Making Your Own Movie Monsters

…(or at least a reasonable facsimile.)

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

Even before the first Godzilla movie premiered in 1954, I was a fan of monster movies and special effects films produced by film masters such as Ray Harryhousen. I thought it would be fun to recreate a scene from my own imaginary monster movie and instead of the legendary Fay Wray, I drafted my wife Mary into playing the damsel in distress aka scream queen.

Mary was photographed in our kitchen posed in front of a collapsible two-sided (blue/green) Westcott Chroma-key 6×7-foot background. I could have used either side of the background for this shot but your own choice of blue or green will depend on the predominant colors in your main scene.

The two different images were combined using Digital Anarchy’s Primatte Chromakey, a Photoshop-compatible plug-in that allows you to create a composite image by removing the blue/green screen background from a photograph leaving the subject against a transparent background that can be replaced with another background, such as…

The Tyrannosaurus Rex was photographed outdoors at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal Utah. I know that Godzilla is not a T-Rex but that’s the closest I could get to a real-life monster.

The original Gojira (the film’s Japanese title) was a black and white movie so I converted the color photograph using OnOne Software’s Perfect B&W.