In the twenty five years I have been employed as a freelancer I have seen countless iterations of the latest technological wonder come and go, all of which have required re-tooling existing workflows and on-set protocols. The current role I address on set is to comprehensively incorporate a diverse number of digital camera systems and formats, as well as streamlining the technical and creative workflows for a particular project.... »
Boris RED is a very powerful compositing program. The deeper you dig into it the more you’ll find. Don’t be afraid, though. There are plenty of presets and style patterns to learn from.... »
We were hired to shoot three television commercials in one day on greenscreen. Due to the time constraints, we wanted to be able to do live greenscreen with the modeled set built in After Effects and capture all the footage seamlessly during the shoot.... »
Step 1 CREATE YOUR COMPOSITION Before you do anything else, it’s extremely important to plan out your scene. First, make sure you’re happy with the overall composition. This will give you a better idea of... »
Remember to sleep and eat when in the middle of a busy and time-consuming project! If you’re tired and struggling to solve a problem into the early hours, you are going to be even more tired and unproductive the following day.... »
There are three methods to decode Dolby Pro Logic II– encoded audio using a hardware-based workflow: with Holophone D-CODE; with an A/V receiver that has a built-in Dolby Pro Logic II... »
In this tutorial, the objective is to remove the unwanted noise without degrading the overall sound quality of the scene. Sounds that vary wildly in pitch are the most difficult to remove. Be mindful of your shooting environment and if you anticipate that a particular background noise will give you problems in post...... »
MetaCheater lets you select one or more QuickTime movies, and through a variety of settings, you can work with any number of workflows, depending on the metadata extracted. It’s a great way, for example, to work with QuickTime files associated with a RED Camera workflow, as I explained in my previous tutorial in the April issue.... »
Grass Valley recently updated the MediaEdge video distribution system to support delivery of mixed media content. Video, still graphics, scrolling text, animated Flash, and HTML can now be combined on a single display. I’ll show you how you can use MediaEdge to publish digital signage using the new Display Content Manager, or DCM.... »
This is just one easy way to create a transparent version of your company’s signature or logo for importing into a Final Cut Pro project. If you plan to use square pixel elements in your Glass Bug, simply drag or copy those elements into a non-square Photoshop document to customize them for use in your project.... »
When doing any kind of scientific or reality-based animation, it’s important to do a lot of R&D up front. We spent about two months preparing for this project before it went into production, developing techniques, pipelines, models and textures that would give us consistent "looks" during compositing.... »
This technique is a simplified play on color isolation made popular by such films as Pleasantville and Sin City. It is, nonetheless, a powerful tool to command the attention of an unsuspecting audience.... »
James Mathers talks with Mitch Gross, director or rentals at Abel Cine Tech, about three flavors of Phantom cameras, the new production and post workflows, including near-instant transfer of the footage and editing Phantom footage on Final Cut Pro, as well as the special adaptation Abel Cine Tech has made to the Phantom cameras. ... »
