When you want to make an epic trailer, like the one we have been talking about for months, you need some footage of a camera flying through the mountains. It’s pretty much a requirement. For this shot we bought some nice stock footage of a camera fly-through but we wanted to add a little more evil to the countryside. So we used a 3D camera track and added a matte painting of some jagged mountains and even used particular to build a spooky evil Myst across the land. The great thing about this promo we are making is the wide variety of shots and techniques needed to finish each shot so expect some expansive tutorials and information. More to come soon!
Good news! Now that I am finished helping out with some visual effects on the new film Super 8, I’m excited to get back to all this awesome Video Copilot action!
As some of you may know, we started shooting this Crystal ball promo a couple of months ago and before I could finish, my schedule filled up with some great opportunities to work on a feature film with director J.J. Abrams. Now I didn’t want to release our promo project until it was completely done so now that I’m back, there are a few last minute effects to do and then we are going to premiere the promo sometime next week.
Until then, here is a short video with some behind-the-scenes coverage.
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Today we have a new After Effects script to help you work with shots on a large VFX project like a Commercial or a music video that has many edits. One of the nice things about doing VFX inside of AE is seeing your shots in sequence to make sure they flow together, but it can get tricky if you start adding hundreds of layers into a single composition as we all know.
A more organized solution is to Pre-Compose each shot into individual compositions and do the work inside. The Trim Compose Script helps make that job fast and easy but wait there’s more. The script automatically takes selected layers and then pre-composes each one into time accurate pre-comps, based on the length of each edit.
Benefits:
- Create edit accurate pre-comps based on final cut
- Keeps projects organized and VFX inside individual comps
- Create proxies for specific range based on the edit
- Batch process shots to work with multiple artists
- Adds frame handles automatically
This probably doesn’t make any sense, check out the video for a full demonstration.
I was experimenting with some interesting energy fields and I discovered a fun combination of effects. I used the standard fractal noise effect to create a basic turbulent map and then applied a Find Edges effect on top. I added some color correction and a glow to give it more punch and even animated the evolution settings. Feel free to play around with the fractal noise settings with the Find Edges effect applied and see what other interesting looks you can discover.
The project file is only cs5 because I don’t have CS4 on my laptop right now but I took a screen shot of the settings so that should help.