How did we make Pirate Titanic? With the most simple of equipment. Listed below is what we used to bring the Pirates to life:
- Camera - An old JVC VHS Camcorder. My mom bought this sometime around 1989 or so. It has a 1/4 second animation feature (which is how we filmed all of our animated movies). The camera is on its last leg; it no longer runs on battery, and the zoom in/out runs very slowly....but the animation works, and that's all we needed. The credits were compiled with an old, yet sufficient super-imposing feature of the camera.
- Editing - The 'primative', yet efficient linear editing technique. Titanic was filmed straight through, with no need to piece shots together. At 1/4 a second shots, you have to know what you are shooting and what is up next. So we filmed it in its entirety. We used 2 4-head VCRs, one to play and one to record, and we used a sound board for music and voice dub-overs. Pretty simple.
Okay, fine...but exactly how did we get the ship to sink into the Living Room floor??? We purchased carpet (which is where the bulk of the $57 budget comes from) and used a table with a removable center leaf. We placed the carpet on the table (leaf removed), and cut a hole wide enough to place the sinking ship in. Voila. A sinking ship. Enjoy some of the 'making of' pics below:
- Filming complete! (39k) - Scott Lorah, Christina Humphries, and myself at end of filming.
- Creating the sinking (36k) - Scott Lorah and myself, setting up the carpet to make the Pirate Titanic sink.
- Another sinking shot (30k) Using Christina's table with the center leaf removed, we could cut the carpet and let the ship rest in the hole. Everywhere around the ship still appeared solid.
- Camera trickery (29k) Filming the infamous Pirate falling, hitting the railing, and flipping into the water. Rather than elevate the ship for this, we kept it level and just raised the carpet! Note the Highlighted cirle - that is the falling Pirate.
- Going down with the ship (19k) - We had to film the scene where the Captain dies. This is after the carpet has crashed through the windows.
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