[Mark Suszko]

This has got me on tenterhooks, as my 6-ish-year-old, 27-inch home iMac, with the optical drive slot and SDHC slots on the side, and plenty of USB AND t-bolt ports – just crapped out it’s graphics card this week. I’d been keeping it on the older OS with my FCP7 suite…. and resisting upgrades. I bought it with money from a NASA contract I did and so it has some sentimental value to me as well. At home right now I’m running on an 80-dollar Android Chromebook I normally use for ukulele practice.

I’m betting I missed the widow for having Apple fix this for free, it was a known problem but only just now manifested on my machine – SO I’m wondering what to do – sit tight and see what gets announced this week – go forward with hundreds of bucks in repairs on an old machine, or maybe buy a replacement graphics processor and do my own repair using guides from iFixit.

[Mark Suszko]

This is a custom app written for production companies and edit facilities; it’s a “skin” that actually sits on top of and interfaces with good old Filemaker Pro. It’s been around a long time, and one of the functions, the “library” lets you tag and check-in/ check-out/ track every resource you care to label and enter into the system, from tapes and memory cards to cameras and grip gear, to props, etc. This software has a barcode module in it so all you add is the hand scanner and a label printer and you’re off to the races.

https://www.studiosuite.com/

[Mark Suszko]

I’m afraid Ned’s assessment is the more likely ending to the story. There is no guarantee you’re gonna be picked to direct this show if it goes to production. That’s the Executive Producer’s call, and the network’s call. The best you’re going to get is probably an ongoing screen credit, as one of the originators, but no real money. If you want to make continuous profit off the idea, you have to either bankroll the thing yourself as Producer or Executive producer, or become a/the Writer, and get residuals from the writing. You wanna get rich quick, buy a lotto ticket. The odds are better.

[Mark Suszko]

Following this discussion with interest. It covers so many creative endeavors, from typography to architecture and more.
Consider the amount of space you apply between letters in a section of type. There’s a natural break-point in every font where it gets too hard to still recognize a word, because the inter-character spacing is too wide. And conversely, You can bunch those letters together so closely they overlap into a jumble. Stretching and squashing type like that, adjusting “Leading” and “Kerning” is a common way to animate titles by transitioning the words from illegible to legible and back.

In architecture, form and space each define the other. I can’t stand it when some rube looks at an atrium space and declares it a waste of productive room that needs to be filled up with… “stuff”. I actually got to see this in play in one of our buildings, which originally had a central, open, reception and multi-use space in an atrium with a great view. The atrium got walled off into private offices and conference rooms, leaving no practical area to receive or hold visitors. Now they just stand in the elevator lobby like cattle before the chutes.

Powerpoint slides from clients are the bane of my existence: every client acts as if they’re going to be charged by the individual slide, so they overload them until they look like the hood of a NASCAR racer, or they cram thirty columns of Excel Spreadsheet into one slide. You have to hold them by the hand and almost force them to break down their bullet points and ideas over more slides, so that the typography is large enough to read and understand, with enough clear space around it to frame it.

And back to the edit: even in something as short as a “vine” video, you need to play with beats of time to make the story or joke work… you’re working in a micro time scale, but the issues of timing in making the story work are the same.

[Mark Suszko]

Try Rampant and Motion VFX

[Mark Suszko]

You are one of those people that won’t just yank off the bandage in one go… you have to slowwwllly peel it off. I get it. I’m like that on some things.

You can get a swell 20 or 27 inch used/refurbed imac with the latest software on it for about $300-$700 from OWC, comes with a warranty and everything. Run all your other apps on that, leave this system alone and use it just for editing. Put FCPX and new Motion on the new system, and dabble with it in your leisure time.

[Mark Suszko]

I keep an older FCP7 suite around chiefly for access to DVDStudio pro, just so I can do stuff like this, but I don’t think even it does menus for bluray. Fort hat you probably need to buy a third party software like Roxio Toast titanium or the like, or subscribe to Adobe’s online services for a month.

[Mark Suszko]

This specific oddball thanks you for the response:-) I have an inquiry out to the local steel fabricator. Still, it’s easier for me, purchase-order-wise, to find a pre-made product .

[Mark Suszko]

All I see is a cut to the shoes, with an overlay of light leaks leading up to it and if you step-frame the previous few frames, it’s backed-up one or two frames every three or four going forward, about three times.

[Mark Suszko]

Slice x makes this easy but if for some reason you can’t get it, you can make a duplicate layer, offset the position on the x or y axis, just far enough to get clean green from near the same area, and crop it to create a moving mask before keying…

Other options-

Motion track the guy using the built-in tools, and parent a green patch from nearby to it in Motion or AE. before doing the key.

Multipoint drawn mask tool is keyframe-able, and easy to use right in FCPX.

You could try to chromakey the tear using it’s specific color.