The official trailer for Captain Golden Years.

This is the big reveal of the robot, and easily my favorite shot to create. First, Raymond, our lead, was filmed on a green screen, and then I filmed a clean plate. The robot was modeled and animated in Cinema 4D, using the raw footage as a reference for lighting and staging the composition. It was then rendered out as a PNG sequence. In After Effects, the green screen was keyed out, and the robot was sandwiched in between Raymond’s layer and the clean plate. Add some artificial camera shake, and some color correction, and we have our final shot. Check out the full breakdown of the robot model HERE!

This was another really fun shot to make, because I got to go way over the top with it. This was made in After Effects, and is essentially just a bunch of layers. There’s several layers of particle effects, each with their own tweaks in the direction and thickness of the particles. There’s also a few solid color layers that are overlaid to give the illusion that the beam is giving off light. The heated metal on the cane was created by tracking a few solid layers to a little sticker on the cane, and then masking the solid layers so it wouldn’t extend beyond the edge of the cane.

I created a fictitious senior daycare center for the film, and created pamphlets to use as props while filming. To go along with the pamphlets, I needed to create a sign in front of a building to match. This was made in After Effects, and essentially just required a lot of masking and blurring to make the text fit. Masking around the handicap sign was easy, since it’s just a square. Masking Raymond’s head, however, was a different story. All I can say is, it’s a good thing I like what I do.

Remember how I said I like what I do? This shot really made me question that. So, on set, I didn’t think to turn the TV on to give myself something to track in After Effects. This made tracking the shot impossible to automate, so I needed to track this shot that was shifting in perspective while exiting the frame by hand. The video that was tracked to the TV was overlayed, which made the glares on the screen come through from the original shot. So there was at least a plus side to leaving the TV off while filming, I guess?