TITLE: Malignant
YOUR ROLE: Director/Lead VFX Artist
MEDIA: Visual Effects
SOFTWARE: Adobe After Effects, Adobe Stock, Garry’s Mod
DURATION: 1:18
CLASS: FMX 322
PROFESSOR: Javier Olarte
SEMESTER / TERM: FA 23
INSTITUTION: University of Tampa
DESCRIPTION: Chroma keying and green screen is a very commonly used form of visual effects in the film industry, and unsurprisingly it is something I’ve had to dabble in for my VFX class. In the case of this short film, ‘Malignant’, I turned to Adobe Stock to gather chroma key footage to use for my project after preparing the audio and soundtrack for the short first, as I wanted the footage to accompany the audio rather than the other way around. Luckily I was able to find clips that suited the dystopian idea that I wished to push, and ones of a very high quality at that. After removing their backgrounds, I used the Luminetric Color effect in After Effects to adjust the lighting of the clips to better fit the environments, which I sourced from a map via Garry’s Mod. Certain pieces of footage did require me to either scale the pieces back, like the second officer with the rifle 24 seconds into the film, or scale up the backgrounds themselves, such as the aforementioned scene or the train tunnel at 35 seconds in.