Destrukto Ray

Finished the Destrukto 2050 Deluxe ray beam penetration bit of the Big Party scene. This 10 second section of the film took 4 days to edit! I created a glowing red orange circle in Illustrator and then imported it to Final Cut and made it pulse and sized it to the frames of DV. This wasn't easy as the camera was zooming into the window area where the party goers are looking. The shot was a jerky hand held deal so I had to find a reference point in the frame and try to keep the circle in that area, simultaneously making it larger as the camera zoomed in. Whew. When it was done the circle looked to "animation like," so I added a copy of the DV footage on the top layer of the edit, set at a 30 percent opacity level. This gave the effect that the red circle was behind the window glass. I then added a color diffuser to make the circle glow more- kinda like the moon does on a foggy night. I mean- what the hell would a giant ray beam shot at the earth from 33 light years away look like?