About a month ago we mentioned the first in a ongoing series of articles on Pixel Aspect Ratios in digital video. Well it’s about that time again…After Effects gurus Chris and Trish Meyer of Cybermotion have now shared Part 2 of their Pixel Aspect Ratio primer (PDF).

Part 2 delves into the how and why of setting PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) tags in software for all your project media, gotchas associated with still image sources, and when to use square pixel compositions. Next up? The upcoming Part 3 article will touch on IAR - Image Aspect Ratio, and how it affects widescreen sources. Stay tuned.

Lucid Movement is site sharing a bunch of really fun high speed video footage, various objects and items being tossed, dropped, blended, etc…in beautiful super slo-mo.

The kicker? Each video clip has detailed technical data on the particular camera and settings used to get the shot. Very cool stuff. If you like a specific clip, you can buy the hi-res version as well, at very reasonable prices (royalty free terms).

(Via Editblog and Camcorderinfo)

During production of the 1951 movie Distant Drums, a sound effect was born. Collectively entitled “man getting bit by an alligator, and he screams”, a sequence of short scream sound effects were recorded in studio, and take number 5 was used in the film during a alligator attack scene. Two years later the scream was recycled in The Charge at Feather River when a character named Private Wilhelm was shot with an arrow. In the ensuing years, the “Wilhelm Scream”, as the collection of takes became known, was used in a number of Warner Brothers films. And somewhere along the way the Wilhelm Scream developed a cult following of sorts. Damn Interesting has the story:

Since it was first blurted out upon the world, the scream has been featured in over two hundred movies, TV programs, commercials, video games, and theme park attractions, and it has been heard by countless people. Notable filmmakers have also specifically requested the Wilhelm scream for their movies after learning of its history, including directors Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Peter Jackson.

It’s a distinctive sound sample and quite recognizable when you hear it in a film. There is a handy montage of various scenes and movies the scream is featured in at Youtube. Here’s a sampling; Star Wars, Willow, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gremlins, Spaceballs, Lethal Weapon 4, Batman Returns, Resevoir Dogs, Toy Story, Wallace & Gromit, and most recently, Superman Returns. Where have you heard the Wilhelm Scream? Take a look at this list if you need a hint.

Everyone’s favorite free 3D software has just been updated with a host of new features. The 2.43 release of Blender offers sculpt modeling, render baking, retopologizing tools, improved fluid simulator (now with particles), more compositing modes (including defocus node), and much more. Check out the full list of improvements.

Researchers Adam Ecker and Laurie Heller, building on the work of Daniel Kersten have been studying the effects of sound on how objects and movements are perceived. In tests, volunteers watched animations that were accompanied by specific sound effects, and recorded what they “saw”. The results are quite revealing, and filmmakers should take note.
Continue reading ‘How sound can so critically affect what we perceive’

Courtesy of GeniusDV, here’s a quick and dirty tutorial on how to create a station or brand identification “glass bug” to be superimposed over footage. Quick. Simple. Effective.

The MIT Technology Review is featuring a very interesting article on advances in fluid dynamics by a professor at Caltech. Mathieu Desbrun has developed new equations that describe more accurately (than current visual effects tools) how a liquid should move within a given space.

The advances don’t work faster than today’s tech, but more accurately and realistically, and have the potential to save time and expense in animation and VFX post production. There are a few very interesting video examples attached to the article.

Kendal Miller pointed me to this gem, an extensive video tutorial on Motion Control systems by Mark Roberts Motion Control. In some ways it’s an advertisement for the systems they create, but there is a lot of knowledge shared that transfers to planning, shooting, and compositing with lesser tools. A ton of fantastic commercial and music video creative work is shown, with shot breakdowns explaining how the motion control rig was utilized.

I must caution you, watching this video may induce the urge to mortgage your home and buy one of these MoCo systems. At the very least, you might wet your pants like an excited puppy. You’ve been warned.

General Specialist recently posted some excellent advice for better chromakeying. Read on for our Top 10 Quick Tips culled from those suggestions, as well as a tutorial on chromakeying in Adobe After Effects.

1. Keep It Blurry
Turn off all in-camera sharpening and skin detail settings. Seperate the talent from the screen and strive for a shallow DOF. Seperation also helps control light spill.

2. Resolution and Framing
Shoot as high rez as you can afford. Disregard TV safe areas and framing, you need that extra 10%. Tilt the camera 90 degrees for shots of standing people and flop the image in your comp during post-production.

3. Blue or Green Screens?
It depends. Green is a brighter color channel with less noise than blue. Blue is better for blonde hair. Blue light spill is also less sickly looking than a green cast.

4. Don’t Depend on Imagination
Don’t assume that the talent or crew understands what you are after. Good storyboards will save you time and frustration. It’s hard to act in a vacuum, so give the talent something to look at and interact with.

5. Garment and Costume Colors
Greens, browns and khaki are all no-no’s for greenscreen work. Jeans and blue colors are just as uncool for bluescreen.

6. Proper Props
Ensure that shiny props don’t reflect the color of your screens. Or don’t use shiny props.

7. Lighting is Key
Get a crew that knows how to light if you are unable to, proper lighting is more critical than ever for chromakey work. You cannot fix the lighting in post, don’t bother trying. Get it right the first time.

8. Preview On Set
Provide some method of previewing at least a rough version of each comp as you shoot. Your talent and lighting crew will thank you and hopefully reward you with better performances.

9. Chroma Sampling and Codecs
If you can afford it, capture a 4:4:4 image without color compression into a codec that doesn’t discard any of that info. For DV keys, blur the U and V channels before pulling a key, or use software that does this for you.

10. Progressive Frames, not Fields
Shoot progressive instead of interlaced if at all possible. If you are forced to shoot interlaced, properly deinterlace the footage before keying it.

Read the whole enchilada at General Specialist for more tips, detailed explanations and picture examples.

For those keyers still wet behind the ears, here is an excellent tutorial on chromakeying in After Effects. And there are many useful tips and nuggets dispensed in this tutorial on Motion Control systems by Mark Roberts Motion Control (highly recommend watching that one).

(Via HD For Indies)

The following are my Top 10 Final Cut Pro Tips, with many thanks to the talented guru’s over at ProAppTips. These tips have either made my life as an editor easier, enhanced the creative workflow process, or are just really cool. Here they are, in no particular order.

*FCP BIG Keyframe Editor - Expand your Motion/Filters tab keyframing area to a much larger space for fine-tuning keyframes.

*FCP EZ Add Video Without Audio - Use Control-I and Control-O to effortlessly drop video sans audio to your timeline.

FCP fit to window shortcut - We all do it. Fire off a few quick keystrokes to zoom the timeline…before realizing that the browser or canvas is selected instead. Fortunately the fix is just as easy to do…simply use Shift-Z to toggle the canvas/viewer back to “Fit To Window” mode and correct your mistake sans profanity.

*FCP Open Bins in a seperate browser tab - Option+Double-Click on bins to open them in a new Tab.

*FCP Moving a clip just a little in Canvas - Single-pixel clip pan/crop/motion adjustments.

*FCP Creating a Multiple Filter Favorite Folder - Create a bin in your Filter Favorites folder that contains multiple oft-used filters or a “look recipe”.

*FCP using Motion scanline transitions in projects - Create a scanline transition in Motion 2, and utilize that as a transition in FCP. Examples and project files included.

*FCP Color Correcting Multi-clips already in timeline - Use Final Cut’s powerful Find feature to locate clips in your timeline that originated from uniquely named clips. Drop/paste correction filters or attributes, and presto-chango you are done.

*FCP Shane’s Stock Answers - This compilation wouldn’t be complete without Shane’s extensive list of stock answers to common questions. Ranging from exporting a still from FCP to the differences between 24p and 24pA, there’s something for everyone here.

*FCP fast timecode entry tricks - Get around the timeline faster with these tips for timecode navigation.

I hope that one or more of the tips on this list help you as an editor. They have all been helpful to me at one time or another. For tons more tips and workflow tricks, check out the ProAppTips site. And if you have something that other editors could use, consider contributing it.