CGI. This is not exactly a newsflash, but CGI has revolutionized the art of filmmaking. I am not just talking about Avatar, Lord of the Rings, and high tech, effects driven movies. Even on a character driven movie like The Prankster we had 51 effects shots which greatly improved the quality of the movie and/or saved us money. Allow me to explain.

Even though we were working on a low budget, we knew we were going to need some effects shots – for example, the big Kokopelli fireworks display at the end. We were very fortunate to be put in touch with Tony Hudson, an FX wizard with many years of experience in the industry. Not only did he give us an extremely reasonable bid for the FX work we had been contemplating, but suggested numerous other shots.

But, you ask, if you were on a tight budget, how could you afford more FX shots? Well, it boiled down to this – to shoot some of the scenes practically would have taken more time, and thus cost us more money, than doing them CGI. That’s right, adding FX shots to shortcut some difficult production shots saved us money.

Some examples – and hopefully you’ve at least seen the trailer that’s on this site. The shot of Tres Rios High School (building with Roman colmuns) is actually San Rafael High School. Tony Hudson digitally replaced “San Rafael” with “Tres Rios” on the building’s signage, and voila, mission accomplished without having to climb up there, mask the sign, paint over “San Rafael”, shoot it, and remove it later. Sidebar – I went to San Rafael High School and when I wrote The Prankster, I was envisioning SRHS, because that was my personal frame of reference. I never imagined that we would shoot the movie at my old high school, but in a marvelous display of synchronicity, that’s the way it worked out.

Other examples – at the end of the movie the Dean is stalked by Dick Hertz’s model airplane, a la Cary Grant in North by Northwest. To do this practically would have been a nightmare. But with very convincing CGI, Tony Hudson added the plane buzzing the Dean. Similarly, we have a shot where the light stansions go berserk, a la the end of The Natural. Again, an absolutely impossible shot to create practically, but something that could be done economically in CGI.

There were many other instances where CGI allowed us to create a shortcut or solve a problem. We used the Sausalito Cruising Club barge for our location for “Nick’s Burgers By the Bay”.  Tony was able to add signage to the roof of the barge to “sell” it as a bona fide restaurant. Also, in serveral shots, there were small signs in the background which read “Sausalito Cruising Club.” Oops. But, no problem, Tony replaced those with smaller “Nick’s Burgers By The Bay” signs.

Another wonderful “save” was in the opening assembly scene. Despite the valiant efforts of our extras coordinator, we were only able to garner approximately 75 extras for the scene, and we needed a shot that showed a full gym. Tony, who was on the scene and anticipated the situation, had us lock down the camera and shoot several different takes, moving our 75 extras to different places in the gym. Later, he composited the images and, voila (deja vu all over again!), we had a shot showing a marvelously full gym. I cannot overstate how important this shot was to the movie. Coming at the very beginning, we wanted to sell the scene, and the movie, as something with high production value. The CGI FX shot allowed that to happen.

In addition, we had a couple of “pyro” shots (sparks, etc.) that we tried to do practically (speakers blowing up, connecting cables) that just didn’t look good. Tony and CGI came to the rescue again.  The point?  CGI is cool?  Well, it is that, but more importantly, any and all filmmakers, even you character driven types (bless your souls) should add the option of CGI FX to your filmmaker toolbox. It helps you make movies better and cheaper. The ultimate beneficiary is the audience, who is given a higher quality moviegoing experience.  You gotta love that.