The Making Of "Knife Juggling Accident"

The Knife Juggling Accident

Well this was not only our first sketch of the revitalised Bubblegummonsters, but also our first of 2015. For those who haven't seen it, here it is again.

You've Been Maimed

In the UK there has been a long running video clip show called "You've Been Framed" (YBF) where viewers send in their home video howlers, quite often involving clips of someone getting hurt. One of the funniest things about these clips of someone getting hurt is the canned laughter which follows the incident. Well this is like a red rag to a bull where Bubblegummonsters are concerned and we took this to the next level... well an extreme version of it.

We always try and create a character or theme for our sketches and "You've Been Maimed" is a series we would like to do more of, which is a great opportunity for you to send us your suggestions. The character we created for this series of sketches is actually behind the camera, as with YBF has the canned laughter, our sketches has the laughter of the cameraman who finds these extreme accidents really amusing. 

How did we do it?

Well the sketch takes place indoors, however this wasn't where we originally shot it. Our first shoot of the sketch was filmed outdoors on our Panasonic AF-100, however went it came to post production we found that due to the harsh shadows, (created by the surprisingly glorious evening), we found tracking a real challenge. Using our new Panasonic GH-4 (4K DSLR) not only did we have more information for the tracking software, it was a great excuse to put it through it's paces, however, as we don't yet have ND (Neutral Density) filters for it and because we needed more control over the lighting we opted to re-shoot the sketch indoors. For more information on ND filters follow this link >> Click Here << which is a great article written by Carey Duffy. 

As with all our videos which involve CG effects we use what is known as HDR (High Dynamic Range) which is really useful when lighting the CG scene/animation. This video actually has two separate CG scenes, the first being the knife juggling, the second was the knife embedded into the head.

HDR Ball

For some detailed information on HDR follow this link >> Click Here<<

The Knife Accident

Normally, we would simply (we say simply... the theory is simple but a hell of a lot of work goes into it) have a model of the subjects head and track the CG knife on to it, however in this instance and due to time constraints we didn't have an accurate model of the head and found that tracking the knife accurately was again proving to be a real challenge. After some research we came across a really useful app from Autodesk  called 123D, (available on both Android and I-Phones) which allows you to generate 3D images from photographs.

We took a series of photos of Stuart's head and imported the 3D generated image into Z-Brush where some further alterations were made to perfect the model. 

This allowed us to have a reasonably solid reference point for the embedded knife to track against as Stuart turns around to reveal the knife stuck in his head. Previous attempts had resulted in the knife appearing as if it was floating off the head and didn't move with the subject in the way which appeared realistic enough for us to pull off the sketch.

Peter Comments

We have filmed a commentary where Peter comments on some of the challenges we faced and goes into some more detail which will be released on www.youtube.com/bubblegummonsters later today.

We would love to read your comments or receive constructive criticism on our videos and blogs. You can get in touch with us through our YouTube channel, twitter or this blog.

Until the next time, thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!