[Charlie Reader]

Thanks very much everyone- Will have a little play!

[Charlie Reader]

Thanks for the response Dave- I figured the box itself would be easy enough but am less sure about creating the flashing line and the effect of the text being typed- It’s still probably quite easy but I haven’t yet used a technique in AE that I think would help me achieve it. Would you able to advise on those aspects?

[Charlie Reader]

Hi Brad,

Sorry for getting back to me and apologies for my late response.

I used Handbrake to encode the master, using constant quality rather than setting a bitrate target. I also used scopes when grading the video so am fairly sure that it’s all broadcast legal, although saying that I set black to 0/0.3 as it isn’t going on television (only internet release), but this hasn’t been a problem for any of my videos before using the same compression settings.

I will try what you said anyway though!

Thank you

[Charlie Reader]

Thanks for your reply. Because After Effects will not open the MTS files. They are from a Sony FS700

[Charlie Reader]

Thanks very much for all of your advice.

I agree that shooting as much as possible practically is the best way to go, but unfortunately there are a lot of limitations with the location we are filming at- We can’t shoot after sunset and can’t do anything destructive to the area we are filming in (IE digging holes for lights).

I’ve looked into the plugins you guys have mentioned and am feeling more confident about creating the rays in After Effects. I then might shoot an extreme closeup of the characters face at another location like my garden and use a real light to intercut with the medium wide of the beams coming out o the ground- this would add the realism hopefully.

But is there a good way to create shadows for the medium-wide shot?

With regards to the character climbing into the hole- I had thought about animating the mask path of the character, but I’d probably need to film the action in front of a green screen which we don’t have access/time to do. I think I’ve thought of a solution though where the climbing in can be implied rather than shown.

I’m going to do some day-to-night tests this weekend- as I said I can’t shoot at night so am looking to shoot early morning and early evening when theres light but not a huge amount. I’ve done a fair bit of research on day-to-night shooting already but if anyone has any advice they feel would help, please do let me know!

I’m also wondering about creating 3D fog in After Effects in some shots- Again, any tutorials or thoughts on this, feel free to share.

Thanks so much guys!

[Charlie Reader]

(I have After Effects CS5.5 on a mac)

[Charlie Reader]

Thanks very much for all the info! I ended up replacing the opacity key frames with the ‘dip to black’ transition. Not sure whether the problem was to do with the alpha channel thing or not but it seems to have solved it!

Will have a fiddle with the key frame distance on the export and see what I can come up with. Thank you!

[Charlie Reader]

haha glad to hear it.

I’ve actually created the title fades by using keyframes on the opacity line. It’s only just occurred to me to try using a dissolve pre-set instead!

[Charlie Reader]

You’re right – I have always been scared of commitment!

I think I’m just going to accept that its time to commit to Picture Lock, what’s done is done. And then I can do the quickest/easiest thing to colour two cuts and replace all the shots with AE comps.

I think that’s what I’m going to do!..

[Charlie Reader]

Thats a good idea.. I was under the impression that the latter definitions were correct though.

The problem with that though is I wont be able to utilize Color Finesse which is so much better than the standard cc tools in terms of the quality of alterations/how it deals with colour information.

I’m now thinking that I could just replace all the clips in PP with AE comps, copy the original cut into a new sequence, and the make the cuts on the replaced AE comps.

The only downside to this is that obviously these are now AE comps in PP so the rendering will be terrible and the whole edit will truly be locked in the future unless I replace with original and color correct again.

Any thoughts on this?