Looking at the few sneak peaks we have seen of Video Copilot’s new lens flare plugin, Optical Flares, it is already looking like it could be massive competition for the leading Lens Flare generator, Knoll Light Factory. Yeah, KLF has been around for ages, but time is showing, and although it is very popular among its users, its got a steep price and an ancient looking interface.
Everyone knows what Particular is, and how to use it in some way. There are virtually billions of different ways to manipulate this insanely robust particle generator, and some people find ways to express its power in ways we would have never thought possible. These people stand out above the rest in their amazing, and sometimes breathtaking pieces of motion graphic artistry.
Nowadays we use a lot of different media, types of cameras and other means to record video for our productions, and there are so many different media types and possibilities, it gets hard to keep track of them all. I have rounded up all the different kinds of media and am going to try to demystify what they are and how they record, so that you can make the correct decision when it comes to buying equipment for your productions, big or small.
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So Digieffects have had a few new products out this month, one which is quite a useful tool in working with still imagery and 3D space, and the other which can give you some nice looking old film effects, as if it were from the Super 8 era. Both of these plugins are quite useful in their own ways, and even better than that… we got some copies of them to give away to YOU! That’s right, check out my review on CameraMapper and Aged Film, leave a comment down below with your Twitter username, and you will be entered in to win a DigiEffects Bundle with the two plugins in today’s review!
So, obviously it’s hard to get your film picked up by a distributing firm, or if you haven’t entered it into any film festivals yet, most people don’t know who you are, or even what your film is about. Truth is, they get hundreds of submissions and approaches each day to distribute some kind of DVD, product or whatever. Well, what if I told you it was possible to distribute your films without the help of big business or large amounts of inventory and e-shopping carts… and little to no effort on your part? Well that time has come, my friend, and it’s gonna be good.
Red Giant has another awesome plugin out called Magic Bullet Mojo! Developed by the ingenious Stu Maschwitz, the creator of the famed Magic Bullet line of products (Frames, Looks, Steady, etc…) Stu and his team have yet again developed an amazing extension for your favorite editing and vfx applications. The plugin works in After Effects, Motion, Final Cut Pro, Avid and Premiere systems, and provides an easy set of presets and control to replicate some of the looks that you see in hit blockbuster movies.
Sometimes it happens. You are thrown a project and you got weeks to finish it, but you just cannot seem to muster the ambition to make something awesome. Maybe you’re having a bad day, maybe you’re mind is elsewhere, or maybe Heroes is on that night. Whatever the reason may be, you need to find a way around that wall. There are some things that I do to get the creative juices flowing, to get my brain thinking the way it needs to, so hopefully they can help you out when you get into that funk.
So the Halloween season is upon us, and the superstores have opened their doors. This is perhaps my favorite holiday of the year, because I love gore, scariness, and of course candy, but it is also the time that I stock up on the prosthetics and fog juice that I use for my random movies throughout the year ahead. It is the one time of the year that makes it a breeze for horror and action movie film making aficionados to get the stuff they need to make some cool on set special effects.
So you got your gear, you went out and splurged, got the camera, mic, rearranged your furniture to make your set look presentable, and you have your first show shot. Now, you have to edit it. Editing is a crucial part of making your media look presentable and professional. Now, maybe you like to do things in one take, maybe you are in love with the jump cut, but remember… you need some kind of graphic, fade in/fade out… whatever. That along with your video hosting platform, website, and things like that, we are going to look at the cost effective way of marketing yourself to the full potential with the least amount of money.
There are always free tutorials to fall back on, but for some applications such as Houdini, RealFlow, XSI or Massive, there just isn’t enough free material on the internet to get a thorough understanding of the application you want, or quite possibly need to learn. When all else fails you are going to probably have to pay for some training DVDs to get the education you need. While it is kind of a pain to pay, you always have to remember, it’s a lot better than a few years of college.
Inside the Hive is the community blog of VideoHive, an Envato marketplace. At VideoHive you can buy or sell royalty free stock footage, motion graphics and complete Adobe After Effects project files. Items are created and sold by a huge community of very talented authors from all over the world!
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