Aged Film

So, onto the review portion of the deal.  I am going to start off with the newest of the two plugins that got released last week, Aged Film.  This is an awesome looking, easy to use plugin, that you can literally apply, and know exactly how to work it, without a learning curve at all.  All of the parameters are pretty straightforward, and there actually isn’t too many of them, not that it needs more than it has, but it doesn’t overwhelm you like some plugins have the tendency to do.  You basically have your opacity for the effect, seeding options for more or less aged-ness, control over the color of the effect, Dust Control and Vertical Line Scratch control, which inserts more or less of the specks and lines you see in old film, and finally Frame Jitter, which randomly offsets the video like it is playing slightly off the film reel.  There are other minor little features to turn on and off and tweak, but those are the basics for the effect.

My thoughts?  Completely cool, and complete in what you would expect from a plugin called Aged Film.  Although, I wouldn’t use this a whole hell of a lot, but for the price of only $29.00 it could probably save you a few hours of work, especially if you are putting together old war sequences for a short film, or faking a grandpa playing some old movies… or maybe you are working at a news station and they like “Blast From the Past” segments for those slow news days… (I find myself wishing I had this about a year ago from now for that exact reason), now that could be VERY useful!  Bottom line, for the effect it is supposed to be simulating, it is a killer deal and a huge time saver.  Although you might not use it too often, you never know when you might be called upon to make some vintage graphics, and when that time comes, if you got this in your toolbox, it’s just going to make your job that much easier.

CameraMapper

Now onto CameraMapper… now this is a plugin a lot of us have been waiting for.  I mean there are workarounds littered across the net on how to achieve this effect without a third party plugin, but that’s no fun, now is it?  Now, this plugin was designed for you to make subtle camera moves, such as pans, tilts, dolly ins and outs… that kind of thing.  The way it works is to project your footage onto solids in your scene that you position and rotate in 3d space to act as the planes that you are going to move past, toward, or away from, thus creating the illusion of individual 3d elements in a scene made up of one piece of 2d imagery.  This isn’t made to do drastic camera moves, although if you plan out your shots correctly, then you can get some pretty amazing results.  Although now that I understand exactly how to use the plugin, it was kind of confusing at first, but with some experimental procedures, and watching Mark Christiansen’s tutorial over at Digieffects (he’s one of the co-developers of the plugin by the way), he laid it out there on how to position your solids and set up your camera movements, and what to avoid so you don’t “break the image.”

Overall I am highly impressed with both products and I highly encourage you all to at least check out the trial versions for both products (you can find them on the product pages), just to get an idea of what they are both about.  You might not need them right at this moment, but they could down the line, prove to be indispensable tools for certain projects.  They are definitely worth an hour of fiddling around in After Effects to see if you like them or not.

Now for the giveaway portion of the deal.  Digieffects have generously given us two bundles of CameraMapper and Aged Film to give away to two of our lucky and loyal readers.  This is almost $110 worth of plugins, and there are just a few things that you have to do:

• Follow @VideoHive & @Digieffects on Twitter (recommended because we are AWESOME, but not mandatory)
• Leave a comment below with your Twitter username
• Let us know what you could see yourself using these plugins for

That’s it!  Seriously, its that easy.  We will announce the winners on Friday, and for a chance to double your entry hit up my website, VisualFXtuts.com for the same contest and another chance to get your name in the hat!

To enter, head over the Jungle blog, and leave a comment with your favorite AJ file. Remember to read the post fully to find the posting guidelines required to enter. Click the banner above, or this link: Celebrate 10,000 Files on AudioJungle with our Free iPod Giveaways

Once again, huge congrats to our sister site. We’ll see you there soon!

The one requirement for these assets is that they need to be musically themed. Any music is sufficient. While full details regarding part two have yet to be released. I can only speculate that the second part will involve some sort of Flash file built around music with some integration of these assets.

There is $333 up for grabs to the winning author, so now might be a great time to get involved! Follow the link below for more information, and some examples of videos that would be acceptable.

FlashDen Music Competition – Phase 1

Everyone did a great job on their projects, so before I announce the winners I’d like to just congratulate all authors, and thank everyone for their participation!

Okay, I’m gonna stop rambling now, here are the official winners in the first ever VideoHive competition!

Third Place Winner – $300 Prize – Drudoran

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  Corporate Business

  Corporate Business is Drudoran’s highest selling project file during the sales portion of the competition. This project boasts a super clean, perfectly flowing, corporate feel. Tons of spots for video, images, or text. But also featuring elements like growing graphs and moving gears to add to that business feel.

  View File…

Second Place Winner – $700 Prize – Plamencvetanov

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  Top of the Town

  Top of the Town is Plamencvetanov’s highest selling file during the sales portion of the competition. It features a very dramatic fly-through of a digital city scene. Plaster your video, images, and text right on the side of these very realistic buildings. The project is super easy to customize!

  View File…

First Place Grand Prize Winner – $1,000 – Generator

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  Pages

  Pages was Generator’s highest selling project file during the sales portion of the competition. This file provides users with the ability to easily create a very robust way to present a portfolio of imagery. It looks very much like a realistic magazine, flipping through pages to reveal each image.

  View File…

Additional Prizes

Of course, these three authors are also getting their competition files bundled up into the featured collection on the blog (top left), so head there now if you’d like to check them out!

All entries to the competition can be found here:

Be sure to stick around because we are already planning our next competition, that I’m sure will be tons of fun!

First up is the easier of the two aspects of the “film look”, 24p mode, which essentially is a 23.976 frame rate (25p for PAL cameras).  Some cameras have this built in such as prosumer HVX200 P2 cameras, and some cameras have a faux-24p mode sometimes called “cinemode”, or “frame” like my old Canon XL1, or “PF24″ like in my Canon Vixia HV30 consumer camera I have now.  All of these simulate 24p, but don’t actually record at that frame rate, they still record at a 29.976 frame rate.  Although this approach works for consumers looking to make fun films with their kids in the backyard, for some filmmakers this just doesn’t cut it.  There are other approaches to getting that film frame rate effect, without actually shooting in 24p.  The old adage, “Fix it in post!” applies here, as there are a few workarounds.  First off you can use Andrew Kramer’s Frame Rate Converter tutorial at Video Copilot from way back in the day.  This preset helps you take 60i, 30i, or any other formats or frame rates, including PAL footage and convert it into 24p NTSC, or 25p PAL if you need to.  This tutorial is a little weird when it comes to audio, so make sure if you have a voice track with it, you can do some modification, because the audio track needs to be time stretched 104.5% to compensate for the frames lost, and fitting into the time that you need it to.  The second post production approach to this is a little bit easier… Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Frames.  Frames is a plugin that works with Final Cut, Premiere, Motion and of course, After Effects.  It uses frame blending algorithms and edge smoothing to basically do the same thing that Andrews tutorial show you, except in plugin form, and also gives you more control over deinterlacing your footage to make it true 23.976 frames per second progressive scan (no interlaced fields) picture.

The second half of the formula in is getting a shallow depth of field, or at least having more control over what you focus on, and what is blurry.  The professional way to go about this would be to shoot with 35mm lens adapters and lenses, but there are a few camera and post production techniques that you can use, as well as a few avenues you can head in, camera/gear wise.

First, the techniques that won’t cost you any extra money other than the gear and the software you already have.  With your camera depending on how good your zoom is, you can position your camera a ways away from your subject, zoom in, and have some more control over what you can focus on.  Of course, this is a hassle, especially if you aren’t recording ADR, and have your mic plugged in directly to the camera.  This of course brings other conflicts such as having long XLR cables and a boom operator, setting up your shots so they don’t have much movement in them, because even with the best tripod skills, operating a camera at full zoom is always difficult to keep from shaking.  This of course is a very limited technique because you can’t always shoot from 50 feet away, especially if some shots are taking place indoors.  Your other option for not shelling out any cash is to fake it in After Effects.  Of course this is also a very limited technique, in which you have to have little or no movement in your shot, or at least stationary objects or people.  You can then bring your video into After Effects and mask off different elements in your scene that you want in focus, and then animate those masks according to the movement in the shot.  This might be a good technique if you have a closeup of someone’s eyes and would want to rack focus to whatever they had been turned away from.  This is very hard to fake, so I would suggest not trying it, unless it is absolutely necessary.

Now for the more expensive route.  35mm Lens adapters, lenses, cameras and DIY solutions.  First up is the lens adapters, which is probably the most foolproof route.  Companies such as RedRockMicro, Letus and Brevis make adapters that you can attach to your camera, prosumer and consumer, that lets you then attach 35mm lenses onto that.  The only problem with this is if you don’t have around two grand to drop on equipment costs, you are out of luck.  Not only do you buy the lens adapter, the fact is, its only the adapter.  You also have to buy the lens to attach onto that, and on top of that, a rail support system to support the bulk that is your new 35mm system which is going to double the size of your camera.  If you are looking for an adapter but can’t drop that kind of cash, there are always the DIY approaches to things.  Videopia has a great video that explains 35mm lens adapters and explains the DIY approach in video form.  Basically, the way these things work is there is a glass plane in the adapter that the 35mm lens projects the image onto, at the exact focal point of the lens.  This increases the imaging plane, giving you the depth of field you oh so sought after.  You can find out more about making your own 35mm lens adapter from scratch at JetSetModels.info.  Again remember, you still need to buy lenses after you make this adapter to be able to use it.  The last option for getting that sweet, sweet depth of field effect for relatively cheap when it comes to actually buying a camera with that option built in would be a DSLR camera with HD video recording capabilities.  Yes, I am gonna talk about the Canon 5D MKII… if you are in the market for buying a video camera, and have been looking at options for lens adapters, look no further.  Cameras like these have the native capability to attach 35mm lenses onto them, because well, they are made to be photography cameras.  All SLR and DSLR cameras have had the ability to attach and switch out lenses since their creation, but just lately they have gained the ability to record HD video.  This makes DSLRs an amazing option for newcomers to the film making scene to grab a very equipped camera for not a gigantic chunk of money.  The only thing that isn’t that great about these, is they have the form of an SLR camera, and aren’t as comfortable to hold as a handheld/ENG camera, but there are rail support systems you can get for them to make them feel more like a video camera.

Basically there are a ton of options to consider before you just jump in and buy a Letus Extreme adapter, or that Canon XH-A1 you had your eye on.  Truth is, more and more people are using consumer and prosumer cameras with workarounds such as these to create big budget looking movies for little to no money.  All you need are the techniques and a lot of free time on your hands.  Of course it doesn’t hurt to have a bit of cash to throw around though

Finalist 5: The Final Frontier

by circuitbomb

“Space. It is colorful. It is infinite. These are the voyages of the starship Envato. It’s continuing mission…”

Congratulations Circuitbomb, you’ve won US$3,500 to spend on your ultimate creative set-up!

Each of the 10 finalists have won the contents of their collection. Thanks to everyone who entered, and watch out for the next big Envato competition!

Finalist 1: Life In The City

by ahmednaguib

“A collection about cities, modern buildings, industrial sounds, videos of a town in motion, or a building in color, you will find it here, brought and made by some of the greatest authors in their fields, enjoy!”

Finalist 2: The Eco-Friendly Collection – Web and Print

by idrawdesigns

“The Eco-Friendly Collection (Web and Print) is a compilation of items across the Envato Marketplaces that relate to going green and being environmentally friendly. Templates can be used as a base for websites and printed material that promote recycling, preserving nature, and anything that has to do with being eco-friendly. Sounds and flash animations can be used to accompany work created on the web.”

Finalist 3: Admin, the Ultimate Collection

by Gr0in

“A collection of files to help create the ultimate Flash/Flex content management system.”

Finalist 4: Must-have to Create a Masterpiece

by Leas

“Some sounds, graphics, and stock footage to give a masterpiece the perfect feeling.”

Finalist 5: The Final Frontier

by circuitbomb

“Space. It is colorful. It is infinite. These are the voyages of the starship Envato. It’s continuing mission…”

Finalist 6: The Colors Of The Rainbow

by drarock

“This collection has the most colorful resources you’ll ever find. Here you can find icons, vectors, website templates and business cards full of joy and fun, just like a rainbow!”

Finalist 7: So Cute it Hurts

by drarock

“All the cutest resources from Graphic River, and a couple from FlashDen are the cherry on the cake.”

Finalist 8: Web Designer’s Toolkit

by epicera

“This library showcases the best & most useful products in regards to general web design. From Flash to Photoshop to fully coded templates, these represent the best that the Envato Marketplace has to offer. In short, these products should be on every web designer’s shopping list!”

Finalist 9: Urbanism

by Arezoo

“The Urbanism collection contains the best urban inspired themes, web elements, and design templates.”

Finalist 10: Rokband Pack

by iLLeT

“Rock band objects, textures, graphics, product mock displays, and more.”

Each one of these finalists will win a single use licence to every file in their collection!

But who will win US$3,500 for their ultimate creative set-up? That’s up to you! So pick your favourite and vote for it below!

Please note that only one vote per user will be registered. Voting will close at 12 midday, Australian Eastern Standard time on Monday the 6th of July. The winner will be announced the following day, and then all finalists and winners will be contacted via email to receive their prizes!

So stay tuned to find out who wins Envato’s biggest competition ever!

As you all know, the 2nd half of the competition will run from today (June 8th) until 11:59pm EST, July 8th. Soon after, the totals will be tallied up and the winners will be announced. Remember that only sales aquired between now and July 8 2099 count towards the competition standings. Sales made before June 8th will not be accounted for. This allows all 86 files, the same equal playing field to start from.

So good luck everyone, the entries are all brilliant, this is set to be our best competition ever! Regardless of the fact that it’s our first competition ever.

Great job everyone!

That page fully describes the rules and regulations, so if you haven’t already it’s worth checking out. Submissions end on June 15th, so make sure to get your submission in before that date!

Here are some great collections that are already entered!

Following that time, all submissions will be recorded, and the following 30 days will be for sales. Whichever file gets the most sales will win the grand prize and as I said earlier, there are two runner up prizes for 2nd and 3rd place!

For more details on prizes, and rules please check out the original post here: $2,000 Project File Competition

Good luck everyone!