Special Effects

Has anyone put thought into the effects used in Marble Hornets? The videos shorting out were good, Except videos don't do that when they malfunction. The weird stuff was cool, but unrealistic. How did they do that? I would love to get a program like that.

Am I the only one who thinks he's a manniquin? I swear to god he belongs at JC Penny. That's why he never moves.

He moves all of the time in Marble Hornets, and I'm pretty sure it's the only series that shows Him actually running.

I'm pretty sure the Marble Hornets guys use Sony Vegas to edit their videos.
They use the Offset effect to do the little visual tearing at the bottom of the screen that's featured in the first couple entries.
Tribe Twelve uses Adobe After Effects, which is much more complicated than Vegas, but has more effects to choose from

MOD EDIT: Topics merged, and moved to appropriate subforum.

The Video Series Trailheads subforum is for discussing the events of the series, rather than the behind-the-scenes aspects of it.

whateverworks wrote:

Am I the only one who thinks he's a manniquin? I swear to god he belongs at JC Penny. That's why he never moves.

Seems to just be a very good, very patient actor to me. Yes it is possible for someone to stand THAT still, if they're good at acting.

Actually... now that I've rewatched MH and thought on it... it could be a combination, or still images composited into the clips. There's definitely an actor in-costume for some entries and appearances, probably on stilts with arm extensions. Plus some of the scenes (like the one with Jay recording at the brick things in the park) are occurring too quick between transitions for a stop-filming-to-move-Operator-dummy moment; they look like continuous filming. There may also be a dummy as well, but I think it's used for scenes where we are definitely not seeing Slendy approach anyone or otherwise enter a room. I think it depends on what is called for at the time.

BananaBrains wrote:

MOD EDIT: Topics merged, and moved to appropriate subforum.

The Video Series Trailheads subforum is for discussing the events of the series, rather than the behind-the-scenes aspects of it.

Then where would you post this? none of the other subforums seemed to fit. Sorry for putting it in the wrong place though.

whateverworks wrote:

Then where would you post this? none of the other subforums seemed to fit. Sorry for putting it in the wrong place though.

Out-of-game discussion, where I moved it to. This is the subforum for discussing things like special effects and the technical aspects of series! :]

SoulEatingBunny wrote:

I'm pretty sure the Marble Hornets guys use Sony Vegas to edit their videos.
They use the Offset effect to do the little visual tearing at the bottom of the screen that's featured in the first couple entries.
Tribe Twelve uses Adobe After Effects, which is much more complicated than Vegas, but has more effects to choose from

I use adobe after effects as well. For example, I used it in my own Slender Fan Film. It is a very nice program, by far the best out there for special effects.

Well fancy programs aren't a necessity really. When I did my own short, impromptu Slenderman found footage film, I just used a filter pack I installed into Windows Movie Maker that added like a bajillion new effects and transitions and overlays and stuff (including an Offset effect for visual tearing, scan lines, noise filters, etc.), and found clips of static noise (both video and sound) to use. I also made some of the sound effects myself in Audacity (a freeware program) and used it to edit the audio in general. There was even a clip of myself I had saying. "Maybe we should turn back" that I looped the end of, recorded it playing through my laptop's speakers (so it sounded tinny and washed out), and added some noise filters and mixed in low hums. Audacity's a great tool for sound effects and audio editing; I highly recommend it.

tl;dr - you don't need the best to have good effects or for your series to be good, but if you can get better programs, then do it.

If you're looking for a more digital look, you can experiment with various forms of datamoshing. Hopefully you're more patient than I am, because I really wasn't able to get consistent results with it, but it looks like you could really get some neat effects out of it.