Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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If you can track down Nimbus Sans L, you’ll be very close to a solution. It was released as part of an open source set of 35 fonts similar to the postscript set, called Ghostscript.
Here’s some background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_Sans_L#Nimbus_Sans_L
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I hear you loud and clear, Kim. I did a recent project for a company in the Central African Republic. We set everything up for them to make Skype calls to me (first warning – no video on Skype calls, not enough bandwidth).
I let them know that I had a 50GB Dropbox account, so there would be no problem sending approvals files, and then final delivery. As it turned out, the approvals files (at 640 x 360) sometimes took four to six hours to download (they only have dialup in Bangui), and sometimes they didn’t go through at all on the first shot, when there were interruptions in service. I ended up sending the entire final delivery package via FedEx on a LaCie 500GB tough drive. It took about six days, about the same amount of time it would have taken downloading from Dropbox. Oh well. Live and learn.
So I guess in our discussions of the Cloud, we should remember that the “Cloud”, as it stands, is totally different depending on where you live.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I think that you might want to leave the music mix as is, other than just matching levels with the VO. If the music came from a production source – which it sounds as if it did – my guess is that there is already compression on it.
I would just put together a rough audio mix with everything in place, then sit there with my eyes closed, and headphones on (or near-field monitors if you’ve got them), and tweak levels until it sounds right. Just an opinion – that’s how I’d do it. You might want to try a second mix if you’ve got the time, with compression on the music, then A/B them to see which one you like best. It’s really a matter of preference, I think.
Here’s an interesting read on audio compression – somewhere in there he warns about compressing music which is already compressed:
https://georgegraham.com/compress.html
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
You might want to check out Pond5.com. They have a huge collection of stock stills, video, music, etc., and their prices are very good. With a quick search I found a nice shot (search found Satellite Aerial) moving about the earth – satellite POV. Even if you don’t find anything specific, it’s a great idea generator.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
It’s a shame that what could have been a short, albeit pithy, dialogue has turned into such a large waste of back and forth. Everyone has a point here, and it all boils down to whether you’re in the thick of the broadcast industry, or in the trenches in the film industry. Different tools will be adopted, cast aside, improved, assets sold off, and so on. It’s all about money and numbers, not art or coolness (that’s for the marketing department), from the standpoint of the manufacturers and distributors.
Back in the late 80’s I was writer/AP, then producer and co-host, of a television show called PCTV Live! (a live weekly show on Thursdays). We got the best and brightest of the software/hardware industry people and products, and I had my hands on tons of the cutting edge products. If I had a list of the ones which would have moved things forward, it would not have been anywhere near the list of those which succeeded. At the time, the Mac platform had about 13 or 14 percent of the PC market – we followed the numbers weekly, and that was the high-point of Mac dominance. There was the Amiga, the NeXt, OS2, CorelDraw, the Xerox paperless workflow, and dozens, if not hundreds of other cool technologies, which dominated, then poof! What I’m getting at is that the iPad, while a cool tool (maybe) on first blush, is only as good as it’s apps. Add to that the fact that every new model orphans the last, and you get a sense that the iPad is like the stapler – sell it for relatively cheap, and reap the profits on the consumables (the apps). Do they get the job done? Who cares? How many apps did we sell?
I’m not throwing stones at it – I’m just being a realist. My day to day graphics work is on the Adobe CS Master Collection, and 3DS Max. I have an Android tablet, a Blackberry, and I’m constantly staying up on the OS and encoding issues, because my clients demand their productions play back on their iPad, iTouch, Blackberry, and whatever disposable comes along next week. Today’s cutting edge is next month’s museum piece, in case you haven’t noticed it. I have to stay up on what’s new and cool – I don’t have to use it as a production tool. My laptop (ThinkPad W510 with the CS5 Master Collection) is as small as I need to get, thank you (at this point in time). To me, anything below (form factor) a laptop is part of the distribution chain.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi Cara –
The good news is that you’re already several steps ahead of those who want to get into motion graphics, but have no background in art. I think you may be narrowing your scope a bit much by wanting to target companies who work with HBO, but, that said, it’s good to aim at something – you can always change direction.
A knowledge of design, typography, perspective, composition, and other “traditional” facets of an art education are essential (or should be) to getting into motion graphics. If you’re studying graphic design at a college, you may want to look around right where you are. Many colleges which teach a traditional art education are also offering animation and motion graphics courses.
I don’t know what you have for software (I use the Adobe CS5 Production Suite, 3D Studio, and a few other ancillary packages) , but a good place to start is to look at what you like (obviously HBO, at this point), and try to figure out just what is being done. Many of the animations are simply multiple stills layers being animated in x, y, and z space, and being overlaid in various modes (much like Photoshop), so as to look much more complex than they really are. When you add these to video, the illusion of depth can be astonishing.
I think that by studying what you like, picking that apart, taking some courses in After Effects, or other compositing software, Photoshop, and Illustrator (if you’re not already), plus starting to think of the screen not as a flat object, but as more of a viewport into space, you will be on your way.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
That’s a nice analysis of your methodolgy. I find that I still use a combination of the notepad and the metadata. Although, since I’ve been using After Effects for a very long time (way before metadata), I had to come up with a system of file naming which would serve me well.
I still use that system, in combination with the above. To simplify it, I use file names for my projects which are descriptive of the project (i.e., “MadgeTech_Open_10sec.aep”). I follow that as my versions are save sequentially, with a number sequence (i.e., “MadgeTech_Open_10sec_1.aep” and on…). Once I hit the revision stage, I start adding “_rev1.aep” as I go along. Enough of that.
Since metadata, I’ve also started putting descriptions in the description field, and using keywords so that I can sort the various opens, bumps, rejoins, etc. as a project goes along. I still have to use the notepad because not all of my files are combatible with Adobe XMP. I have .3ds and .max files, and a whole lot of others. I suppose that if I were doing file sharing or workgroup stuff, that I would be a lot more anal with my tagging the metadata.
But with all the gee-whiz stuff available, I rely on the yellow pad probably a lot more than I should, and I file the pages I rip out into project files in my desk. Granted, the critical stuff that I’ll need to get my hands on quickly, I sometimes transcribe into a word file (PMS colors, key file names of master projects, plugins used, etc.).
To be honest, nothing replaces organization, whether you do it with a yellow pad, a laptop, or metadata. I don’t think that any one of them is the cure-all, but the keywords and metadata make my life a whole lot more organized, and I can get at files very quickly when I need them, using Adobe Bridge.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi David –
Here’s what Adobe says about it in CS4:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a4f2dff7-79a3a.htmlAnd here’s what Adobe says about it in CS5/5.5:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a4f2dff7-79a2a.html
I hope the info helps. I have not done it at this point. I have a fast machine (although not cutting edge, by any means), and it’s not been an issue.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Of course I missed a big one – Sonic Fire Pro – a lot of editors I know use it to create custom arrangements which can be timed and “arranged” to perfectly fit their video productions:
https://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/
While not a music composition package, it does allow for a lot of customization of their tracks.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Victor –
While Rod has a point, he maybe isn’t aware that there are lots of options out there for non-musicians. There’s UJam, which probably doesn’t have lots of classical choices, but I haven’t checked it out thoroughly:
There’s also Steinberg Sequel:
https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/sequel/start.html
Sequel is more of a sequencing package, which uses pre-defined loops to create custom music.
Of course there’s ACID music, a looping tool, and there are many others of this type, which allow you to “compose” by using pre-defined loops, and mixing them together. Soundforge, FL Studio, and GarageBand are others.
There are also collections of music loops in styles that you can purchase and use in whatever audio software you choose:
https://macloops.com/audio/free_garageband_classical_music_loops.php
There’s a whole world of music out there for the non-musician.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com