By which I mean, “how do you use elements as things they weren’t intended as?”
Here’s an example - ActionVFX has lots of fantastic smoke footage, but smoke doesn’t have to be “smoke.” Before the dust hits were created I’d take a smoke element, hit it with Curves to punch the contrast then use that as an alpha matte over a Fractal Noise in shades of tan to make dust.
Another example would be to take an ActionVFX explosion element into a precomp (Ae) or Composite Shot (Hitfilm) and animate the clip so the main fireball stays centered in frame (use a mask to get rid of the trailing edge). Take this into another comp, change its color, hit it with some Twirl and a heat distortion. Now it’s a spell hit or a teleport cloud or something.
Muzzle flashes can be used to simulate rocket thrusters. Just remove the blank frames, and alter the color to suit your need.
Before the ActionVFX blood mists I used to repurpose smoke puffs/dust hits to be blood. Learned that one from FreddieW back in the day (or Corridor Digital).
I can’t remember where I saw it first, it might’ve been Daniel Hashimoto (ActionMovieDad), but one of the coolest ones I’ve seen is where someone took ActionVFX Water Hits, the small scale ones for bullet hits, and comped them to look like lava bubbling up inside of a lava pit.
You can use a jet flame for a blow torch, I used that for a torture scene in an action movie once. Also, I have used the smoke for steam or breath and retimed it / mesh warped it.
I just used a torch flame element for a piece of French toast that got left on the stove on fire. I mesh warped the torch portion shape so it was flat like the bread piece. Worked great.
@ajjax44 I’d like to see the french toast shot. Just the idea made me chuckle.
Trivial note - long long ago I exec-produced a short film where our DP was the guy to shoot the breath elements for “Titanic.” He goes nameless here as he wasted much of our money insisting we shoot a 10 min short on Super-35 “for his reel” and wasted 2/3 of a shoot day setting up a jib shot that didn’t make the short (but was on his reel.)
