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Cool Creative 3rd party Plug Ins
Anybody know where I can get some cool, preferably free, 3rd party plugins. Sapphire is awesome but they cost way too much and there liscense only works on one computer. Stibs has some cool useful ones.
I do a lot of corporate videos. Guys want quick turnaround and more bang for the buck. I find myself having less and less time fore after effects.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE
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4 Replies
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There’s a pretty comprehensive list here:
https://proapptips.com/tips/links.php?category=Plugins
FREE? A few…but c’mon…someone worked hard on these and you want them for free? You worked long nad hard on your corporate piece, would you give it up for free?
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This reminds me of the old “Production Triangle” that we learned of in school.
Picture each one on the tip of different points on a triangle:
Good
Fast
Cheap
Then tell your client to “Pick two”.
If your corporate producers want fast turnaround and lots of flash, then they need to pony up for some stock effects and filters. Find a budget for it. If they don’t then each project that needs to be done in a hurry is not going to have the flash. Each project that needs to be done and needs flash will not be done quickly, unless some money is made available. There’s not that much of a way around it.
Digital Juice’s Editor’s Toolkits are good for stock graphics, as well as 12 Inch Design, just to name two. I have Boris Red and Continuum Complete for effects and filters. However, the learning curve on those is steep, and after 9 months of owning it, I don’t feel like I have a handle on how to use it AT ALL. I might look elsewhere for filters if I were shopping again.
They can find a couple grand in the Marketing budget. There’s always money in the Marketing budget. Convince them to buy once, use forever. (Okay, they will eventually get stale, but I find the Editor’s Toolkits are a great jumping off point. I use the packages and other Digital Juice products (JumpBacks and VideoTraxx) to create my own customized graphic treatments.)
Stock gfx and filters should be viewed by corporate producers just like stock music and sound efx. They just need to exist. Period. They don’t have the sound guy build a new piece of music for each production, do they? No, there’s not the money or the time for that. Why should they expect an editor to design a new graphic treatment every time? Same argument. New decade.
You know the politics of your place. Find the most diplomatic way to explain to the person who holds the purse strings or makes the decisions about when the purse strings get pulled that stock graphics, filters and footage are pretty much status quo these days. Not spending the money to have it available to you for every project actually costs them more money because it takes more of your time to build graphic elements from scratch. If you need to, add up how long it takes you to create a graphic treatment, to build a background. Multiply that by how many projects you do a year. If they can see the savings in your time, and therefore their money, and also know that is shaves 4 hours off of every project, they may see the wisdom and value.
You really have to argue your case to those who don’t understand the process, especially when those are the folks who are making the money decisions. They need you to explain to them why it’s beneficial to them to spend this money, even if there’s no internal client to bill it back to. They can build that in to the budget for each new project. Add $100 or $200 per project for graphics, or whatever, and paying for the stock will eventually pay for itself.
These tools exist to make our lives easier, but also to save our clients money. There’s no reason to recreate the wheel for every lower- or medium-budget project when such great resources exist already.
debe
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Digital Heaven makes some great plug ins for only $10 each. I find them invaluable as they make up for gaps in FCP’s toolset.
Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc. -
Very Helpful info
THANX
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