[Christopher Travis]

🙁

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks Glenn,

You can have “Get Bin Info” set to a key by using “menu to button assignment” and grabbing “get Bin Info” from the “bin” menu. The problem comes when trying to attach the “show reference clips” action, I don’t believe that can be assigned to a key. Never mind, I’m half way there with the get bin info” shortcut, that’ll do for me if that’s as far as it can go.

[Christopher Travis]

Yes I have. I learned a lot from it, and having it in my bag gave me a lot of confidence on my first Avid gigs.

Maybe it’s that case that I just need to keep practicing to get the muscle memory down, no one is complaining that I’m slow. I just feel like, with FCP, I knew it inside out, and felt confident that I was attacking each action with the best tool for the job. With Avid I feel like I’m taking more button presses and mouse clicks to achieve things, and more often finding later down the line that I’ve messed something up by accident.

[Christopher Travis]

A “taster tape” is in common parlance where I come from (London). It’s a not-for-broadcast clip produced for commissioners or clients to sell either a programme idea or to show new presenting talent. I’m cutting a talent taster at the moment.

As for the results I’m not at all surprised to see Avid top of the pile, and I’ve no reason to call the results into question since Televisual is one of the countries leading industry magazines. They would have been able to canvas opinions from decision makers at the top of the country’s biggest production companies and facilities.

I can easily believe that in the wider (and ever widening) video production market that PP and FCPX are gaining share, and with good reason, but in TV and film, Avid isn’t going anywhere.

[Christopher Travis]

Motion is generally acknowledged to be able to give you about 80% of what AE can do, for about 50% of the time investment. It’s designed to pre-empt a lot of the repetitive tasks that get done in AE, and boil them down to simpler, though slightly less customisable procedures.

My Motion skills have slipped a lot in recent years since I’ve learned more how to use AE, but I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t know or have AE but wants to do nice looking mograph quickly, and doesn’t need infinite customisation and/ or expressions.

[Christopher Travis]

Not sure where I fall on the intro/extro spectrum. I’d basically say I’m a bit shy. I like people and enjoy company, but I’m not gregarious. I tend to wait until I’ve been spoken to before speaking my mind. This could be because I’m English. Anyway this thread seems to have turned into one about working alone Vs working with others, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on that.

I’ve been cutting broadcast docs and factual stuff for about 7 years and have had a nice variety of experience when it comes to the solo vs collaborative ways of working. I think the dynamic here is different to the corporate world because you tend not to be working with “clients” but “collaborators” in the form of producers or directors who (hopefully) know as much or more about film making as you do.

When I started out, I was working with lazy directors who knew I was young and keen, so they would dump the footage on my desk and say “have at it”. Which was fine by me, I got to take ownership of the project and develop my own storytelling skills, and they got to go to the pub. So for the first few years I really enjoyed working alone because it felt like I owned the end result more. One problem with this was that I never really had any mentors. No guidance from those more experienced than me, which would have been useful in those early years.

Despite the lack of mentorship I’ve managed to hack my way into slightly bigger jobs these days and find that now more often than not I’m working with a producer or director over my shoulder all day. This was a big shock to me at first and took some getting used to. The first thing I learned was that even if your producer knows exactly what they want, don’t slip into “auto-pilot” mode and just blindly implement their instructions, because at some point they will ask what you think and you need to have been paying attention. That was a big one for me.

Over the last few years I’ve had good and bad experiences with producers but overall I must say that I broadly prefer working with an engaged partner. I love just sitting there and swapping ideas for ways to make scenes or stories work. Sometimes we’ll just talk from 9am till 4pm. But by that time we’ve hammered out the bare bones of the story and I can just throw the sync cut together in an hour or two because we know it’s going to work.

I’m finding this way of working to be a revelation to me because A) if I’ve worked with someone to get the structure right, then I don’t find that I’m terrified of exec viewings because I’ve got the support of my producer and B) I feel like I’m finally getting the help and guidance from more experienced film makers that I didn’t get in my early days. I honestly thought I knew it all about 3 years ago, but I’ve learned so much more since then and am excited at the thought of how many other people I’ll (hopefully) get to work with in the years to come.

Naturally working so closely with one person for 12 hours or more a day 5 days a week can become stressful and there have been times when I’ve been staring at my screen, clutching my mouse tightly, willing the producers head to explode so I don’t have to hear them say “I’m still not sure about this music” one more time.

I think the perfect scenario for me is working closely with someone to get the story straight, then being left alone to make it look and sound right. It does not take 2 people to choose every cutaway, reaction shot and music track.

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks to everyone for your responses.

As ever, there are numerous ways to achieve ones goal in After Effects and it’s always interesting to hear different approaches even if I’ve found one that works already as hearing about other techniques can often lead to a breakthrough or inspiration in other areas or projects. So thanks again

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks Declan,

This worked a treat.

[Christopher Travis]

Thanks very much Declan.

I can’t try this right now but it sounds like it’s going to do the trick. I’ll come back and let you know though.

[Christopher Travis]

Ok, thanks Ty.

The music beds are pretty quiet in the mix anyway, I was just wondering if there were anything extra I could do. I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear, some sound ok, others not so much.