piece of card on the wall as a green-screen for the panel. Interestingly, the shadows cast by her hand on the orange cardboard made the colour underneath slightly different to what was being caught by the chroma key, but not different enough to not get picked up altogether. The result is that the shadow instead appears like a reflection in the panel, so I decided it was a rather happy accident, and left it as it was.