The Missing Bank Card 2: The Revenge of Stephen Douglas (Video)

As you could probably tell from the film, we had a tremendous amount of fun making it. It was our first film in which we didn't feel too constricted by our lack of experience. In the past, we felt too limited by our lack of knowledge in filmmaking and special effects to really get the look and feel that we wanted.

One thing that was considerably different with this film, was the amount of time we had to work on it. I had about a month before shooting to research and prepare effects, and 3 weeks after filming to put the effects together. We collaborated primary through rendered outputs of videos through email, and the last week we gathered up all our computers and hardware and made Paul's "game" room home for several days while we ironed it out.

My most time-consuming scene, was the car-portal explosion with Douglas. I was lucky enough to acquire Video Copilot's Action Movie Essentials 2 stock footage library for the explosion video, and I created a disintegration mask over a painstakingly hand-rotoscoped, slowmotion video of Douglas (Jeff Benson) in front of the car waving his arms.

99% of the time, I can always count on Paul to change something in an effect shot, whether it's changing the colors, the order of the shots, or just plain changing it entirely. This is most certainly not a bad thing, it helps prepare me for the real world of motion graphics. There's a saying in the industry "Pimp yourself, not your work", never fall in love with your work, and it ALWAYS changes before it reaches the final product, and ALWAYS be willing to change it for whomever wants it changed, because someone else always sees something that you don't.

It was funny, the only scene that Paul didn't ask me to redo, was the M.T. fight scene. Which I was surprised, because to me that scene is the only scene that I am not too happy about, it just wasn't perfect. But since he loved it on the first take, I decided not to mess with it unless I had time (which of course I didn't).

This is (so far) my proudest film and I am very glad to have worked with everyone on it. And I hope to top this.... very soon...