But it's not easy
Unless you have some major bank to afford time at the Skywalker Ranch near San Francisco and if you can afford Linda Evangelista's fee-PER HOUR.Then you can't have a great FI,but if you play your cards right,you can come up with your own Femme Invisible for far less.
First of all,the talent...it's best that you get amateur or intermediate models for the venture. It has been stated that a model wants to be seen at all times and to do a FI,she would vigoursly want for her face to be seen.The Model has to been someone who is willing to take a chance and a shot at doing something adventerous and that's the key. If you have the model who thinks that she wants to be seen at all times,it will wreck what you are trying to accomplish.A Bay Area photographer has assembled a page with links to several modeling forums where you can post what you are looking for within reason. The serious caveat would be that if you post anything in these forums,be prepared to be "spammed" by those offering links to adult web sites.
Care and Feeding Of The Model
Okay,unless her fees are what you pay for rent in one month,it's best that the model should know what finances are involved in this. If you are a student filmmaker,the payment should be modest ($25-50 dollars per session,dinner and a copy of the tape,the rate may increase depending on where the model is from and if she has to drive or come out to where you are located by plane or etc.).If you are a cable access producer or a b-movie guy,the fee should be negotiated depending on budget and expenses.If the model is coming in from elsewhere,it would be prudent to put her up in your house for the night-saves a lot on the expenses.Unless she has family in the area
To get a model
The best thing to do is NOT deal with a major modeling or talent agency.What should be done is to run a classified notice in a college newspaper. Pick the best day when the readers will read the paper.There may be students who do model and may want to do this on the side.It also helps that you should run an audition notice in a weekly alternative newspaper.When posting these,it should be stated that the model should have some acting experience or none. The best thing to do to prove that you are legit and are not out to make a porno movie is to meet with them at a neutral place and show them a copy of the work you have done.This way,she will feel very confident about you and it says to her that you are not out to do a skin flick.
How I Got My Own femme invisibles
The way how I got my own set of models to do invisible stuff wasn't easy.In fact,I had quite a bit of rejections before finding the special talents out that who had fun at it and loved it. When I first moved out to Pittsburgh about 7 years ago,I was taking music-video courses at the Art Insituite Of Pittsburgh. I had to come up with something for a school project.I remember being enthralled by the teleflick "The Invisible Woman" and wanted to try something like that for a project. I had a primitive conecpt for it back home in Ohio,but it never got off the ground.I was able to do it in Pittsburgh because there was a local access channel that had the capability-for a public access channel. Well,a roommate's friend got me in touch with a model from Pittsburgh and we basically started the whole conecpt off. From there after,what i would do is to run ads in free papers looking for models.I gotten some good and some bad results. Now,what I do is to run postings on the net looking for models and I have had the better talent come in for these,which is a good thing.
The Bluescreen
This is the main way how this is done for TV work and in some video
based films. The 1983 remake of The Invisible Woman was shot on videotape
in comparison to the 1940 version,which was done on film. Basically the bluescreen
involves the use of Blue as the key color.The model or talent is wearing blue
clothing,which is usually formfitting and in some cases is all one shade of blue.
The talent is situated against a blue wall in the studio.The talent wears regular
clothing over the blue.Now when you work with blue as the fading color,it is best that
you have that person wear bright clothing that doesn't have any elements of blue,white
or black.The best colors to use are reds,yellows and greens. The blue overall is completely
out in the studio and is replaced with another scene.The result is that the person is made
invisible and the only things seen are what that person wears.here's another example
Film EFX
This type of effect is basically the same as video based magic,but in some cases black or blue can be used to "erase" the person from the scene.In the Invisible Kid,Chynna Phillips becomes invisible in a few scenes.As you can see in the above picture,they made her fade out and used film based effects to do that,even though they may have had a handler help her out with some of the effects on there.
In another scene from the film,when Karen Black tries out the invisible potion and vanishes,they had her wear a stocking mask over her head and hands.They also added a wig,false eyelashes and glasses as well,which meant that she didn't have to don a full blue bodysuit for the effect.
note: these two effects can either look well polished in some cases or they can look like it was a rush-job. The Man Who Wasn't There and to a lesser extent,The Invisible Kid have a rush job feel to the effects. Here's another example...
Then again,it's helpful if you can get access to a community access studio or your college's production facility to do these...and they don't require a ton of money to do these effects.
More Professional Links
If what I tried to xplain was a little too vague for you,then maybe these links can give you sure information on how Bluescreening works.
This site has good info on how Bluescreen works
Ultimatte a very key part of the bluescreen process has info here and there
There is also another "how to" page here on how Blue/Green Screen works.
Go here for how I do the bluescreen shots and what's needed...
Coming Soon will be info on how to make a FI out of UV light and other cheaper ways too...
Invisible Links
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dennard summers
femmes-invisible@earthling.net
p.o. box 10210
pittsburgh, pa 15232
United States