Turn up your speakers and get ready for the 'Payment Plan'. Sam Loya is back again with an epic performance in super wide-screen.

Some people try to qualify their work by saying things like, "we only had $500 to make this" or "The cops came and we only had half the time to shoot".

Well this film had a budget of 80 MILLION dollars and 6 years of filming. It was shot in 3D and we converted it to 2D so it could be watched on a normal monitor.

The goal however, was to make it look like it was shot in one evening...

Watch Short Film Now

Earlier this month I mentioned this short film we created to demonstrate an effect for an upcoming tutorial... Well that film will be online later today.

There has been a lot of interesting guesses about what the effect will be... we'll find out together. Be ready. It may just be the worst thing you have ever seen!!

Optical Flares 1.2 will be launching soon, this update features several new improvements including Full Screen mode and adjustable panels and windows. We're just going through some more testing and it will be available soon. I know it's taking a little longer than expected but the new features are nice.

This free update is for all versions including 32-bit and added support for AE CS5 in 64-bit.

See Full Screen Snap

UPDATE: Twitch ZIP file updated. Thanks.

Alright! So many of you have upgraded to After Effects CS5 for all the 64-bit amazingness and so we have been working to update our 32-bit plug-ins to work with the new version. Of course we will continue to develop and support the our 32-bit plug-ins as well.

Here is what you need to know for VC Tools:

All of our Stock Footage, Music and Sound FX products like Action Essentials II & Pro Scores are already compatible with AE CS5, there is no update required. The free video Copilot Presets will also work in CS5 as well.

For our paid plug-ins such as Optical Flares, Twitch, as well as our free tools, Sure Target and VC reflect, After Effects CS5 requires a 64-bit version to work.

Here is the download information:

VC Reflect 64-bit

Sure Target 2 64-bit

Twitch 1.1 64-bit (Requires email address, re-use your current license)

Optical Flares 64-bit:

While working on the 64-bit update for Optical Flares, we ran into a small hitch that was going to change the way pop-out windows would behave on OS X. So we decided move forward on a new feature that would solve this problem and give people with larger screens more space.

Basically the Optical flares update will now launch in Full-Screen mode, with resizeable control windows to take advantage of more screen space for editing and browsing presets. This update will be available for 64-bit and current 32-bit customers at no charge.

We apologize for the delay and we expect this to be available next week.

We are currently in post production on a short film, purposely created to demonstrate an effect for an upcoming tutorial. Please stay tuned for the film premiere as well as exciting behind the scenes action.

What is this mystery effect? You'll have to wait and see.