thenimbus-deactivated20200907 answered:

1. I made all the fortune cookie fortunes myself.



2. The songs used to create the Hellgaze ambiance in order of appearance are:

The Drifters - Under the Boardwalk

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

Pendulum - Tarantula

Porcupine Tree - Blackest Eyes

Jumanji Drums



3. Many of the effects I created came out of spontaneity. I randomly filmed a leaf caught on a spider web spinning because it looked interesting, had an idea, and added in an iris in post.



4. The entire bit with the giant spider was conceived during filming of the looping entrance sequence. I noticed in a hole in the trees, a single orb weaver spider suspended. I zoomed in on it and noticed how clear it all was. I realized that I could stabilize the spider’s motion, track the motion of the branches, and then add the spider back in with an increased size. From there I found a free crawling animation of a spider and warped it’s legs to match the giant orb weaver so it looks like it goes from rest to crawling down.



5. The spider’s name is Mongo.



6. All of Mongo’s screechy spider sounds are modulated mouth sounds made by me sucking air through my lips and teeth.



7. The sound of Mongo running on the boardwalk was just me tapping my fingernails along a wooden floor, pitched down and slowed.



8. The process in After Effects in which I make an element look like it’s part of the world is usually:

- Track the motion of the base footage and apply the tracking data to a null object

- Drag in an element and position and crop it accordingly

- Attach the element to the null object so that it moves with the base footage

- Tint the element to the white and dark levels of its surroundings

- Turn on motion blur

- Make a copy of the base footage, then make a pre-comp contaning the element, the null object, and the duplicate base footage (this duplicate is solely for referance if I need to edit something inside the pre-comp and is turned off for the final effect)

- Apply match grain to the pre-comp, the grain source being the base footage



9. Future Noah’s hair is a cheapo wig I got from a wholesale Chinese site, but the beard is real. I grew it for a month or two to achieve that ruggedness.



10. Future Noah’s voice is 3 layers; one pitched up, one pitched down, and one unmodified.



11. My ARG master and buddy Stringweaver piloted the camera and filmed as present Noah from the point where the camera turns to meet Future Noah, to the point where Noah trips and falls on the DIE box.



12. Filming Future Noah’s bits, and every shot at the boardwalk really, was super hard because the infrared night vision is very picky when it comes to lighting. If it’s too dark, you can only see a few feet in front of you due to the limitations of the camera’s infrared light and if its too bright everything just gets completely washed out. There was only a good 30 minutes of perfect light before sundown to get all the shots needed.



13. The bag of mystery meat was just some candied yams and chicken bones. I had a hard time not gagging when putting that stuff in my mouth.



14. The bit where I showed the gash in my hand is not a practical effect, it is completely digital. I put two Xs on my palm, tracked them, and attached a scar to my palm with some stock video of blood oozing. In addition to the process listed above in #8, I put in a lighting effect to mimic the infrared light beam passing over the palm that truly made it all look real.



15. I actually rolled an 8 on my first take and had to edit it so that it appears as if I almost landed on it.



16. Upon finishing editing, I realized that there were several instances where Future Noah’s left hand is clearly visible without the scar. I had neglected putting a physical scar prop on my hand before filming as well as forgot to add the tracking Xs on my palm. I initially felt it was beyond me to do anything about this, but the Kubrick in me would not stand for this glaring continuity error, so I painstakingly went back into as many shots as I could where my left palm was visible and meticulously tracked my pinky and thumb frame by frame to add the scar onto my hand so that if you pause the video at any point where my hand was out a dark scar would be visible.