Special effects - being hit by a train

shnaek

I am making a short film, and one scene requires someone to be hit by a train. I'd rather not risk an actors life, so I was wondering would I be able to use 'shake' or 'motion' to come up with the special effect, or would ye have better suggestions?
Cheers for the help.

monkeyfudge

Unless you really know what you are doing or if you're spending big money on it... then it's going to look terrible.

I'd suggest cutting the film to imply what has happened... if the viewer has to use their imagination to fill in the gaps it can be far more effective.

Just look at the ear cutting scene in Resevoir Dogs for example.

Lump

I agree with the above sentiment. When I was in college we did a similar effect, it looked ok but not the best, Basically a pane of glass slide out of a van and cut somone open, we ddi the action in reverse (IE the glass came out of the guy and slid into the van) Then in the edit we reversed it and sped it up. As I say looked ok, but not great, also it'd be harder to do with a train

John

shnaek

Thanks for that, guys. I appreciate it. I had been thinking myself that it may be more effective to imply the accident and concentrate on faces and reactions. Though the shooting in reverse idea is also a decent one.

pizza

hey there.im a makeup artist.iwould suggest taking into consideration
special effects in that aspect.before the victam gets mashed by the train
he/she is goin to look shocked when they realise they are mince meat in a
few seconds.after they get hit you could get lots of meat,fake blood and
some bone like substance and splatter it around the area.you could make
pretty ugly seen out it man.

hope dats some help to ya.

RuggieBear

could you not do a sliding cut or something like that....bit like how they did the bus hitting the girl scene in final destination.

I'm no film maker so i don't really know the what or the how of it.

moonboy

can you put the shot into context?
is it a funny film? serious film? whats the framing youd like?

Miguel_Sanchez

Are you just going to film a train that's running as normal or do you actually have use of the train so to speak? Can you get it from different angles as it approaches etc. etc.?

shnaek

We subbed a truck for the train - getting a train was just too much hassle, and after talking to some heads who had worked with trains before they told us working with trains is very time consuming.

humanji

I'd have to agree with the cutting away from the impact idea. Unless you have big bucks to plow into sfx (and not many shorts do), it's just going to look rubbish. I'm in the same boat as yourself in that I need a girl to be hit by a car and unfortuantely the impact is the climax of the film so I can't cut away from it.

Dustaz

If your desperate to actually show it, you could try doing shooting a static shot in 2 passes.

Shoot your train/truck passing normally as a background plate and then without moving the camera shoot your victim being pulled violently forward with a harness. Then comp the two together in a compositing program. It wont look perfect but it might do the trick if you really want to show it rather than imply it.

shnaek

Dustaz wrote:

If your desperate to actually show it, you could try doing shooting a static shot in 2 passes.

Shoot your train/truck passing normally as a background plate and then without moving the camera shoot your victim being pulled violently forward with a harness. Then comp the two together in a compositing program. It wont look perfect but it might do the trick if you really want to show it rather than imply it.

That's an interesting suggestion. I'll look into that. Cheers.