Alan Edward Bell started as an editor in the film industry some 17 years ago. His visual effects career grew out of his extensive editing background. Alan explains: “I began as an apprentice editor and then worked my way up to be a first assistant, and then, eventually as a full fledge editor. I mainly work as an editor cutting feature films. My visual effects career grew out of that editing. So far, I’ve managed to do both jobs and still s
To me, visual effects are just another tool to help with the story telling. I started to dabble with doing some of my own effects while I was cutting the feature film ‘ Bait ‘ for Antoine Fuqua. This particular director had some very big ideas about visual effects and did a lot of green screen shots. It was clear to me that my first cut was going to have tons of unfinished elements that would detract the viewer from the story. I knew about Adobe After Effects and what it could do, so I convinced the head of post-production to buy a copy and get a system for the editing room. I then gave my assistant the AE manual and told him he had a week to learn it. Well, he didn’t master it in a week, but he did a darn good job….. He did all these temp effects and they looked pretty good, but they were all still in video resolution. We made kinescopes of the shots for the screening for the studio. That screening went so well that I ended up with a bit of explaining to do when the studio realized that the effects were all temp ! ”
Alan continues: “It was about that time that I started thinking: Why bother with temp effects ? Next time I’ll do the real thing ! By the end of the film we did about 8 film rez effects on a G3 using After Effects because the studio wouldn’t pay for our effects house to do them. They were stupid shots anyway: Lens flares, Flashes and ridiculous things like tazer lightning. Over time, I also acquired a basic knowledge of AE from some personal video projects that I had done. ”
From that basic background, Alan then aquired Discreet Combustion about a year ago for his Mac, to be ready for film resolution work. “I was doing some work on ‘ Alex and Emma ‘ for Rob Reiner and I had to do some tracking. The AE tracker isn’t very good. I heard that the Combusiton tracker was very good so I gave it a try and I’ve been hooked ever since. There are some many things that Combustion does better than AE in my opinion that I rarely even open AE anymore. ”
Alan says that the Combustion features that he likes and uses most are: “the Combustion LUTS (Look-Up-Tables,) which make a huge difference in my work flow for film work. I don’t have to worry about converting my cineon files from log to linear before I work on them. What I see on my monitor is pretty much what I get on film , all with very little fuss on my part. Also, the paint tools allow me to do clean up work rapidly and in an intuitive way. Overall, the whole Combustion interface is designed to make my working less ‘ messy. ‘ I spend no time looking for palettes and dragging windows around, and all of my time being creative.”
Alan has shared two clips from recent projects that show his use of Combustion:
The first clip, entitled “Death Hand” is a 2K job that required delicate paint, roto and matte work. Alan explains: “The director wanted the hand to look black and mummified but the studio didn’t want to spend very much money, which is always the case. The sand falling between the fingers and over the sides was the tricky part: I basically just made mattes for every twig and sand flow. There are about 58 masks in the whole effect. I used the tracker where I could to track the mask to their respective objects and the hand,and then roto-scoped everything else. In the end, they were very happy with the shot. It took me about three days to finish it.
Here is a Before and After of that shot:
Deathhand (Quicktime)
The second clip is DV footage for a kids show. Alan comments: ” WallRats is a documentary that I’ve been doing in my spare time with some friends. The whole show is based around taking these two young kids up El Capitan,which is a three day climb. The director and I wanted the show fun for kids, so we pulled out all the stops and went crazy with the effects. The cool thing about working with DV is that it is so immediate. I put that effect together in under an hour. I just took a digital image of my toilet and used it to copy in paint.
Here is another short clip:
Wallrats (Quicktime)
Alan summarizes ” The basic fact is that I am anything BUT an artist — For example, for the WallRats clip, I couldn’t even draw a toilet ! This is why I prefer to call myself a ‘visual effects craftsperson.’ Most of my work is what I call ‘ traditional optical effects ‘ – I tend to do such typical things as crowd replacement, dissolves, supers, wipes, wire removal, repositions, painting, color correcting and compositing, scratch removal. So, 3D is just not my area. I just don’t have the time or skills to go down that road. In my mind, the people who create things from nothing — those are the true artists of our industry. ”
When it comes to films, Alan also has a rather interesting background as a member of the unique film group simply called ‘ DirectorUnknown. ‘Created over five years ago, “DirectorUnknown” works simply as a film collective, where each member gets to produce, write and direct their own films, as well as act as talent and crew for each other. Each production has but two days to shoot and completely finish their short film, which are typically done every other month. Alan has created over eight different short films, all shot and edited on DV. Alan comments: “What is special about ‘ Directorunknown ‘ is simply that no one ever takes credit for their work. This makes it all an extremely collaborative process, and not about who did what as much, as it is about just getting out and trying new things, all in a new way.” Examples of their past work can be found on-line at their website – http://www.DirectorUnknown.com/ but today, the group has opted to hold a screening every year in a large local theater as opposed to posting their work on-line.
Visit Alan E. Bells website at www.alanbell.com to view more clips and samples of his work.
FXGuide & Jack Pfeiffer would like to thank Alan E. Bell for taking the time from his busy schedule to share his story with us.
