Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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Combustion’s tracker is killer! It was ported from Inferno, Combustion’s high-end cousin. I’ve done stuff, such as track footage onto multiple tv screens in a long, moving shot, and, while it wasn’t easy, it would have been impossible in After Effects. No matter how good the tracker, you’re going to have to do some hand tweaking of keyframes – there’s no way around it. So if you’re quoting the project out, allow an extra 50 to 75 percent of the time you think it’s going to take for all the extra tweakage. It’s easy to get your track really close in Combustion with one pass – it’s tedious to make it look perfect.
The best thing you can do is in the pre-pro – make sure you’ve got marks or dots that are high-contrast for track points. If you can, get a motion control rig, with people that know how to save the camera coordinates – those can often be imported into Combustion, so there’s no need for tracking…just the final tweak.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
I’m not complaining. Anytime a large software company, whose products I earn my living from, asks me what I think of it, I’m willing to spend an HOUR answering questions, and giving opinions.
It really appears that much thought was put into the multiple choice usage profile section, and that they are listening. Now if only AVID would do the same, they might be around for another year or two.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Hey Dog! Another thing to bear in mind when you bring something into AE that originated in a different color space (I assume you got bit by CMYK) is that there is always a slight color shift when you make the conversion, whether it be from Illustrator CMYK to Photoshop RGB, or the conversion is made in Photoshop. We’ve had clients send in logos where the color has to be accurate, and they complain after they see it on the air. We have a policy that if a file comes in from the outside, the client has to do the CMYK to RGB conversion on their end and eyeball it to make sure they’re happy.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Yeah! Isn’t it amazing how corporate rules so often lead to poorer quality, bad morale, ineffective management, and higher profit! Ya gotta love this country!
Joe Bourke
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For some reason, the guy that runs our graphics gateway (which is our on-air playback engine) at the corporate level requires that second pass with Quicktime Pro. I don’t get it either; my feeling is that every time you transcode (even with the same codec) you lose something. But of course DV25 looks bad to begin with. Thanks.
Joe Bourke
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I run into this all the time, depending where I’m doing the viewing. We use Quicktime Pro to output our final DV versions for our playback system (720 x 480). So my workflow out of AE is to first render to the Quicktime DV codec in After Effects (DV/DVCPRO, spatial quality high=100, 48khz audio 16 bit stereo). THEN I open the file up in Quicktime pro and export a DV file (Movie to DV stream, NTSC, 4:3, audio format locked at 48khz). The file looks absolutely horrible just about everywhere except in After Effects, but it airs looking just fine. We have also put this format to tape with good luck.
My opinion on DV (at least DV25, which is what we air in) is that it is just barely broadcast quality. If it’s first generation, which it is, since I send my files directly to our playback server, it holds up. Once you do anything else with it, that transcodes it, losing a generation, you start to get noise, field hash, etc.. As I said, this works for our particular workflow, but you may want to give it a try.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
The first method your friends have suggested is a great way to build your technical skills while also building a demo reel, but it will not help you grasp the reality of dealing with client(s), which is the most difficult part, whether you’re in-house at an agency, and your clients are producers, or you’re freelancing, where every job might be a new client.
A recent Creative Cow magazine article dealt with the issues of dealing with difficult clients (is there anything else?) and not giving your work away. I would guess that it’s on the website as well, so try and find that to start (I think it had “Grinders” in the article or title, referring to clients who grind your price down, while demanding more work).
Since it appears that you’re already out in the workplace and dealing with the realities of putting money in your pocket, I won’t suggest interning, or taking an entry level job at a production facility, both of which are great ways of honing your skills and seeing what’s entailed in the various jobs. If your day job is your meat and potatoes gig, and you’re doing your web design in your off hours, you might consider taking a cut in pay, and making a move into a production house where there’s room to move up.
I would suggest that you start on the self-initiated projects, while keeping an eye on the job listings. The realm of Broadcast Design is getting so broad now that there might be a position where your web design skills are as important as any other skills you might have. Remember…if you can design good graphics, you can just as easily design motion graphics as web ones. The technical parameters are a bit different, the resolution is higher, and there’s motion and effects entailed, but don’t sell you existing capabilities short. There are many broadcast facilities that use their Graphic Designers for on-air, promotions, commercial production, AND web design. Your web design capabilities just might get you in the door. And don’t move from point A until point B is solid. These days just having any job is sometimes a necessity. Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Here’s my two cents, Mikey. I am entirely self-trained. My formal education was in music. I firmly believe that advertising, commercial arts, motion graphics is just rock and roll with a thicker coat of veneer.
Formal training will expose you to all of the techniques you will apply in your career, and, if you get a good teacher(s), may even mold your creative ideas somewhat. What I think separates the real talents from the pack is the ability to start with someone else’s idea (especially in your early development) and carry it further, or bring it in a new direction no one has yet thought of.
Learning all of the software in the world from a technical standpoint will get you only so far. Every graphics software package should have a disclaimer on the side that says: “Talent not included.”.
Look at all the stuff you really like with a critical eye, pick it apart, learn how to do it in After Effects, whether it’s a special effect in a music video, or the latest Chevy commercial. Find every motion graphics website out there that posts examples and duplicate the effects you really like, or, if you can’t, figure out which plugin was used and why. It’s exercises like these that will help you develop both talent and taste. I suggest you buy one (if not all) of the Chris and Trish Meyers books on After Effects:
https://www.cybmotion.com/training/books.html
They are an education in themselves.
One of my music teachers had us write a melody every day, and his reasoning was: “It will get the sh** out of your system.” Every time you create something that’s not quite right, or almost there, is a step toward being where you would like to be. There’s plenty of just ok talent making a living in our industry (and I include myself among them) – it’s those who stay critical of what they do, and work hard to develop their talents, who rise to the top. Good luck.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
As Steve above said, the Chris and Trish Meyer books are a great way to go. They address all the training issues you are ever likely to run across, and the CD that comes with the book is packed with projects that will get you up and running quickly. If I had only enough money to get one thing, it would be one of the Meyers books:
Between the Meyers books and the tutorials on the Cow site, you should be able to be working comfortably in AE within a couple of months (given an hour or so a day reading and working out of the books with AE). Good luck!
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Kevin –
You owe it to yourself (and your facility) to look at the Deko family of graphics machines. We’ve been a Deko facility since the first TypeDeko machines came out (late 90s). They are very intuitive, easy to use, and getting more powerful all the time. We can create graphics (CGs, type effects, and backgrounds – although we use Photoshop for our Paint, then bring it into Deko). It is very intuitive to use (unlike Inscriber, or the AVID type tool) and has a built in language that allows you to simply create templates and formatted graphics that can then be produced via ENPS or MOS (newsroom script and rundown software), or just typed into directly.The Deko family was developed by Pinnacle, but they were purchased a couple of years ago by AVID. Here’s the website:
https://www.avid.com/products/deko1000/index.asp
With a Deko1000, we are able to playback motion graphic templates on air, and then let our producers type in the CGs for lower thirds, full screens, etc.. It works like a charm, except that most of our News producers can’t spell. There are several versions of Deko, from free standing offline versions to full blown live playback engines.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV