The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap

Chapter 4. Effects

The DV Rebel must be a visual effects artist. Maybe you won’t ever work in the visual effects industry the way I did, and maybe you will not single-handedly execute all the effects work in your own film, but you will need to achieve a comfort level with visual effects. This is because, like Robert Rodriguez, you will be your own visual effects supervisor—the person who designs, plans, and oversees the effects. No one but you will have a complete enough picture of your film to realize all the ways that effects can enhance your production value and save money. Like Rodriguez, it will be up to you to come up with the brilliant plan of building only half a set and simply flopping half your shots to make it look like a massive cockpit ...