Larry S. evans ii
Forum Replies Created
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Tim,
Wondering if you’ve had nay luck with this. I’ve got it happening on two machines. One does in fact have NVidia drivers which are probably older in order to play nice with my Lightwave. But the other machine doesn’t have hardware OpenGL. Everything else plays nice except Encore on both machines.
Any info is appreciated. This will become a real problem in a few weeks.
Larry
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
I’ve done the “Star Wars” style opener a number of times. The easiest way to do that is to create the entire text as an image in something like Photoshop, rather than using the text tools in After Effects. After Effects tracks all that text as vector points, and if you’ve got a lot of letters, then you’ve got a lot of points to keep track of, etc.
However, in Photoshop you can pre-build the text layer and rasterize it so that it’s just pixels. Import it into AE as it’s own layer, and then turn on 3D layer. Rotate it on the X axis (X runs, left to right, Y up and down, and Z front to back) and then animate it travelling on Z. I guarantee you it will render faster.
As for the file size, I’m in complete agreement with my peers. You are probably rendering out at full-frame uncompressed AVI and depending on the length of the animation and the size of the video (SD or HD, etc.) the files can get huge. Full-frame uncompressed is advisable only if you are going to do further processes to the video (such as frame by frame editing, sound sync, etc.). If this is the “final” then render it to the codec for your output format.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Thanks. Camera is on the way.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
My company bills $150 an hour for my work. Oddly enough that’s not what I’m paid.
The difference between what I make and what my time bills for goes to all sorts of things like the office space (yes you can work from home-if your zoning and/or deed restrictions allow it- can you expect clients to pay $125 to meet you over the kitchen table?), electricity, phones, office supplies, payroll taxes, social security, insurance (health, property/casualty, auto, E&O, etc.), hardware and software upgrades, marketing costs, collection costs, and accounting -just to name a few.
A whole lot has to be done to make a business viable, and unless you are a master of all of it, and can still find time to do the actual revenue producing work, you may find yourself quickly in deep trouble.
I’d suggest you seriously re-evaluate your supposition that you only need an additional 3-4k to go out on your own. Ambition is a fine thing, and good luck with it, but check your numbers against reality first.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
Dickens is public domain, hence everyone has lifted from it for “Christmas special” material every year. To the best of my knowledge there is no “Dickens Estate” or other body that holds rights to any of his works. -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
No problem.
I actually had an actor write his lines on a whiteboard in shot once. Fortunately the lighting obscured what DOF didn’t. -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
In reading your question, I gather this was just background content rather than something actually referred to in dialog, or held in close shot. In that case, you’re probably okay.
“Is it good for the company?” could be on any whiteboard in any office on the planet, so even though that phrase might be copyrighted in the script of Office Space (as dialog), it’d be really really hard to make a case for intentional infringement.
The TPS report cover reference is a bit more direct, but again, in the absence of an admission of guilt, the anagram “TPS” could apply equally to what your fictional company was preparing reports on. Anagrams cannot be copyrighted.
One has, under copyright law, the “Fair Use” defense, and one of the Fair Uses is parody. I have spoofed many copyrighted productions(although I won’t go near a Disney property) for purposes of parody or satire. Generally if one is not being defamatory or claiming endorsement from the copyright holder, such use is excused under Fair Use. Be clear, however, that Fair Use is a defense against a lawsuit claiming infringement (which may or may not be accepted by a court) and not a privelege under the law.
The ultimate question here is whether or not what you have going on in the scene is more interesting than what was written on the board. Unless you have somehow draw specific attention to it, many viewers will not even notice the “inside joke”, and those who do will not likely go marching down to the production company for Office Space and turn you into their attorneys.
If you are really that concerned about it, just add a bit of blur to the board to make it less readable, or replace it with something else. Odds are it’s not an issue to even think about paying legal fees over, but the easiest and cheapest way to avoid any trouble is just to erase it.
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
A LEGAL copyright notice is of the following form in the U.S.:
©2008-My Production Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The copyright symbol on a Windows PC is accessed by holding down the alt key and typing 0169. You can also use the word “Copyright” instead of the symbol.
Note that changes in U.S. Copyright Law to bring it into compliance with European and other countries now require registration with the Copyright Office (at $45 per) in order to bring a claim for infringement seeking damages.
The “private viewing” portion is not actually required by law, but is frequently added based on the idea that somebody viewing it may not be fully aware of what copyright prohibits. While that’s really not a valid defense for infringement, lawyers being what they are (and I’m married to mine) they add the “overkill”. You can get by with the following:
“This motion-picture photoplay is protected by copyright and other applicable laws in the United States and other nations and may not be duplicated, distributed, re-broadcast, or used in any other manner without the expressed written consent of the copyright owner. This material is intended for personal use only and the public exhibition or broadcast of this material is prohibited by law.”
As for the disclaimer, this is frequently added by studio attorneys to cover themselves if the rights and releases department missed something. While I would agree with the previous poster that it sometimes leads to bizarre and humorous implications, it’s still not a bad idea, just in case someone somewhere gets the bug to sue you.
It’s far more likely that this would be a small business type of thing where you accidentally or coincidentally used the name of a business or product in your indie project, without ever knowing about it. But consider that if your indie project shows someone getting killed by an Amalgamated Widget, the guys who actually make that might rightly be upset. The following verbage is generally adequate for this sort of thing:
“This motion-picture photoplay is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons (living or dead), places, events, or other material is coincidental and unintentional.”
And just to keep everyone happy, you probably also want to add that line that “No animals were harmed in the making of this motion-picture.” It’s also not legally required, especially if you didn’t have any animals in the picture, but you know some people get really outrageous about these things. If you’re planning on making the rounds at Sundance and similarly activist festivals, it can’t hurt. -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
That’s almost the definition of limited memory. I would ask you to answer the following questions though, as it may be of some help in diagnosing the problem:
1. When you say “do something to the comp”, do you mean do ANYTHING to the comp, or just do the same thing that you were trying to do but didn’t complete? It may be that this particular task is causing some failure in the system, however, if ANY change to the comp produces the error, then there’s probably a different cause.
2. Are you saving the comp before trying to render? This would tend to argue for a memory problem. In other words, you’ve made a change and all of that change is in memory somewhere. When you go to render, the system runs out of memory or scratch space because it’s already storing all the changes. You may be able to fix that with either saving the file, or purging the file. If you want to be able to reverse those changes after rendering, then use “Save As” to a new file and see if that works.
3. Are you using an external hard drive for scratch space? Sometimes external drives go into “sleep mode” either due to driver settings or the OS and if they don’t properly respond to a wake-up call from the application, then it can cause errors, either because the scratch space is not there when expected, or because parameters written out to it are not accessible. To fix that, either use internal (and awake) drives for scratch, or change the drive settings to make it stay awake unless you tell it otherwise. Not sure how to do that on a Mac these days.
If those don’t help, you might see if there are large temp files floating around on your drives from the previous crashes. Failing that, you might try reinstalling After Effects to make sure it has all the proper libraries and that none of them have become corrupted. I am presuming you have not installed any updates to either the OS or video drivers, etc. recently, but if you have, try rolling those back to the last version and see if the problem goes away. -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions -
There are probably numerous tutorials or tips here for lightsabers, and there are two very good ones over at Videocopilot.net.
As far as “making a greenscreen” there are a lot of options.
I shot for two years on one made from a tarp painted with flourescent green marking paint (about $6.00 a can at your larger hardware supply stores. A can covers maybe six or seven sq. ft. well. Light spots will necessitate a lot of cleanup).
“Pro” greenscreen paint comes from Bosco Industries and is about $50 a gallon. It can be purchased from theatrical supply houses, but figure you’ll pay almost that much in shipping if there’s not one near you. A gallon is supposed to give you a reasonably large wall (10′ x 12′).
You can also buy premade fabric or foam greenscreens of several types and varieties from various online places. I got mine from Tubetape.com for around $150, including the hanging rig. It’s 10′ X 12′ and rolls up to put in the bag the rig fits in. I got a second hanging rig for my lights from there too. Lights are important. A poorly lit screen will be a mess to clean up.
Now, if you’re stop motion is table-top, go down to the local sprawlmart or hobby store and buy a couple of sheets of neon green poster board, and tack them onto the wall or a frame so that they fill the area behind your camera. That’ll cost you less than ten bucks total in most places. I use them for doing model shots and miniatures when the scale is small enough to accomodate it. Just remember to light it well so that there are no shadows and you’ll be able to key out fairly well.
As for techniques for keying, follow the tutorials at this website and explanations in the manual. That horse has well and truly been beat to death, and there’s no point in trying to “improve” on what other’s have said much better, before. -R
Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions