Mercury?

[AJ]

I think you should consider the CGI method, it's going to be extremely straightforward to create your 'seeping' shots in 3D using a package like Lightwave or 3D Studio Max.

Most of the main professional packages have built-in fluid and dynamics simulations, so flowing mercury can be achieved with no mess and no risk!

To illustrate, I made this quick test in eight minutes. Thats including the time it took to take the photographs for reflection maps and background image!

electric-shed.freeservers.com/test_mercury/Test_Mercury.avi

Just imagine what you could achieve if you got someone to spend a couple of days on your sequence!

John

[DAD]

Nice work AJ.

[mandor700]

I'm still not entirely sure if I have the ability to have the human interaction I want in digital.

[AJ]

That really depends on the skills of the person you get to do it for you.

Check the scene with the mirror in 'The Matrix' and you'll get an idea of the sort of thing you can pull off.

Its simply a case of planning your shots carefully and keeping things feasible.

If you get a decent animator on your team, creating a 'chrome man' in the style of T2 is really one of the easiest effects to pull off.

John

[DAD]

An easy way to do it digitally would be with a locked off camera for all the shots. You could shoot it as follows:

1 scene where the liquid oozes up in the hallway in a static shot of the hallway. doing the appearance of the ooze would be fairly straight forward for this.

2. lay down a shiny layer on the floor of foil for the guy to walk in on and slip and fall. do it in a quick cutaway, several fast angle changes, CU's and such and you should be able to get away with it.

3. once the guy is down ... keep him down. have him knocked out. now you can shoot a static shot of him on the foil background and it should be fairly easy to create the effect of the ooze rising up and closing in over his face in a CU. keep it tight and only show a little bit of what is happening and keep the camera locked off so you don't have to do any camera movement match moving. doing this in CU you could even have someone manipulating the foil to give it a rippling effect and make it look more liquid.

I'd do some simple test first before jumping into the full blown scene. But as long as you limit camera movement and keep it tight, you can cheat a lot of this.

[bizzarro]

Well, that really SUCKS! Come on guys! We had the perfect guinea pig willing to show us what TRUE mercury poisoning looks like and you talked him out of it! And you call yourselves horror fans... Dude, don't listen to them. Use the mercury. Bathe in it. I mean, sometimes you must make some sacrifices for your art, y'know. Good health IS largely overrated, don't you think? Come on, you can do it. I got faith in you! Anyone else with me on this . . .

[mandor700]

Thanx for the imput all, I'm gonna at least try to do the seeping scene digitally.

Fun Fact - "Did you know you could walk on a sea of mercury?"

[sightsunseen]

Fun Fact:
Did you know it would be your last mile?

Additional Fun Fact:
You can gargle with drain cleaner.

You can stay under water for over 30 minutes...
then someone has to fish you out.

You can use dye to color your eyes blue like in Dune.

You can superglue parts of your mouth shut to get that Matrix effect that Neo had during the interogation...

whatever.

[mandor700]

Yea but they arent nearly as fun!
Brighten up man.

[sightsunseen]

Dude...
I'm sorry if I seem a little hostile towards this BUT...

You're talking about deliberately risking injury...
no problem since it's other people right? Wrong.

This type of action makes us, horror filmmakers, ALL look bad...since nobody will remember that YOU did it,
only that an independant horror filmmaker did.

[mandor700]

Yea no worries.

Actually I take the opposate philisophy which i suppose comes from my days when we made movies in an afternoon with no budget or planning (and often even no script). I will usually risk myself injury (back in the day it was always me doing the stunts (jumping from rooves into pools, climbing clifs, you know the usual.)) but anyway yea if it endangers others I will think alot more about it before giving the go ahead, I know if its me I know exactally what I'm comfortable with and what I can and can't do so I'm willing to risk it.

But yea anyway, thanx for you guys for talking me out of it, now I've just got to think of a viable alternitive.

[DAD]

I know exactly what you are talking about. In my younger days I did all the stunts too. I even set myself on fire a few times just to 'get that shot'. LOL

I've gotten older and wiser but sometimes I think ... what the hell ... and do it again anyhow. :-)

[AJ]

We all do silly things from time to time, especially when we were younger

But in this particular case, we are not talking about risking a broken arm or black eye, we are talking about potentially ruining an actors health, not something to be taken lightly.

I'm glad you've changed your mind about this, after all, if everyone is telling you not to do something... there's usually a good reason!

And you Dad, shame on you for starting a new topic on dangerous stunts! I thiought you were such a responsible guy too...

[DAD]

WHAT? WHAT?

Hey, I was seventeen when I did it and I still did it as safe as possible under the circumstances. Anyways, it wasn't a full body blaze, just some shooting up my back. I was wearing flame retardant clothing under the stunt clothing, had a very thick skinhead wig on under a stunt wig and had several fire extinquishers and hoses around to douse me after wards. Didn't even get a single burn from it.

But it was still pretty stupid. Oh well, never again.