FEATURE: Epitaph: Bread and Salt Feature film

Another thing that helps A LOT on these things. Since the particles are essentially emitting light, I'd create a copy of the EXACT effect going on and use it to create some flickering on the face a bit as it goes by. It sells it as being a part of the scene.

Little things I have picked up.
 
Because of the way the image was lit the left side was too dark so we couldn't really lighten it. (Actually we could've, via a cut and paste trick, just didn't want to go through the trouble for this particular test). I just wanted to see could I do what I believed I could now that I have everything up and running. I haven't used AE in some time so I want to run some test. Next I want to do a great looking, but not too complex vampire/demon dusting and some other things.

-Nate
 
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Epitaph: Bread and Salt 2nd F/X Test

Having some fun with After Effects. This is our second F/X Test. Hope you enjoy it. Sorry about the low rez background, but I just wanted to see how the dimensional burst travel effect would look. In this clip, apparently I've run into a doppelganger in a dark alley and try to run, but the dop has burst travel.

-Nate

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Dude that looks fantastic! You can do all this with after effects? I really need to learn some of this in post. Can you reccomend any good tutorials? The sound effect really punches home also.
 
Ditto what El Director said. I use the Videocopilot tutorials, the rest I figure out. Like that effect for the burst jump was something I put together once I figured out the AE system. That background is from Video Copilot. That's the famous explosion alley from their tutorial. It's SD but it worked for this as I couldn't find my other photos plus they were daytime shots.

AE is a lot like Photoshop. Once you figure out what everything does for yourself and you can retain all that info, then you can do some cool stuff. I had to relearn the stop watch animation process, as well as learn motion tracking and particle effects and the motion tracking gave me heck, but it turned out to be really simple. And it's the sound that really sells this effect. You can get those from Sounddogs for free.

-Nate
 
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Thanks you both for the info! I checked out video co pilot and wow! I especially like the tutorial that shows the white eye sockets as thats something i am willing to learn rather then buy contacts for everyone. Lets see some more tests!!!
 
Epitaph: Basic Vampire Dusting Test
This is long awaited dusting test effects for our film "Epitaph". I wanted to shoot some special footage but it didn't work out. So, We used a clip of Sam Loya from Videocopilot.net. The effects were done in After Effects but we slowed it down in FCP because it looked better and people could see the effect more. BTW I befriended Sam on Facebook so I know he saw this. LOL.

-Nate

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We used the particle world and a transition or two (or three). I'd been working on this effect for a few days until it came to me how it could work. This was pretty easy compared to Andrew Krammer's. But I would like to pop some smoke and fire in there and have it burn through. I think it would look real good.

-Nate
 
That's what I'm thinking. I'm hoping to get Action Essentials soon. I want to add some of those elements. Friday we're going to do our second fight practice. I'll post the first one but the sound sucks because it was a windy day and they were mowing the grass around us. I may use the shotgun mic next time.

-Nate
 
Friday we had our first fight practice. I just went through the basics. Sorry about the sound but
we didn't use a shotgun mic and everything from wind to giant lawnmowers made noise. LOL. I'll upload
the 2nd half later.

-Nate



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Thanks. Actually, I just finished working with the script last week. I got it to everyone Saturday night. Everyone gets to see their roles now. It going to be a lot of fun and the cast seems to be a great group. This will be my first special effects film so I'm interested in how that's going to work out.

I can say this, my G4 is a workhorse, but the G5 just chews through After Effects. The speed increase is very noticeable. If this It what it's like working on a G5 I can't wait to do AE CS3 on an Intel. But my workflow is stable an working real nice. As we know the G5 won't transcode MT2 files in iMovie or FCP. I do it in Toast and it's relatively quick. I do a bunch of clips at once, pop them into FCP as AIC files (I also have to save the audio as 48khz and change it from ACC) and there's no rendering. Everything cuts clean. It's just like editing DV, but higher quality.

-Nate
 
Said hi to Sam Loya on Facebook today for all of a minute. LOL. Another practice is coming up Friday and a rehearsal this weekend. I'm going to show them some military styles. The Fist of God uses Krav (her character is Israeli), and street fighting. Sastu uses a series military close combat strikes and blocks (hand techniques and kicks) plus his vampire bullet dodge skills. We'll be doing some gun and knife work. Tomorrow it's back to getting in shape for the film. I'm in the process of also coming up with a style of fighting for the vampire extras based on lunging, slashing and stabbing (with their claws) and basic strikes and punches. It will be martial arts based, but won't look like martial arts.

-Nate
 
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I can't wait until I can cut HD without having to do the offline thing. It took me about 4 hours today to bring all my offlines online for the render. Maybe if I'm good, Santa will bring me a new computer =D
Good luck with your next practice man!
 
Yikes! Honestly it really doesn't matter. You're going to wait one way or the other when dealing with this ultra compressed stuff. Either you'll be waiting to transcode, waiting to render or any other number of things. Like I said before, the best camera in terms of workflow is the JVC HM100/HM700. You set the camera to shoot at your desired format, pop the footage into your Mac or PC's NLE and edit. No waiting. But then you have to wait for the final output, because it takes longer than it does with DV. My last film took 10 hours to render. I can only imagine this one will take a day or possible more to render on the G5. Then you have to deal with a massive 100 - 200 gig file. LOL.

-Nate
 
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