This is going to be a brief article...
Work continues fixing various bits and pieces of effects shots that (as I've said here before) "have always bothered me." There are about a dozen shots left to finish at this point, and the work is being done by Peter Andrew Montgomery and myself.
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| Progression of steps used by Peter Andrew Montgomery for a new optical effect (described below) |
Peter Andrew Montgomery explains his process:
"Tech stuff in post for John Ellis movie Twilight of the Dogs that I'm finishing up effects enhancements for. I took the original shot, reduced contrast to obtain a jet black background. I then tinted the subject green, and added colour balance, pulling red and blue to zero and boosting yet more green. After this. I added another contrast and flattened the green in the image. I now have a green subject on pure black. Now to add an inversion turning the image negative before setting to green only, this flipped the matte to a black subject and green background. After render, I took this plate and placed it on top of the original contrast reduced image of the subject, applied Keylight and removed the green screen signal, cropped the black matte and feathered. This left an outline of the woman, that outline was then blurred and turned blue in tone and leveled up to be brighter. That layer was then further rendered and placed with a super imposition back onto the woman. I finally added a light burst to create the beam effect and a further turbulent displacement to cause the beams to move. That's basically the image in non motion on black, for the composite onto the stars, the black matte with green keyed out is placed onto the back-plate image of space, and finally the woman superimposed on top of that before parenting the matte layer to her before motion was applied. John wanted a chemical look for this so no light wrap. The black rope was matted using a garbage matte of another black layer".
Here's some more examples of Peter's exceptional work:
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| Frame of the original effect from 1995 |
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| Peter Andrew Montgomery's new VFX |
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| New optical effect by Peter Andrew Montgomery |
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| New optical effect by Peter Andrew Montgomery |
Matte Paintings by Ron Miller:
Famed astronomical artist Ron Miller has been involved with Twilight Of The Dogs from the beginning, for which I am forever grateful. He did a few key matte paintings for us back in 1994, and recently did another we needed for half a dozen spider shots.
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| The burnt brush in the background is a new replacement matte painting for 'Twilight' by Ron Miller. |
Ron Miller's new painting was composited into multiple shots by Peter Andrew Montgomery. The miniature set,
spider model and stop-motion animation are by Kent Burton.
Here's a matte painting created for 'Twilight' by Ron Miller in 1994:
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| Matte painting of disused nuclear weapons facility from Twilight Of The Dogs by Ron Miller |
I recently discovered several snapshots I took of Ron working on this paintings:
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| Ron Miller working on matte painting of disused nuclear weapons facility for Twilight Of The Dogs |
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| Matte painting for Twilight Of The Dogs by Ron Miller in 1995 |
1995 Animation cels for 'Twilight'
In 1995 I animated several dozen optical effects shot for Twilight of the Dogs, consisting of hundreds of animation cels. They were painted black by assistants Laura Barltrop and Elizabeth Heyd, who also cut black construction paper to cover the rest of the cels, leaving clear areas for the light to pass through
I finally found ALL of the cels, which solved a number of problems, where I wanted to re-do some of those shots. The following pictures show a little of what's involved:
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| Under-lit animation cels created in 1995 |
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| Ellis' under-lit setup to re-photograph the animation cels in 2022, using a light-box and cell-phone. |
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| Unfinished test frame, one of the shots being re-done by me today |
There's a lot more to talk about BUT we don't want to give EVERYTHING away before 'Twilight' is released late this spring, but this is just a small part of all the work being done. Over the next few months will share processes we had to deal with in 1995, and NEW technology we've been using to update the film today, as well as MORE articles and news clips from when the film was in production in the '90s.
I've been re-posting a lot of the incredible media coverage we got at the time for the film. It was unusual (in the Washington DC area) to have a full-blown homegrown science fiction action adventure picture made there, shot on film with stunts, weapons, trained animals, explosions, and a lot of special effects, including car sized black widow spiders!
That's all for now, so see you again in two weeks!
John Ellis
Hollywood, California
-30-
#twilightdogs #longlostfilm
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