Red giant’s vfx short
Seth Worley reveals how Red Giant shot their action-packed short film, Go Bag
VFX and shooting advice for filmmakers
A luggage mix up leads to an unwitting spy facing the toughest day of her life in Go Bag, the latest project from Red Giant. Matching tight direction with ingenious in- house visual effects, this short cleverly balances humour and action while constantly escalating the drama . “One day my Dad jokingly texted me an idea for a TV show he’d thought up, in which Jack Bauer and Constable Bob engage in an in-depth conversation about their ‘go bags’,” explains Seth Worley, who both wrote and directed the studio’s eighth film. “But after reading it I realised I had never seen a movie or show actually titled ‘Go Bag,’ which was kind of absurd to me,” he adds. This lead to the idea of a spy escaping danger using normal items like a laptop, socks and a shaving kit. With the threats including fireballs and gun-mounted helicopters, Seth quickly ran into a few obstacles. “Before Go Bag, I’d never been able to properly execute an on-screen explosion,” he says. “Explosion and fire comps are insanely hard to do right and insanely easy to do wrong,” he explains.
Fortunately Seth had just finished directing Real Gone with Ryan Connolly for Film Riot, which involved a lot of digital pyrotechnics. “I learned a lot through trial and error on that, which gave me a huge head start in approaching the big explosion at the end of Go Bag,” he says. “It ended up being made up of stock explosions from several different sources, blending them with the helicopter using a world position pass in Element 3D.”
Shot entirely in a parking garage in Downtown Nashville, Go Bag also involved a lot of car stunts that required careful planning. With the help of motion graphics designer Harry Frank, the line between performance and effects became seamless. “On this one, he used Mocha to erase the safety rigs from every shot of Rabbit (the protagonist) on the hood of the car,” adds Seth.
One shot in particular, where Rabbit has to turn and jump onto a car, involved special attention. “We shot her turning and jumping onto a crash pad, then repeated the shot but removed the actress and had the SUV drive through frame,” Seth reveals. “I was able to merge the shots in After Effects using Roto Brush and the Puppet tool to create what I believe is one of the coolest moments in the film.”
When asked if there was one effect he was particularly proud of in Go Bag, Seth singles out the sequence where Rabbit appears to lie underneath an SUV and manually push it down a
ramp. “We shot the car and the actress separately, putting the actress on a small crashpad tied to a rope that [ stunt coordinator] Jeff Ailshie used to drag her across the parking lot,” Seth explains. “She looked and felt utterly ridiculous, but she was a total pro and committed 200 per cent to the performance. In post, I was able to roto and composite her under the car, and I still get a kick out of how awesome it looks.”
Plug in and play
Red Giant also develop motion graphics software plug-ins, which Seth used to help create Go Bag. “I used [organic 3D particle effects generator] Trapcode Particular throughout the film, especially in the helicopter sequence to add the embers and sparks that are coming off the torch in the gas tank.”
Territory Studio used the company’s Trapcode Suite when working on Go Bag’s end titles. “They imported .objs into Trapcode Form to create the wireframe/point cloud models that scroll through the sequence, and by using Form they were able to animate the entire thing within After Effects,”
I used Trapcode Particular throughout the film, especially in the helicopter sequence to add the embers and sparks
Seth reveals. “They also used Trapcode Tao rather inventively to create transitional elements.”
It’s this unique combination of plugins and films that keep Seth creatively satisfied. “Honestly this job wouldn’t be half as fulfilling if I only set out to do things I knew how to do.” Explore Red Giant’s films and software by visiting www.redgiant.com