As editors, we will run into situations or projects where footage we need to tell a comprehensive story isn’t always available. Knowing that, we have the option to go online and search for footage shot by others to help us tell our stories. That’s where stock footage comes in. However, finding the best place to purchase stock footage can be a tireless effort. I’m here to provide some info on reliable sites which I’ve used in my career to help me fill in gaps in my projects.

ArtBeats (www.artbeats.com)
One of the oldest and most respected sites for stock media, Artbeats sells a variety collections to accommodate any project. Footage from their site has been used by every major broadcast network on the planet. They offer footage in SD, HD, Stereo 3D and 4K. The formats of the clips tend to be Photo JPEG but if you want any 2K-4K media, you have the option to get an R3D file. They are the most renowned site for stock media and also the most expensive. If you want to use clips from them, make sure your client’s budget can withstand it. They provide excellent previews and training tips on how to integrate their footage into your projects as well as the option to create bins to group specific clips. Membership is required if you want to partake in purchasing their footage.

Unlimited Stock Media (www.unlimitedstockmedia.com)
Another site that’s been around for some time is Unlimited Stock Media. They sell stock media based on an access plan. For $49, you have 24 hour access to unlimited downloads from the USM library. For $197, you get 30 day access to unlimited downloads from the USM library. These clips are shot by the highly talented staff of USM and they provide these plans with client budgets in mind. You can browse the entire library at once or by collection. One of the best features is that whatever clips you download within that time period are yours to keep and use for business or personal use even after your subscription period expires. The footage from USM comes in the Photo JPEG format and has a frame rate of 29.97 unless otherwise specified.

Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com)
One of the newer sites I’ve used for stock footage, Shutterstock has been selling stock footage since 2006. Known for their affordable stock image library, they offer customers stock footage based on a subscription plan or on a per clip basis. Their footage is available in multiple formats such as DVCAM, HDCAM, Betacam and more. If you are purchasing a clip online from them, you can get a clip that is web friendly, SD quality or HD Photo Jpeg at various frame rates. As of today, Shutterstock has over 1 million royalty free stock footage clips.

Overall, these are just a few of the sites I’ve used for my stock footage needs but they are not the only ones out there. Below is a list of few other respected sites that I rely on from time to time for stock footage as well.

Digital Juice (VideoTraxx)
Videohive.net
FreeStockFootage.com
TimeTrapVideo.com (Slow Motion Videos)

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

Digital compositor, Diego Galtieri, was kind enough to answer some basic questions surrounding the role of a digital compositor. Diego talks about what the role of a digital compositor is, what type of programs and processes he uses as a digital compositor, and how to get a job in the industry.

Diego currently is employed by Stargate Studios and has worked on television shows such as AMC’s The Walking Dead, Heroes, and most recently Doctor Who. With nearing a decade in the business you can review his whole body of work on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB). One of Diego’s most notable contributions to the compositing world is the iconic scene in the very first episode AMC’s The Walking Dead showing an aerial shot of the protagonist (the Sheriff played by Andrew Lincoln) trapped in a military tank while a swarm of zombies overtake the city streets.

In creating a final image the process included multiple set extensions along with layering in numerous digital zombies to really bulk up the numbers. When a scene calls for a high volume of people, in this case zombies, it is not always in the budget to get all those actors on set, in make up, fed, and organized. That is where visual effects comes in and blends together live action with digital footage seamlessly saving time, money, and headaches.

The process from filmmaking to post production in this instance would look something more like this: The raw footage is shot on set with the actors while a VFX supervisor guides the process on where to place green screens and leave negative space for his VFX artists to work. A digital matte painter would then go in and key out the green screen in the image and create set extensions and matte paintings to create the atmosphere and look the director was going for. Motion capture artists would bring in actors to act out the motions they require in order to create a digital zombie form, along with taking numerous stills of zombies already on set in full make up and prosthetics. From there a 3D artist would compile the data and still images and create his wire frame model of the zombie and utilize the motion capture data collected to bring it to life.

It is at this point a digital compositor would receive the files from both the digital matte painter and 3D artist and begin to layer in all the extensions and 3D mo-cap models on top of the original raw footage creating one final seamless and realistic looking image — THAT is what a digital compositor does. He composites. He is the one who works with a post production team taking in all the various visual effects from all the various types of artists saved in all the various types of file formats, looks at it all like a puzzle, and begins to piece it all together. Once the digital compositor assembles the final image, it then goes off for color correcting and for sound mastering before the scene is considered finished.

Post production and VFX is such a time labored and artistic field that works so unbelievably hard to convince you, the viewer, that what you are watching is “real,” or at the very least, visually compelling.

This is Garrett Fallin with AudioMicro telling you that no matter what life throws at you that you can always “fix it in post.”

One of the things I love about Photoshop is how deep and flexible it is. The industry standard image editing software has the ability to do a multitude of things that just listing them wouldn’t do the software justice. Photoshop is a valuable part of my post production workflow. One of the things I enjoy creating in this application more than anything are mattes. Using the shape tool, I have the ability to create unique shaped mattes which I can then use in my editing software of choice. Below is a tutorial I did 2 years ago for using mattes from Photoshop to create a diagonal split screen effect.

I’m going to quickly show you how to create a matte in Photoshop from a shape you can use in your editing software.

Matte Creation

One of the first things I tend to do when creating a matte is use the paint bucket tool and make my first layer black. When dealing with alpha and luminance, black represents the area that is transparent while white represents the area that is opaque.

Next, I will use the shape tool and go through my available shapes. By default, Photoshop has a plethora of shapes you can use. You have options such as the rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, line and custom shape. If you want to add more shapes to your collection, you can download some from Deviant Art - some are free and others you can get for a reasonable price.

I’ll use the custom shape tool and choose a chevron shape. I’ll make sure that it is white. It can be any color but black or grey, as those would cause transparency to happen which we want to avoid.

I’ll create multiple instances of this shape so that it stretches the length of my composition.

Now we can save this composition for use in our editing software. When you want to save items like this from Photoshop, you can go about it a few ways. You can of course save it as a .psd file and it will import fine into your editing software. This tends to be of higher quality and will help you maintain access to your layers and have more import options.

You can also save it as a .jpeg, .png, .tiff or any other image format. When you save it in an image format, this will merge your layers into one image,unless you save it as a .tiff, which supports layers. Since I want to use this as one image in my editing software, I will save it as an image format.

If I heard over to my editing software, I can import the image into my project panel.

Now if I perform the method of using a matte filter (for Premiere and Media Composer) or matte blending mode (for Final Cut Pro) I can place my video inside the matte and create a cool composite.

Matte creation in Photoshop is a valuable technique to know as Photoshop tends to be more flexible in image manipulation/creation than your editing software may be.

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

There are times when we are shooting green screen footage and we don’t have any idea what type of background to use for them. Well I’m here to provide you with some resources for places you can purchase virtual sets for your next green screen edit.

Animated Shoulder Sets (Digital Juice)

One of the newest products of the DJ family is this collection of virtual sets. Designed for green screen news talent, these sets come with creative backgrounds, over the shoulder screens and transitions. With options available for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas and Final Cut Pro/Motion you have your choice of using these sets across PC and Mac. The best part about these sets is you can either purchase the entire collection for $99 or individual sets for $25. Currently, Digital Juice has released two sets of this collection with newer sets on the horizon.

Virtual Set Backgrounds (Footage Firm)

Footage Firm is a site which has sold royalty free video assets for the last 10 years to numerous broadcast stations and has a great offering of virtual sets if you purchase from their DVD collection. With these sets, you have a greater variety of news style sets which also come with transparent video screens. They have sets which accommodate breaking news, entertainment, sports and more. Using one of these sets is a simple process of layering it underneath your green screen footage. You’ll be up and running in no time with these virtual sets.

Virtual Reality Sets (Tube Tape)

Tube Tape sells a variety of products to the budget filmmaker to bring their imagination to life. With the Tube Tape collection of virtual sets, you can mimic a news room, lecture hall, court room, conference room or concert. These sets come in the PNG file format at 1920 x 1080. The best thing about these sets is they come in pieces. This gives the user great flexibility to accommodate how they shoot their talent. These sets are typically $79.95 each but Tube Tape is running a 50% off deal where you can purchase them individually for $39.98 or in a bundle for $99.99.

Virtual Sets (Virtual Set Backgrounds)

Virtual Set Backgrounds specializes in selling customers digital backdrops for video production. They offer over 100 virtual sets to choose from and are compatible with a variety of editing and compositing software. One distinct feature these sets tend to have is that their monitors either come in green screen or have luma mattes which can be used with a keying filter to place footage inside of. The price range of these sets varies from $49-$135. VSB offers tutorials with various editing software to help the user get up and running quickly.

These are just four of the resources you can check out if you ever need a virtual set for your client. You can always create one yourself but if time is of the essence, you’ll fair much better by investing in one of these resources. The ease of use each company provides will make a seasoned editor look like a superstar.

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

Adobe made the announcement at Adobe MAX – the Creativity Conference, on May 6th 2013 that they will no longer be making any new editions to the Creative Suite (CS) line up. Instead, moving forward they will be putting all of their attention in the Creative Cloud (CC). But what does that mean to you, the consumer? Outlined below are different categories which highlights everything you need to prepare yourself for its launch this June.

Topics to be covered:

• What is Adobe Creative Cloud?
• How much does it cost?
• What new features does it offer?

What is Adobe Creative Cloud?

Adobe Creative Cloud has everything you have come to love from Adobe software – Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and more – now using the cloud. This allows you to keep everything in your creative world in sync from your files, to fonts, settings, and updates all across multiple devices. You also gain access to Behance, the world’s leading creative community, where you can post, share, and connect with like minded creators around the globe.

To clarify, Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) is not new. CC was released with Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) back in 2012. The sudden stir about CC is because during Adobe MAX 2013 conference it was announced that moving forward Adobe will no longer be releasing any new version of CS and will now only be focusing on their CC service. As such, with CC utilizing cloud based technology Adobe will no longer be selling a boxed version of their software and instead will be moving towards an online monthly subscription system. By doing so this will allow Adobe to innovate, update, and develop their software programs much quicker and seamlessly offer it to their subscription users.

How much does it cost?

By signing up for CC, you will be able to access all of their programs for $49.99 a month (about $600 a year) with an annual commitment. Previous Adobe product owners (CS3 or later) will get a 40% savings for the first year and be charged $29.99 a month (about $360 a year) for an annual commitment. Students and Teachers have a 60% discount paying $19.99 a month (about $240 a year) with an annual commitment and proof of institutional affiliation. Alternatively, if you only require the use of a single Adobe program, or just looking to try something new, instead of utilizing the whole collection, individual programs run $19.99 a month – no annual commitment required. If you’re nervous about jumping into the creative cloud and want to try everything out to see if it fits your workflow, no fear, there is a free 30 day trial offered as well. For additional pricing for larger creative teams and companies I recommend checking out Adobe’s pricing page for more information.

What new features does it offer?

Adobe CC offers everything you are already used to using with your regular Adobe programs – and more:

• Photography: A new addition that everyone is looking towards is the new camera shake reduction ability becoming available with Photoshop CC. What that means is you now have the ability to save those blurry pictures you took. What happens is it analyzes the general path of motion and then compensates and corrects the issue. You even have the ability to choose where you want to be in focus and leave the rest of the image still blurred out.

• Video Editing: Rotoscoping just got a little easier – and let’s face it – rotoscoping is no walk in the park, and anything that can make the job easier is warmly welcomed. For those of you who are already aware of Photoshop’s ‘Refine Edge’ tool, it now can be applied to moving images in After Effects CC.

• Design: Amazing new tools like the Kuler app for smart phones will allow you to use images to extract color swatches that can be imported and used with your designs. Type is now easier to edit as each character performs like its own object and can be scaled, rotated, and resized like any other object.

• Web: The internet is everywhere, and more and more today we are finding and using it on devices other than a computer – smart phones and tablets are on the rise and not going away anytime soon. Dreamweaver CC now offers a fluid grid layout that allows you to adjust your designs on the fly in order to fit the size requirements of alternate devices utilizing CSS3 and HTLM5 coding.

• Promotion: Need to reach the top creators and show them your best work? Why not let them find you? With the CC workflow you can now upload your work to Behance, the leading professional social network. Creators from all over the globe will be able to review, critique, and connect with your work by viewing your online portfolio – all easily managed by Adobe CC.

These are just a few of the hundreds of new features available on Adobe CC. If you would like to be one of the many creators to join the Creative Cloud experience, you can sign up today on the Adobe website and keep current with all new features and announcements.

From sword-fighting skeletons, to dinosaurs attacking, to giant bugs slithering, all the way to spacecrafts exploring the vast sea of outer space, Ray Harryhausen, was nothing short of a pioneer in the field of special and visual effects. If you are unfamiliar with Ray’s work, take a moment and watch his animated creature list, presented in chronological order.

The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation on Facebook reported his death on Tuesday May 7th 2013, in London, at the age of 92. Ray’s work inspired so many of the greats in filmmaking over the years, and the foundation goes on to show some of the most remarkable tributes paid to him:

 “Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry. The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much.” “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS”

~ George Lucas.

 “THE LORD OF THE RINGS is my ‘Ray Harryhausen movie’. Without his life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made – not by me at least”

~ Peter Jackson

 “What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits.”

~ Terry Gilliam.

 ”Ray, your inspiration goes with us forever.”

~ Steven Spielberg

 ”I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant. If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are.”

~ James Cameron

First inspired when he saw King Kong (1933) as a 13-year-old, Ray Harryhausen, became obsessed and found his life long passion pushing the boundaries of film effects and stop-motion animation. His most popular film with iconic sword wielding skeletons Jason and the Argonauts (1963), took over three months to film as he worked alone on his projects and would often shoot no more than 13 frames of film per day (13 frames being roughly half a second).

Stop-motion animation is a painstaking process that requires a whole lot of patience and time. At the absolute most basic level, a stop-motion animator takes a still image of an object, moves the object ever-so-slightly, and then takes another still image. Over time these still images will be combined creating the illusion of motion. Each second in time is 24 frames, which translates to 24 still images. Now imagine you have to animate a terrified boy running down the street from a ravenous mob of zombies. In each still image you would have to move every single character only a tiny bit, remembering which sequence of motion they were in, and repeating this process for a 10 second scene. That roughly calculates to requiring 15 thousand still images from start to finish. As previously stated, patience and time are the most important skills to have as a stop-motion animator, and the scene just described comes from the animated film Paranorman (2012). To get a better appreciation of what Ray Harryhausen and all stop-motion animators undertake to complete their projects you can watch this b-roll segment put together from the making of Paranorman.

This is Garrett Fallin with AudioMicro bidding a fond farewell to one of the greats, who inspired generations of filmmakers, and left a permanent impact on the way we all see films today.

In recognition of the third Iron Man film I thought it would be a great idea to show you how to make a simple Iron Man hand blast. I have created both a video tutorial and written directions you can follow to create this effect.

This effect can be achieved in 3 simple steps using Adobe After Effects:

• Creating the Shape
• Animating the Shape
• Adding Fire and Flares

STEP 1: CREATING THE SHAPE 

The basis for all energy blasts is creating a color solid and drawing out what it looks like. That’s really it. So to start off lets go to LAYER>>NEW>>SOLID. From there choose the color you want for the energy blast (I’m choosing a faded yellow to stay true to the iron man image).

Then, using the pen tool, I am going to draw out the shape and perspective I want my blast to follow. For me, I will be adding an energy blast firing from the actor’s hand in the foreground and destroying the car down the street in the background.

Perspective wise, I am going to draw the energy blast to be rounded and thicker towards the actor and it will stretch out and become thinner as the energy blast nears the car down the street. Make sure to feather out your edges under your mask settings to soften the edges (shortcut key is by hitting ‘M M’ (2 m’s) on your keyboard).

Now add a glow to your energy blast by going to EFFECT>>STYLIZE>>GLOW. This will give our masked solid the punch it needs to start looking more like an energy blast.

STEP 2: ANIMATING THE SHAPE

For this what I mean is you are now going to be adding the movement of your energy blast. To do this you first need to pull up your mask settings on your energy blast layer (shortcut key is by hitting ‘M M’ (2 m’s) on your keyboard). Then you are going to want to select the stopwatch icon next to ‘Mask Path’ and by doing so set a keyframe for where you want your mask path to begin. Because Energy blasts are extremely fast, the blast itself should only last for 3-5 frames at most. So what you are going to do is go frame by frame and move the energy blast closer and closer to its target. I find it works best to move up a frame, highlight a couple of points on the mask and stretch it closer to its destination.

Around the 4th frame I am going to start having my energy blast scrunch up on itself as it’s collapsing in on the car target. This will be the last frame my energy blast is visible.

 STEP 3: ADDING FIRE AND FLARES

A footnote before I begin this step, the explosions and optical flares used in my version are from VideoCopilot. Yes, they cost a bit of money, but as aspiring editors and VFX artists you should always strive for perfection – so I will continue to show you the best means to achieve the effect no matter the cost. That said, there are free alternatives of which I will make note of as I continue through the process.

To add some explosive elements to the scene, I first had to track the car that would be blowing up from the energy blast. To do that I right clicked on my source footage and chose ‘Track Motion.’ From there I placed my tracking marker over the car and tracked forward frame by frame.

After I was finished tracking, I applied the data to a new null (LAYER>>NEW>>NULL). Now I am able to add in my explosion and make it look like it is part of the scene. The explosion I chose to use if from the Action Essentials stock footage pack created by VideoCopilot. A free alternative to check out for explosions would be Detonation Films. Once I choose which explosion I want, I can resize it, and parent it to the tracked data of the null object.

To take this one step further and really polish the look, lets add in some flares. Using VideoCopilot’s Optical Flares plug in, first add in a new color solid (LAYER>>NEW>>SOLID), and from there apply the optical flares plug in (A free alternative would be going to EFFECT>>GENERATE>>LENS FLARE — it is free but the controls and look of the flare are very limited). In the optical flares control panel clear out the default flare, and simply choose the ‘Glow’ flare object — this will be the only flare object necessary to complete the effect.

Choose the color that matches your energy blast and hit ENTER. Line the flare up top of the blast and change the BLENDING MODE to ADD and keyframe the position of the flare to follow the blast all the way down to the explosion.

Let’s finish things up by adding one more flare for the fire. Same thing using the ‘glow’ object flare, change the color to match, line it up over the explosion, and change the BLENDING MODE to ADD. The only difference is this time you can parent the glow to the null object so it follows the same motion as your explosion.

This Iron Man hand blaster effect was used in another Indie Machines ’5 word film’ challenge, this time called “Different Colors Give Different Powers,” and can be seen here:

Until next time this is Garrett Fallin with AudioMicro telling you that no matter what life throws at you, you can always ‘fix it in post.’

Since making the transition from a Final Cut Pro 7 workflow to a Premiere Pro workflow, things have been great. I was able to modify my keyboard shortcuts to be more FCP friendly and I don’t deal with as many hassles as I did when editing in FCP 7. As great as that is, there were some things that took a little getting use to. In terms of actual transitions, Premiere Pro’s native transitions were lacking to say the least. If I wanted to use a fancy or cheesy transition on an edit, I would have to use one of the many filter based transitions or send my clips to After Effects via Dynamic Link. Another area of interest I felt that FCP 7 had on Premiere was its compositing and masking capabilities. The amount of native masking and compositing tools FCP has puts Premiere Pro to shame.

Now it’s possible to achieve certain masking/compositing effects in Premiere but most times it would require help from the Title Tool and the available matte key filters (Image Matte, Set Matte and Track Matte) or the limited crop filter. Over the last year, two independent entities have created transitions and compositing filters that help fill the gaps between FCP and Premiere Pro. They are Film Impact and Creative Impatience. Film Impact is comprised of a group of developers who create professional, inexpensive plugins for both FCP 7 and Premiere Pro CS5-CS6. Creative Impatience is the brainchild of developer/editor Bart Walczak. With Bart’s plugins, you get plugins that allow you to crop, feather edges of your media, vignette and mask out multiple sections of one or more videos.

Film Impact Plugins

This suite of transitions have been a welcomed addition to the Premiere Pro ecosystem. With transitions such as Impact Flash, Impact Push, Impact Blur Dissolve and more, I have the ability to give my projects more polish. One of the strengths of these transitions is the user interface that is available. Within that interface, I have the ability to effect how my transition will look and interact with my media. For example if I was using the Impact Flash transition, I have the ability to effect the Blur, Glow and Softness parameters which in turn effect how the transition looks. I can take it from its default state to a different variation of the transition.

The best part about these transitions is that they are actual transitions. Many third party transitions that you can purchase for Premiere tend to function as filters that need to be keyframed in the Effect Controls panel as opposed to be placed on an edit. There is a time and place for using those types of transitions but in most cases I like the ease of a transition that can be placed at the head or tail of clips. Overall, Film Impact has definitely been able to figure out the plugin SDK of Premiere and create a great suite of transitions. If future iterations are as good as the first collection, then I know Film Impact will become a power player.

Creative Impatience Plugins
This collection of filters addresses an editor’s need to do simple masking and compositing tasks that you would usually send out to After Effects to take care of. Within this collection, you can download Feathered Crop, Vignette, Power Window and Simple Mask all for free (if you find these plugins useful, you can donate to the developer to help with the progress of current and upcoming plugins). One of the standout filters I found immediately useful is Feathered Crop. Back in my FCP 7 days, being able to feather the edges of a clip for a nice composite was one of my go to techniques. Switching over to Premiere, I found this to be rather difficult with the native tools. To do anything remotely close to this would require the Title Tool and Track Matte Key. Also, the Edge Feather filter was not as resourceful as I thought it could be. When this plugin came out, I instantly found myself using it quite often. With it’s in depth interface, the user can selectively crop and feather from top, bottom, right and left. They also have the ability to add a border around their image if they choose to.

The newest plugin I’m finding immediately useful is Simple Mask. This filter allows you to create a simple and adjustable mask around your media. The best part is you can add multiple instances of this filter to focus on specific portions of your footage or create a unique mask design.

Overall, Creative Impatience has been able to address my masking and compositing needs in Premiere with this collection of plugins. Their ease of use and incredible design makes them accessible for quick and dirty compositing techniques.

If you are a recent FCP 7 convert or diehard user of Premiere Pro, I highly recommend adding these plugins to your plugin arsenal. What these 2 developers have created is nothing short of phenomenal.

I’m the NLE Ninja with Audio Micro asking you to stay creative.

Hello AudoMicronites. This week I’m going to be explaining how you can slap your mug on an inanimate object and make it talk. This effect was first popularized on YouTube with the ‘Annoying Orange’ video series created by Daneboe. Don’t know what I’m talking about?! … well …you should. Each video averages around 10 million views per video. Here’s one for example:

In fact after seeing this effect I became curious how I could do it myself. After some trial and error I figured it out and found the process to be quite simple. To show you how I did it, I have both a video tutorial detailing the process and also a written step by step guide. Both go over the same material and both are great references to use while attempting this effect.

Now let’s get down to business. To create this effect I will break the process down into 3 steps:

1. Shooting the Scene
2. Stabilizing the Footage
3. Editing the Effect

 Step One, Shooting the Scene:

You will need 2 separate pieces of footage. One of you talking and another of the object that will eventually be doing the talking.

When recording the dialogue place a single black dot on the tip of your nose. We will be using this dot as a marker to track later using After Effects.

It is paramount that you keep your head as still as possible as you are recording the dialogue (I actually chose to lean up against a wall to help keep steady). Now you are ready for …

Step 2, Stabilizing the Footage:

The purpose for this is to make sure your facial features (eyes and mouth) look connected to your object and don’t float around aimlessly. So to get started, import the dialogue footage you should now have into After Effects. In a new composition, right click on your dialogue footage and choose ‘Stabilize Motion.’

Now from here let’s focus on one facial feature at a time. Let’s start with an eye first – make sure the inner box of your stabilizer is around the entire eye from corner to corner, and the outer box wraps over the eyebrow.

Track forward using your tracker controls and hit apply once finished. Your dialogue footage should now revolve around the eye you just stabilized. From there you are going to want to pre-comp your footage by going to layer >> pre compose (‘move all attributes’ should be selected). In your pre-comped layer you can now take the masking tool and create an oval mask around the eye and feather out the edges.

You are going to be repeating those steps for the second eye  as well. For the mouth, the idea is the same, but this time you will be tracking that black dot you drew on your nose instead of the mouth itself.

After that you will be ready for …

Step 3, Editing the Effect:

Now with all the heavy lifting out of the way, this step should be a breeze! Simply drop in your object footage and line up your facial features where you want them.

In order to have the facial features appear to match your object, go into each of the feature layers and turn the blending mode to ‘Luminosity.’ From there add the ‘brightness & contrast’ effect and adjust the settings until everything blends nicely.

To help me put this effect to the test, production company Indie Machines brought me on board to help out with one of their ’5 word film challenges.’ Check it out to see how I made a pizza talk.

Until next time this is Garrett Fallin with AudioMicro telling you that no matter what life throws at you, you can always ‘fix it in post.’

Final Cut Pro 7 or Final Cut Pro legacy as it’s known in certain circles brought some new features to it that were quite groundbreaking. The feature I found to be the most interesting to use was the Alpha Transition. The Alpha Transition wipe is a transition that combines a clip that either has or doesn’t have transparency with its alpha matte and a wipe matte. In this graphic below, you can see the user interface for this transition.

In this tutorial, online editing training company GeniusDV explains how to utilize this transition.

I’m going to explain to how to take transitions that are either in the Pro Res codec or different codec and use them with the Alpha Transition wipe.

Using Alpha Transitions from Luca Visual FX

Plugin and motion graphic developer, Luca Visual FX has a collection of alpha transitions that are encoded out in the Pro Res 4444 codec. Due to this encoding, it’s really easy to use this with the Alpha Transition wipe.

Import one of the LVFX transitions into your project browser. Apply the Alpha Transition wipe to the edit point of your clips. Drop the LVFX transition in the drop well labeled Clip. Render the transition and see the result.

Due to the fact that these transitions were encoded in Pro Res 4444 and have built in transparency, we didn’t need to use the Clip Alpha Matte drop well. The Alpha Transition works best when using the Pro Res codecs. Since these transitions have wipe point built in, we also didn’t need to use the Wipe Matte either. You have this luxury with Luca’s transitions but you may not have this luxury off the bat if you were using transitions from other sources.

Turning Overlay Transitions into Alpha Clips in After Effects.

Now if you have overlay transitions from other sources and you have access to a Mac and the Pro Res codecs, you can use After Effects to convert them into Pro Res for use in the Alpha Transition Wipe.

I have an overlay transition that has embedded transparency and a wipe matte. I’m going place my transition in its own composition and do the same for the wipe matte.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to setup the render queue for these clips.

With both my clip compositions in the render queue, I will set it up so that these become Pro Res clips. Here are the options you should be mindful of.

-If you want your transition clip to maintain its transparency, set it up to be Pro Res 4444 with RGB+Alpha. If you want your transition clip to not maintain transparency, render it at Pro Res 422 or Pro Res 422 LT and leave it at RGB. You will have to duplicate the composition in the render queue and set that to either of those Pro Res flavors but change it to Alpha.

For the wipe matte, you can choose to render it out at Pro Res 4444 or the other flavors of Pro Res. Just make sure to leave it RGB. After you are done rendering out the clips, bring them into Final Cut Pro and place them in their appropriate drop wells. (the transition clip in the clip drop well and the wipe matte clip in the wipe matte drop well)

You will now see your overlay transition working as part of the Alpha Transition Wipe with which you can manipulate the timing and other parameters.

As you can see when using overlay transitions, you can easily change their codec and use them with the Alpha Transition Wipe.

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

A camera can only go so far in terms of changing the colors of the raw footage you take; sometimes your typical white balance and contrast adjustments just don’t cut it. Colors seem flat and just don’t come at you enough, so to spice things up, we turn to post-production CC (color correction). Here is a video showing before and after (left and right) comparisons, giving you an idea of the practical capabilities of cc:

We’ll be using Adobe after effects today but pretty much all editing platforms have CC, some more advanced than others. The focus will be on 3 different main effects, each making a slight difference. *remember, CC can be used to not only spruce things up, but create more emphasis on various emotions.

The 3 main effects we’ll use are: Curves, Tritone and Exposure. Each effect will be broken down into small steps so you get a bigger understanding on how each of them work, and how they can be manipulated. So let’s get started.

Some of the footage used in the video will be part of a short movie teaser that I’m making, so of course, we’re going to be aiming for quite a gloomy feel. The shot types and cinematography also play a big part in how we create that atmosphere. The first shot is a handheld shot of a tree. Here is what I’ve done:

This was quite simple to get my desired colors. I added a brightness/contrast effect, to up the contrast and lower the brightness as a starting point. I then added a tritone at 70% blend and went with navy blue midtones and pale yellow highlights. These colors helps make the tree come out and made the branches look more eery.

In the next shot we have a handheld shot of a rocking toy and another one of the shadow that it casts. We used the same effects as last, but also added exposure adjustments, as well as change the color used for the tritone. We took the exposure and offset down for this shot. The exposure controls the amount of light which is let in, where as the offset controls its luminance. I kept the color correction for both the shot of the toy as well as its shadow exactly the same as they were of the same subject.

This shot here is where I decided that a curves adjustment would be useful. The original footage looked very flat and bland, so I needed to correct it quite a lot without it looking too unnatural. The tritone and brightness/contrast was changed a little like the rest, but what helped more with the color grading was the RGB curves.

I took the blacks and midtones lower so the highlights would come out a little more – this helped bring out the texture of the bricks and the colors on the leaves.

The last shot in the example footage is the macro shot of some leaves. The original footage was quite simply dreadful – it was lacking color rendition, and vibrancy and so the color correction needed to boost it up ten fold. I went ahead and turned the brightness down abit and upped the contrast so there would be a little more difference in the background and the leaves. After this is I added the tritone and used bright highlights as well as midtones, and went for a midnight blue for the background shadows. There really was a noticeable difference here.

So color correction isn’t as hard as you thought – just a little experimenting and some decent tools will work wonders here. I hope you’ve all learned something!

Stay tuned for the short movie teaser which I am working on, where I’ll write about some short movie cinematic techniques.

Until next time, Peace, Love and After effects.

For the last 5 years, After Effects has been my go to compositing and motion graphics application whenever I need something beyond the depth of my NLEs. AE has the ability to do a lot of amazing things that would probably take pages just to list. With the filters and options that come bundled with it, the user can take on common to complex post production needs. One filter that I believe stands out above the rest is the Fractal Noise filter. This filter has been the basis of many creative and complex effects. On its own, you can create a myriad of assets such as backgrounds, overlays, textures and more. Of the many templates I’ve used, Fractal Noise has been used in about 80% of them. Within its parameters, a user can manipulate its parameters and create something unique. Used with other filters such as glow, blur and more, the possibilities are expanded. I’m going to show you 3 breakdowns of Fractal Noise designs you can use on your next project.

Background

In this example from author Chad Perkins‘s book Cheat in After Effects 2, I have a fractal noise background which looks like bars of light. The solid is set to 1920 x1080. Within Fractal Noise parameters, the fractal type is basic, the noise type is set to block, the contrast and brightness are modified, the transform settings are modified drastically, complexity is between 2-4 and the evolution is animated over 5 seconds. Combined with the Tint and Corner Pin filter as well as an adjustment layer containing the glow and curves filters, you get this cool animated bar background you can use for a high action title sequence.

Streaks Overlay

This mograph element is relatively easy to accomplish using the Fractal Noise filter. From this example of Harry Frank‘s Form Backgrounds, he accomplished this by manipulating these fractal noise settings. With composition set to 3000 x 1080, he set the fractal type to basic, noise type to soft linear, modified the contrast and brightness between -100 to 200, transform settings to get the streak look and animated the evolution over 9-10 seconds. He also set an expression for offset turbulence that would affect its position over time. When combined with the Tritone and Glow filters, you get a streaks overlay you can composite into your footage or animations.

Texture

One of the best ways to use Fractal Noise is when you need an animated texture. With this text layer in my composition, I will place an animated fractal noise solid into my text. Here is my settings and result of my fractal noise below.

With my text layer above it, I will set my fractal noise beneath to Alpha Matte. Now, my text will inherit the fractal noise as a texture and with some further tweaking, I can get a unique text design that looks something like this.

As you can see from these breakdowns, Fractal Noise is a versatile filter. On its own, it can create a lot of items. Grouped with other filters, it becomes an enigma of creative awesomeness. Next time you are in After Effects, play around with the Fractal Noise filters and see what you can create. You might create something quite amazing.

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

It’s April and around this time is when everyone in the filmmaking and broadcasting industry turns their attention to the NAB (National Association for Broadcasters) Show. Each year, NAB showcases new items to look forward to in the coming months and demos which will leave you in awe. Last year was my first time going to NAB and it was one of the best experiences I had in 2012. Now, I’m going back for the second year in a row and here are some of the items I’m looking forward to this year.

Adobe CS6.5 or CS7 & Other NLE Options

Last year, Adobe released CS6 and it was one of the top news stories of NAB. A large amount of the booths I visited had Adobe CS6 running and showcasing how it would operate with high end graphics cards, server based storage solutions and more.

About a week ago, a video showcasing of the evolution of rotoscoping in After Effects ended with an updated version of the Roto Brush tool tied with a Refine Matte feature. If Adobe is rolling out a new Creative Suite at this year’s NAB, I have a feeling the focus will be on After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop and their soon to be released Adobe Anywhere. Adobe Anywhere is the collaborative tool that will hopefully bring Adobe Premiere into a more shared workflow environment. With this tool, editors across the country and presumably across the world can start a rough cut in Premiere, send their rough cut to another editor via a connected server and have them continue working where they left off.

I’m hoping that the Adobe tools I use regularly get new features and updates that make my job as an editor more efficient. Hopefully, Premiere Pro gets additions to it similar or better than Final Cut Pro that make Premiere a top choice for new editors and hopefully turnover some FCP/Avid users.

Besides Adobe’s suite of tools, I look forward to seeing what Avid and Autodesk will bring to the table. Despite Avid’s financial turmoils as of late, their NAB offerings in post production are usually something to look forward to. There may be demos of a new media server for collaborative edits or possibly a look at the next Media Composer/Symphony. Either way, Avid has always been one of the booths to visit if you work post production.

Autodesk Smoke was also quite the talk of NAB last year. With their announcement of Smoke for Mac at a cheaper price point, they aimed to gather a bigger market share of editors outside the bounds of post production houses and those who may not have been happy with their current editing solution. Smoke is an all in one editing and compositing program that editors use during the finishing stages of post production. With the new iteration, the software aimed to become a go to editing solution for a broader user base. I look forward to seeing Autodesk Smoke 2014 and what unique features it will bring to the table compared to other editing software.

Workflow and Collaborative Tools

Beside Adobe Anywhere, I’m looking forward to seeing demonstrations from Digital Rebellion and Red Giant with their new workflow tools. This week, Red Giant announced a beta of a new tool called BulletProof. This tool is meant to be an intermediate between your camera and your NLE. It supposedly has the ability to offload and organize your files, review, color grade, add metadata and encode your files for project delivery. In the past, Red Giant has created products that help editors and others in post production become more efficient and reduce time on tedious endeavors such as noise removal, audio syncing and transcoding DSLR footage. If this tool can do what it says and more, I anticipate it becoming a staple in many editors workflows.

Digital Rebellion isn’t too far behind with their announcement of a new platform known as Kollaborate. This is billed as the ultimate cloud workflow solution for video professionals and it will provide the following: online storage, video playback and approval, project management and integration from applications from both desktop and mobile devices. From the preview video I watched, Digital Rebellion is entering the online cloud solutions ecosystem currently available from services such as Screenlight, Mindway Media and the soon to be released Get Acclaim service. After using their toolsets for my desktop needs, I have no doubt that this new platform from Digital Rebellion will up the ante on cloud collaboration.

Besides these aforementioned items, what I am looking forward to at NAB is the overall experience. NAB Show is an opportunity to chat with the who’s who in the industry and walk away with newfound knowledge and insight. If you’re not going to NAB this year, then I would recommend following people on Twitter who will be providing constant updates. It’s an opportunity to live vicariously through their experience and stay in the know on new product development and availability in the coming months.

I’m the NLE Ninja with AudioMicro asking you to stay creative.

Whether you are new to the art of editing or a seasoned professional, one thing about it that at times can be oversaturated are transitions. Transitions come in all sizes in shapes. From a simple cut to more stylized transitions, we have been exposed to them in one form or another. The core of editing any video or film should be the story. Transitions and effects are meant to enhance the story, not define it. However, if a transition is used in the right context ant the right time then you can make it work with your project. I’m going to go over some simple practices for commonly used transitions.

The Cut

The most used and effective transition there is. The cut works best in situations such as cutaways, scene/location changes and dialogue. For example, if you are cutting an interview segment and you hear a soundbite about a place or thing, it would be best to cut to a shot of said place or thing to keep the viewer interested and informed. The best part about the cut is that it can trim scenes down or manipulate the interpretation of a scene.

Also, the cut can be utilized in stylized way. It is one of the preferred transitions in montages and rap videos when you want to cut to the beat or flicker between multiple images.

The Cross Dissolve

The second most used transition in editing. The cross dissolve works best when you need a change in place and/or time. For example, if I were showing someone losing weight after beginning a diet and exercise routine, I would want to cut that down to show the weight loss progression. The best way to show those points would be to show them at their worst weight to their healthy weight by using cross dissolves between each significant moment. The cross dissolves would help to give the feeling of time passing.

Fade to White/Black

These transitions tend to serve three purposes: jump ahead in time, build suspense or start/end a video. Fade to White can typically be seen as a way to cover something up like a mistake or serve as visual cue that things have jumped ahead. It works similar in the way that cross dissolve works but hides progression by fading the screen to white for a determined duration. Fade to white has a few variants such as the flashframe transition, exposure flash and more. I typically use the fade to white when I need to jump ahead in interview segments in a stylized manner.

Fade to black can also be used in the same manner as fade to white but typically it’s used to build suspense or end a video. If you’ve ever watched promos or movie trailers, you will notice that fade to black has been used to build suspense with properly placed sound effects. Quick fades to black give the viewer the feeling that something unpredictable is on the horizon and help showcase prominent moments. This transition also signals a cue that a video is over or cutting to a different segment. Used incorrectly it can have a negative impact on your video.

“Bell & Whistle” Transitions

You’ve probably seen them or have been asked to use them. Everything from swish pans, lens flares, light leaks, mattes and more are what I would classify as bell and whistle transitions. They are nice to look at, but if used too often or incorrectly, they start to make your edit look tacky and show that your video lacks substance. In certain situations, your client may request you use a lot of these so be prepared. There is a place and time to use these types of transitions. In my experiences, I’ve used them in event highlights, music videos, sizzle reels, motion graphic toolkits, promos and entertainment interviews. Now, I can do fine using the 4 transitions mentioned previously. However, if I need to pump some life into an edit or add some energetic production value and those transitions are not enough, I will use a bell and whistle transition.

It’s best to use these transitions with a purpose as opposed to throwing it in because it looks cool. For example, sports game broadcasts, talk shows and reality competitions tend to have bell and whistle transitions when showing replays or cutting to commercials, segments and more. They have established these transitions work best when they need to cut to these parts of the show.

Another example of good use of these transitions are on shows from HGTV, Investigation Discovery and DIY TV. With the pacing and theme of shows from those networks, they find a way to use bell and whistle transitions to keep the viewer interested and not overdo it.

There’s an appropriate time and place for all transitions. Using them to enhance your story demonstrates your ability to edit wisely. I’m the NLE Ninja with Audio Micro asking you stay creative.

When I started my journey to becoming an editor, I wanted to know all the tools I would need to get the job done. I believed all I needed was a good computer, some software and footage to work with to do it. As I progressed in my journey, I was introduced to tools that not only made my job as an editor easier but also helped me troubleshoot issues that I may run into. One particular developer of editing tools I’m thankful for discovering is Digital Rebellion. Founded in 2007, Digital Rebellion has developed maintenance and workflow tools for Final Cut Pro 6/7/X, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer. My first exposure to them was when I used the FCS Remover to remove Final Cut Studio 2 and reinstall it cleanly. Since then, I have purchased Pro Maintenance and Pro Media Tools and never looked back. These tools have helped me troubleshoot issues that I would have had to spend hours looking through forums to get the answers to. I can’t imagine editing without them. I’ll give a brief overview of some of the applications from Pro Maintenance and Pro Media Tools. Hopefully, you’ll either trial or purchase them after you know some of their capabilities.

Pro Maintenance Tools

These set of tools were originally available for Final Cut Studio but have since expanded to include Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer/Symphony and Adobe Premiere Pro. Within these tools are applications that can trash/store your preferences, analyze why your NLE crashed, repair your NLE, manage your plugins and more. Some of my commonly used applications are Preference Manager, Crash Analyzer, and Plugin Manager.

Preference Manager allows the user to save, backup and trash preferences from the aforementioned programs. This application is really helpful when you run into an issue that was potentially caused by your current preferences. Instead of going through the many Finder folders to locate your preference files, Preference Manager is able to do it at the press of a button. If you want to import preferences from another machine to yours, you can do it relatively easy by importing them.

Crash Analyzer looks at your editing application crash logs and attempts to diagnose why it crashed. In the application window, it will provide suggestions to help alleviate the problem so you can get back to editing. This application is a godsend for editors who have dealt with their editing applications crashing without knowing how to fix it. I can’t count how many times this app has helped me troubleshoot the crashes I get. The best part is that a widget at the upper right part of your screen will appear as soon as your editing application crashes giving you the opportunity to investigate further. If you get Pro Maintenance Tools, Crash Analyzer is an additional must have.

Plugin Manager allows you to easily and quickly organize your editing system plugins. With this application, you can install new plugins and enable/disable current plugins without having to worry about locating them on your computer. I’ve used this app to help troubleshoot some plugins I have that may be causing issues with Final Cut Pro that are hindering my ability to finish an edit. It’s useful if you just want to disable a plugin as oppose to completely uninstalling it. I haven’t had a chance to explore its further capabilities but I plan to in the near future.

Pro Media Tools

This set of tools helps with the efficiency side of your workflow. There are tools to offload your media to multiple drives, set project folders, detect gamma shifts, handle QuickTime files, notify you of renders and more. Not all the tools in this set work across every editing application so if you are a single editing application user you’ll be limited by that. Some of the tools I find myself using often are Auto Transfer, Post Haste and Edit Detector.

Edit Detector is an application that can detect edits and scene changes in QuickTime movies. This application is helpful for when you have to take pre-edited video and break it up for things like color correction, visual effects and motion graphics. It also comes with a sensitivity slider that determines how in depth you want the application to detect cuts and scene changes. The user has the ability to manipulate edit points if needed as well as export into multiple formats such as individual QuickTime movies, FCP marker lists, EDLs and more.

Auto Transfer is a handy application that allows the user to transfer media from camera memory cards to your computer. You can set it up to transfer to multiple drives so you can ensure backups in case of technical mishaps. I use this application often when I deal with AVCHD media and DSLR media. It’s much more efficient than doing a copy and paste from folder to folder in my opinion. With the metadata options, I can tag relevant info to clips to aid in the logging process.

PostHaste has been my go to application for project organization since its inception. This application allows you to use and create project folder templates, which you can use to organize footage, project files, mograph assets and more. You can also import previously used project folders to create a brand new template if you want. I firmly believe that every editor should have PostHaste in their arsenal.

Overall, Digital Rebellion’s two toolkits are a must have for editors. They help in troubleshooting and helping editors keep things moving. Although it’s most available for Mac at the moment, the developers have plans to have these toolkits available for PC users in future updates. Digital Rebellion also has other great product offerings such as Pro Admin, Pro Versioner, Cut Notes, Edit Mote and CinePlay.

I’m the NLE Ninja with Audio Micro asking you to stay creative.