What does your movie need to get that distribution deal? Total destruction? Science-Fiction effects? Greenscreen elements? Impossible stunts? Inhuman creatures?Whatever you have in mind, we can transform your biggest ideas into celluloid reality, designed to fit your budget. Plan your effects early with us in Pre-Production so you've got more money left over to market your film.

The visual effects process is a lot simpler than you might think. If you're shooting DV or High-Def, all we need from you is a Photoshop image sequence and we give you back the effects in a corresponding image sequence. If you're shooting 35mm film, all we need is a Cineon format image sequence and we give you back the effects in a corresponding image sequence. All you need to do then is have those frames output to film using any standard film-out service to get it back to 35mm negative. If you're out-of-state, that's usual for most of our clients. We can deliver the image sequences back to you right online and even show you low rez clips for your approval online too so you can confer with us from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

We are a dedicated Newtek Lightwave 3D house with creature effects animation as well as combustible visual effects that push digital and filmed entertainment over the top without pushing independent filmmakers into the poor house. Whether you are making a ten million dollar movie of the week or a DVfeature for half a million dollars, your FX budget will go a lot farther than you might expect.

Typically, we get the call when someone drops the ball. We have decades of experience working to save films from botched VFX jobs when there's little money or time left. We take pride in always finding a way to come through in record time with the job finished the way it should have been done in the first place. That's the reputation we've built in almost fifty years in the business. What we can do for you from the beginning, before a less experienced vendor ruins you, is truly remarkable. What makes us different is that we work closely with the Director to create their vision, not ours. We never lose sight of the fact that it's your film and it has to be perfect; we'll give you as many options as you want but it's always your call.

We offer sci-fi hardware design, creature design, previsualizations, composited greenscreen elements, animatics and fully rendered frames in resolutions and aspect ratios ranging from D1 NTSC to IMAX. As with all visual effects, you will always save a lot of time and money by consulting a qualified visual effects house during Pre-Production to make the most out of your project budget.

 

Every Director we've ever worked with has left with not only with the effects they originally envisioned but they also left with a better understanding of how to work even more ambitious VFX into their next movie without going broke. Once you collaborate with a VFX house before wrapping Production, the more spectacular and rich the VFX in your movies can be.

At A.I.A., we maintain a very small on-site VFX department that works an average of eighteen hours a day on VFX projects, subcontracting many of the detail assignments to a pool of freelance detailers that results in projects completed in weeks, not months, costing thousands rather than hundreds of thousands. You won't be supporting an oversized VFX crew and paying their college tuition, you will only pay for the production of effects.

We are not the cheapest VFX house in the world, we're just the most competitive with a wealth of filmmaking experience.

When you hire a CG Artist to paint in gun flashes, it's typical for someone new to compositing and animation to drop in flat, generic flashes from an After Effects plugin then charge you full professional prices for a ten dollar job. When we paint in the gun effects to make your solid rubber gun look real, we track-animate the slide of the pistol cycling; the ejection of the casing; we add radiosity to the room in addition to the muzzle flash, and; we even animate the gun smoke - that's the attention to detail that extends into everything we do to make your effects look real.

Need something as simple as comping in a knife blade to sell your stab wound effect, or need a devastating wound impossible to pull off with a practical? Have us bid your VFX job. Need a jumbo jet to come down into a packed stadium, or turn a partial practical set into an impossible city on Mars?

We will make the most out of your VFX budget. Need monsters seamlessly composited between your actors, or paint out wires to pull off an actor falling from a rooftop? A.I.A. Productions can bring that kind of power to your independent feature for a lot less than you might imagine.

Even our previsualization work looks better than many others finished effects because we build on the previz, so it has to be timed and lit right, even if there is no surfacing on the objects themselves. All we need are your plate shots. We've done minor VFX for DV at $3k, and VFX shots for 35mm features for $15k and up.

We work with what you've got, as long as you have something to work with. Everything depends on the complexity and labor, more than the actual frame count, so you may not even be aware of how far we can stretch your VFX budget.


Photoreal 3D Models created for motion picture visual effects
at our office in Tucson using Newtek's Lightwave 3D back in 2002
for various graphics arts useages under license to the government.

Last year, we did the gunfire and destruction VFX for the feature urban film "Panic In Detroit" and the gunfighting/blood VFX for "The Decoy", a very ambitious Western feature film. If you want to check us out before contracting us, we'll put you in contact with the Director's of those features so they can tell you firsthand about their total satisfaction with the quality of our work and the dedicated, professional service we offer.

To discuss your visual effects requirements or get our references from prior clients, email or telephone Gabriele Andres in Business Development at: 520.982.0520. She can get you going right now on realizing your best expectations for your independent film.

 

 

Below are some practical effects that were eventually combined with digital sweetening from our 1999 L.A. portfolio when we had to rotoscope everything by hand before using Lightwave 3D. The new technologies and techniques introduced since then make these practicals look dated.

 

© James Arnett, all rights reserved.