Rob,

If you read about the guys who made "405," they're both visual effects artists. Ryan W.'s stuff is cool, but I had some trouble trying to watch the other kid's work. None of the videos wanted to load.

I'm not trashing the technology. Plenty of Hollywood productions have used After Effects. What I was trying to say is that the majority of filmmakers are not visual effects artists. There's always going to be the execeptions, but the average filmmaker who writes a script, grabs a mini dv camera, shoots a movie, and then throws it on the computer to edit it most likely isn't going to create convincing effects. I feel that effects on the computer are best left to people who specialize in them. That's my opinion. I just don't want to come off as trying to bash technology and effects programs, because that was never my intention.

As far as OUATIM goes, I went back and again watched the ten minute flick school, the tour of troublemaker studios, inside knb fx, and listened to the commentary for the chruch shootout scene. Unless a special edition came out with different features, never once was there a mention of After Effects. I'm not saying it wasn't used, just that I didn't hear it mentioned. He did however, talk about adding a bullet wound with Photoshop. What I noticed is that he often says "I referenced the shot so we can go back and add it in post." "We" being a special effects team. In the tour of troublemaker studios, he shows how he communicates with the effects house over the internet. He also shows some of the visual effects artists at work. If you watch the credits you'll notice there was quite a few people working on the effects. Rodriguez is definitely inspiring, but he also uses a team of professionals to do a professional job.

I think special effects is best when it is seamless, so by my definition it is not possible to point to such a film.