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eerietomOne of my all-time favorite films is Master of the Flying Guillotine (dir. Jimmy Wang Yu, 1976). It is usually the one I choose to show someone when they tell me they've never seen an old school martial arts film before. The plot (spoiler warning!) centers around the titular character, a blind martial artist armed with a “flying guillotine”, a sort of beekeper hat / buzzsaw combination with which he can decapitate people. He is seeking revenge for the death of two of his students at the hand of The One-Armed Boxer. His quest leads him to a martial arts competition, and eventually, into mortal combat with the Boxer. One reason I like this very guilty pleasure of a film is it shows off a variety of kung fu styles, like snake, monkey, and eagle. The movie also features some pretty outlandish styles (wait until you see the fighter from India). It's a lot of fun and the theme music for the Master, German band Neu!’s track “Super 16”, kicks major ass.
After my success with converting Evil Under the Sun, I wanted to try again with another movie I had seen several times. One major difference between Evil and Guillotine is the former is mostly dialogue—perfect for audio effects like delay—whereas the latter has a lot of fighting sound effects which can get muddy if delayed is not applied just right. Visually, I didn’t want to use the posterize effect again; it's an interesting effect, but once you've seen it, the novelty wears off quickly.
By chance, at a recent MeetUp event, one of the participants was telling me about mantis shrimps, which have unusual and complex eyes, capable of seeing wavelengths beyond the visible light we humans can see. I wondered, what would it be like to be able to see infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, or even radio waves? After much experimentation, I found it was difficult to convey these with my video editor. However, I did manage to come up with several unusual effects, such as a scene where everything looks outlined in neon lighting. As I did in Evil, I used delayed overlays to create a strange sort of déjà vu effect, but this time I added chroma key to remove random colors to create glitchy, fragmented imagery.
Audio-wise, I mostly repeated the tricks I used in Evil, such as delay, reverb, and distortion. One new audio effect I tried this time was auto-tune, set to its most extreme settings.
The result was even trippier than I imagined! It was like some really weird anime or video game from the 90s. The auto-tune effect also worked well. This is most noticeable when the tournament referee introduces the fighters who will battle over a sandpit full of knives. I wish I had guessed how startling this effect would turn out; I would've used it in a scene with more dialogue.
Here are some clips from the video. WARNING! This video contains graphic violence, swastika imagery (used in the film as a Buddhist symbol), and flickering, disorienting visual and audio effects.
Playback issues? Watch directly at archive.org.
After my success with converting Evil Under the Sun, I wanted to try again with another movie I had seen several times. One major difference between Evil and Guillotine is the former is mostly dialogue—perfect for audio effects like delay—whereas the latter has a lot of fighting sound effects which can get muddy if delayed is not applied just right. Visually, I didn’t want to use the posterize effect again; it's an interesting effect, but once you've seen it, the novelty wears off quickly.
By chance, at a recent MeetUp event, one of the participants was telling me about mantis shrimps, which have unusual and complex eyes, capable of seeing wavelengths beyond the visible light we humans can see. I wondered, what would it be like to be able to see infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, or even radio waves? After much experimentation, I found it was difficult to convey these with my video editor. However, I did manage to come up with several unusual effects, such as a scene where everything looks outlined in neon lighting. As I did in Evil, I used delayed overlays to create a strange sort of déjà vu effect, but this time I added chroma key to remove random colors to create glitchy, fragmented imagery.
Audio-wise, I mostly repeated the tricks I used in Evil, such as delay, reverb, and distortion. One new audio effect I tried this time was auto-tune, set to its most extreme settings.
The result was even trippier than I imagined! It was like some really weird anime or video game from the 90s. The auto-tune effect also worked well. This is most noticeable when the tournament referee introduces the fighters who will battle over a sandpit full of knives. I wish I had guessed how startling this effect would turn out; I would've used it in a scene with more dialogue.
Here are some clips from the video. WARNING! This video contains graphic violence, swastika imagery (used in the film as a Buddhist symbol), and flickering, disorienting visual and audio effects.
Playback issues? Watch directly at archive.org.
