Secret World Film Stills
presented by Anthony Torres
starring January Parker-Leclair
Shot, Edited, & Effected by Anthony Team Torres

ABOUT THESE IMAGES...

These stills represent a storyboard for the 4 minute Secret World video.
You can click on each frame to see a higher res version of the image.
They are in sequence, 5 to 10 seconds apart.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Secret World is a homage to Belgian Surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
It is a non-narrative, silent film representing a sleep state and regeneration.

Though 4 minutes long, it represents 3 years of visual research on
Rene Magritte, Surrealism, Origin of Cinema, Animation, Visual Effects,
Trick Cinematography, Matte Painting, Dark Room Photography and
Photo Compositions with negatives, as well as digital effects and
software, including Photoshop, After Effects, Commotion, and Elastic Reality.
A long time for a little film. And this doesn't include all the DVD Bonus Features
viewed to further understand HOW people are using the tools.

I stayed in the 2-D world as 3-D is beyond my comprehension. Rene
Magritte's paintings fascinate and influence many noted visual artists.
His work is simply composites and juxtapositions therein. The simplicity
is what leads to the shock and fascination.

(Jerry Uelsmann is probably better represented in Secret World than
Rene Magritte. I told myself "No Uelsmann,"
and didn't refer to any of his work while shooting and editing. What can
you do? His influence is there. Still, Uelsmann credits and refers to Magritte in his photography,
so I guess Uelsmann is fair game for a homage to Magritte, though his work
definitely stands alone and I enjoy his images.)

Despite an extensive catalog of visual materials and numerous false starts,
the movie ultimately dictates itself in the editing stage. I began research in
2002, actually earlier, but serious research began in 2002. 2003 & 2004
I continued research. In May 2005 I contacted January Parker-Leclair and she
agreed to be in the movie. We shot for one day on June 25, 2005. Probably six
hours, total. Including lunch. Then it was 2 months of editing materials, then
looking at various nature and aquatic video I had shot over the prior years.
Mixing and matching in Final Cut, which is good for starting yet horrible for finishing.

The funny thing was in August 2005 I reviewed the Secret World proposal from 2002.
I wound up making that movie, despite writing various drafts and treatments and
forgetting what I started with. It's a lesson. Keep the plan close so you don't have to
keep improvising and seeking out inspiration.

Alas, the lessons of Secret World were applied to new works like Barrio Boys.
With little stress of the "how," I can now focus on "what and why."
The work itself is labor intensive, yet animation
goes faster when you know the techniques and shortcuts and are confident
that the methods are the most efficient for the task at hand.

MAKING OF...

In researching Secret World, I made the observation that the origin of
cinema is tied to "trick films" and fantasy worlds. Those were the pioneers of
early cinema, and quite frankly what have kept cinema alive.

Alas, the Blockbuster mentality of Hollywood with bigger and better digital
effects has made its way downstream. The high end tools pioneered for
Star Wars are readily available today. ILM - the company that provides the
visual effects for

The images are full motion layers composited together. All layers of imagery were shot by myself,
surprisingly using single chip consumer miniDV cameras. January was photographed
with my friend Skylar's 3 chip Canon GL-1 camera.

Compositing with stills is easier, as you only have to cut out one image and then
animate that object.
I went ahead with full motion video, which requires 15 to 30 frames per second
of image extraction using rotoscoping, mattes, masks, and even digital painting
of the alpha matte.

I did not want to simply animate stills (which is frankly an easier technique.)
No, I did it the hard way, as the purpose of the project was to learn how to
apply higher end visual effects techniques to a visual homage to Rene Magritte.

The software used was Final Cut Pro 3 to import, edit, and rough draft the composites.
After Effects 5.5 & 6.0 were used for fine tuning the composites. Final Cut has horrible
color keyers and no way to manipulate the alphas. So I went to After Effects for that.
Then I used Commotion 2.0 for rotoscoping, which I then exported as a 8 bit greyscale matte.
I think I bought Commotion 4.1 at the tail end,
but I understand Commotion 2.0 better... Turns out a lot of big time places use the earlier version
of Commotion simply for it's simplicity and efficiency. I thought I would use Elastic Reality, but
decided against it as that would draw too much attention to itself.



For further info, please visit
http://www.myspace.com/secretworldfilm

BARRIO BOYS | BARRIO VIDEO | TEAM TORRES

This project funded in part by a Professional Development Grant with support from United Arts of Central Florida