Category: Visual FX
The Importance of the ‘Assembly’ Edit…
Editing, editing, editing… I’m knee deep in footage. Well, I would be if I’d shot my short ‘The Very Big Problem’ on film. Instead I have a 10 minute timeline of what we call the assembly edit. It’s a rough edit of every preferred shot cut together in sequence, but not necessarily the final cut. It’s a place to work from, a place for the film to evolve from. My timeline looks pretty ugly…
It has only production audio for starters, with the noise of the on-set environment and myself calling out actions still audible. The majority of the film was shot against a dodgy greenscreen and currently no FX are in place on the pretty grainy image…
A whole bunch of sequences are yet even to be shot! These are animated elements to be done and re-shot on monitor screens and I found the need to edit the film with cue cards in place first to see what was required and how long the animated sequences needed to be before doing them, so as to not waste my own time with ill-timed footage. The beginning and ending are missing. There are no titles or credits… BUT the essence of the film is here. The skeleton in which everything gets built about is here. I can see the pacing, see the cuts from scene to scene, and I know that once the missing elements start moving into place, trims will be made and the fine-tuning will model the film into it’s final structure as I make my final decisions. It’s the beginning of the end…
I like this! My ‘One Man Did It All!’ Video Highlight of the Day…
I wish I could do this! Sure, when I make a short I do usually have my fingerprints all over it from story to script to direction and camera and editing and FX… but the standard at which Kaleb Lechowski has produced his short is genuinely brilliant, from mood and pacing to character animation and compositing. I wish I was good at everything! Enjoy Rha…
Actually… this might be my video highlight of the day!
How to build a T-Rex in 1993…
I like this! My video highlight of the day…
“Have you seen The Hobbit yet?” That’s the question most film websites have been asking. I’m not asking. I don’t want a discussion going on here, I would just hope you’ve seen it… and hoped even more that you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you haven’t seen it..? GO SEE IT and then come back here and watch how they did all those lovely FX…
Old press…
A long time ago, (right here on planet Earth) my friend Jonathan Hall and I entered a competition in Total Film magazine. It was a short film awards competition and there were a number of categories you could enter. We had had an idea brewing for a long while about a 80’s zombie action movie that would have its tongue so firmly in cheek that it hurt. But this was a feature-length idea and hardly suitable for any short film competition. However this one offered the opportunity to craft a trailer for a non-existent movie. Bingo! So we made it and entered it. You can find the trailer we made above. However, this tale doesn’t have quite the happy end you might think. We didn’t win the competition, (Noooooooo!!!!!) but we did get a name-check in Total Film (Awesome!!!)! It was very odd, picking up the magazine in the newsagent, strolling through the pages only to find your name in print. Now, we didn’t win the competition, but what we did do is write the full-length feature screenplay, currently being touted. See? Not quite the ending we thought when entering the competition, but a more productive one. Why do I bring this up now? Well… I happened to stumble (okay, I searched for it in case it was archived online) and found a scan of that very page we were mentioned on. It just brought a smile. Check it out here…
I like this! My sci-fi video highlight of the day…
Well, I like this. It’s kinda difficult to explain. The video’s description by the film-maker can’t really put it all into words. But it’s weird, interesting and has got great production values so that’s good enough for me. Dive in without any idea and see what you think…
After FX CS6 and why I want it… but currently can’t.
After FX is a staple in my workflow. I use it with every video I produce, and usually do my final renders out of it. It’s such a versatile tool and I reckon I know all of about 5% of what the program can do, but that’s still quite a bit! I’m currently using the CS4 edition as I’m only on a 32bit system and can’t upgrade any further as CS5 and above are only made for 64bit systems. I know by this time I should really be working on a mac, but despite my PC’s tendency to freeze up on me all the damn time, it’s still a quick machine and otherwise works great, if a little bit slow. CS4 has served me well and once AE went 64bit I kinda stopped watching demo’s on all the cool updates for it as I didn’t want to know what I was missing. Stupid! Just watching the embed below makes me resigned to the fact that I HAVE to upgrade to CS6. Everything I need for my workflow now really is in one place (I’m looking at you, rolling shutter fix and 3D scene tracking!). Better start saving up…
One-Line Review: CLOUD ATLAS
I really, really, really wish I could tell you about this film, but an NDA says that I can’t… which is a shame, because I really, really want to tell you about it!
N.B. I’ll come back to this one when it gets its full theatrical release in October or November
More on the awesome Doug Trumball…
This is getting weird! I start talking about Doug Trumball on my blog and low and behold they start talking about him over at Aintitcool! Now this is a bit of a follow up to some degree on my post 24fps vs 48fps, where I talked briefly about Doug Trumball’s showscan technique. Well this little video touches on some of the things brought up in the previously embedded video from Aintitcool, except here we get to delight in some of Trumball’s work on 2001 (the movie that made me want to make movies… more on that in a later blog) and other interesting little tidbits…
I got such fondness for the man, much as Harry Knowles seems to…
I like this! My video highlight of the day…
Sometimes it’s the simplest effects that please me the most. I’m currently in pre-production on my new short and developing a bunch of visual FX for use in the film (mainly graphics work) and whilst scouring t’interweb for interesting FX videos I came across this…
It’s quite a simple effect but as with the best effects… it’s ‘effective’… ha ha!…sigh. I like the closing shot with the beat of music, its a nice touch to expand on what is already shown to suggest you can take what you have created and use it for any number of environments or ideas. Cool.
willdirectformoney 