Scene 11: Main character encased in water. He's in peace, no panic, with his eyes closed in the position of a monk meditating. Water passing all around him.
Bought a huge tub of clear hair gell for this scene, I imagined actually submerging the puppet in a clear container filled with the gell but my editing skills have developed since first picturing filming this scene and i'm now thinking of masking the character into a shot of the hair gell in premier.
First I made a thin rectangular container out of 2 A3 plastic sheets by sealing them together at the sides with acetate:
sealed the plastic sheets to a cardboard base with a hot glue gun to prevent any gell leakage:
Then began to fill with the clear hair gell:
Once all the gell was in it became clear that the space was too big; I didn't have time to order any more plastic sheets and i was wearing of cutting the ones i had down to size as others had warned of it cracking, so I split the space in half with a standard metal ruler:
Still too much space really but i found once the camera was zoomed in It gained the effect I was after, results:
So I had this idea to use a cocktail stick to gently influence the gell to make it look like moving water in Dragon Frame.
Again screwed myself over with the sizing as the casing was too tall for a single cocktail stick to reach the bottom.
After fashioning many failed poking devices (kept snapping from the force of the gell):
I managed to make one that worked! 3 cocktail sticks bound together with thread:
Started experimenting with influencing the water with different movements with the poking devise:
Was also browsing the free content on Adobe Stock and came across some underwater footage which could make the job a lot easier, i fear it will lose authenticity but I thought I might as well see what it looks like and compare the two methods, heres' the original footage:
Turned it black and white and overlapped it with the footage of the gell:
I think that worked quite well but I don't like the idea of using the Adobe Stock footage however without it I feel like there are too many bubbles, kind of looks like a stary night rather than under water.
A big issue is that with every swipe of the cocktail stick more and more bubbles are created that cant really be removed. While I figured this out I noticed a tub of hand sanitiser on the side and figured, hey, that might dilute the gell and allow more negative space between the bubbles, so I poured it in and gave it a go:
Really happy with the results, it's got a lot more fluidity now. As I moved it around some sort of reaction was happening between the sanitiser and hair gell, some of the liquid lost its clarity but I actually think it adds to the underwater effect:
Really love this still, thinking of making a movie poster with it:
edited in the puppet:
prefer him to be a little smaller:
Really happy with the outcome, but I feel like the bottom left corner is a little too rigid, decided to shoot some more footage of the sanitiser without the gell:
Overlapped the last footage with the one that had the gell in as well which created much more depth within the water:
Also decided to add in an extra scene as it felt a little wrong to end it with him under water, not sure why.
I thought it would finish it up nicely if I could reinforce the idea that it was all a dream, so I quickly animated him opening his eyes in bed which I think works quite nicely and brings it to a nice finish while reminding the viewers that it was a dream all along.
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