[Chris Smith]

Was he saying us teasing you about flocking was flaming him? Go figure. Can’t make everyone happy all the time.

Looking forward to your 4th mograph tutorial Mylenium. Love the first 3.

[Chris Smith]

I suppose it’s relative. But to me an average budget for 1 spot is 120k to 300k for production only (post bid separate). Low/no budget is under 50k for shoot AND post. I’m pretty sure you could rig that kind of thing for under 12k.

We did a “pro-bono” PSA spot last year. We pulled in our Panavision favors,Film Workers transferred for free, used film from our closet, used our own ARRI cam, asked regular crew members to donate their time and it was still 15k out of pocket. So free jobs still have SOME cash being thrown around, but at the end of the day, the client isn’t paying much, if any of it. So everyone is thinking what the cheapest options are. And the choice here is a physical gag which relative to a huge post effect is a pretty simple thing to do. When we do things like this, we hire a “Thing builder” guy (similar to the Mythbusters) that handles any weird builds and they find creative ways to do these things cheaper than one would think.

[Chris Smith]

I like flocking a dead horse better. The thought of a swarm of necrotic equine sounds more fascinating then just whipping one on the ground. With Mylenium’s cool German accent, any word sounds appropriate.

[Chris Smith]

You don’t even have to watch the spot to know it’s a practical effect. Drunk Driving is a PSA which means shot for favors instead of having a budget. Doing water simulation would have been completely out of the question. No time/money. Even if there was a budget, as long as you’re not simulating an ocean or massive flood, practical is the easiest, smartest, best looking approach.

[Chris Smith]

I used to use just QT movies like you describe. But since AE7 went 32 bit float, I always render out OpenEXR so I can relight everything in AE.

[Chris Smith]

Thanks, guys. Glad you like them. It’s a lot more fun working on these tools knowing that others have uses for them as well.

[Chris Smith]

Here’s a quick article on it:

https://www.dzine.tv/dzine/result.php?id1=830

[Chris Smith]

Leor,

If you just choose “Quicktime Movie” as your output source it will set the Quicktime to Animation codec. If you turn on “Alpha” it will behind-the-scenes make it a Millions of Colors+ for you. It defaults to a premultiplied alpha. If you want it a straight alpha (I usually do) then click the “Straight Alpha checkbox”.

Create a folder and set the save path for your movie, multipasses and the AE file to all go to the same folder. So when you bring in your AEC it should see all the correct files.

[Chris Smith]

Thanks, guys. Hope you they help you like they do me.

[Chris Smith]

Thanks, guys. Hope you they help you like they do me.