This morning I received this message in reference to our special effects in Last Day and I decided to post my response here for all to see and use:

I want to know how you guys did the light saber and Tron frisbee effects. I stumbled upon the video today at my desk. That video had all my favorite movie and show memories in it. What is up with the zombie thing are they still accepting videos? I love what you guys do.

We used Adobe After Effects for all our effects, we got detailed info on how to do a lightsaber effect from theforce.net:

The Tron effect I made from scratch. First, I made two different discs from frisbee images I got from the internet:

Above: Two different png images of the Tron Disc (Downloads: Image 1, Image 2)

Then I covered the frisbee or area where the disc should be and tracked the trajectory/position of the disc (helpful hint: make the image semi-transparent for tracking purposes and then make it opaque when you’re done). The image layer should be a 3D layer, but if you can’t make it 3D you can scale the disc to show perspective.

Above: Before and After

Here’s what layers you should see in your composition (frisbee not necessary, but it helps to control your hand movements when using the frisbee to block a strike):

Video track 3/4 – Copy of Video of Rudy throwing frisbee (with a mask to show his hand/hands on top of the disc)
Video track 2 – Animated image of Tron disc
Video track 1 – Video of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 1 – Audio of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 2 – Sound effect of disc (I used a lightsaber sound )

This gives a decent effect, but I went one step further by doing this:

I selected only the layer of the disc (Video track 2) making the rest of the screen transparent and saved it as its own file (we’ll call this TronDisc.avi). Then I imported TronDisc.avi into Adobe After Effects and added it as a layer in the composition I was working on before in the place of the original animated image:

Video track 3/4 – Copy of Video of Rudy throwing frisbee (with a mask to show his hand/hands on top of the disc)
Video track 2 – TronDisc.avi
Video track 1 – Video of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 1 – Audio of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 2 – Sound effect of disc

And lastly, I used the “echo” effect on Video track 2. Badda bing, badda boom.

Here’s some unused video footage of a Tiki Bar TV episode (Son of the Internet) I originally made this special effect for (no audio, just 4 short clips):

QuickTime Version

N.B.: The red disc in the above video was simply made by changing the hue of the blue disc to red in After Effects.

As for Node 666, yes we are still accepting videos… it’s now a subscribeable video blog at Node666.org.

- Casey