[Mark Suszko]

Let me preface this by making clear this is just my opinion, and that I have zero idea of your skillsets and aptitudes. I’m basing what I say on myself. If any of it seems like it might apply to you, use it. Or don’t, I won’t mind.

#1 advice:
Don’t sign up for the expensive seminars yet. Not because the place you named isn’t good, likely it is, and there are many choices for such classes. Just that IMO that should be a final step, not the beginning.

You say you are good editors already. So you understand a timeline and keyframing. That will serve you well in setting up animations.

Hopefully, you’ve played around in photoshop and maybe some entry-level 2-d compositing, so you understand layering and maybe texturing. (If not, you NEED to get deep into photoshop and soon) If anything is missing from your experience, it’s in the dimensional area of working with the forms and operations peculiar to that.

So I say, you and your partner, skip the power lectures for a bit, and go take a junior college or privately taught art class together in clay sculpture for a semester. This will really get your eye and brain trained to think in terms of Boolean operations, lathing, skinning, lofting, even IK chains and parenting… the mechanics of how to build up a 3-d form from extrusions of 2-d shapes and combinations of forms. Also, making simple flip-book animations or animated GIFs is great 2-d practice that you can leverage later.

If you just can’t bring yourselves to take a course in hands-on sculpting, at least go to an art store, grab a big blob of cheap plasticene or marblex and one of the handy beginner books, take that home and try building-up progressively more sophisticated items in your kitchen, in private, over a couple of weeks. The clay is re-useable if you keep it moist and bagged. Make simple geometrics, build up animals, try making a human hand.

Concurrently with the hands-on clay play, grab a couple of the most highly-rated Max tutorial books off Amazon, used would be fine. Read and work with the included tutorial materials. You can download a student training edition of Max, I’m pretty certain, for free. Sometimes these are called PLE (Personal Learning Edition) versions. They are the whole application, or the most essential aspects of the application, only their output/saving ability is watermarked or otherwise hobbled in final output so you can’t make anything commercial with it, but you can work with it and practice and experiment all you like, gratis. Later, you can upgrade to full unlimited verions if you wish, with a simple online registering and payment…

Then just get dirty, play with it, open the pre-built models and animation files and take them apart to see the components.

After all that groundwork, THEN is the time I would say attending an expensive 2-5 day course with an expert in MAX would get you the most return on your financial and intellectual investment. These programs are exceptionally deep, and while it is true you can get started with something elementary right away, the path I’ve outlined is what I think leads to better retention and overall comprehension. When you finally take the course with the pro, you won;t just be passive sponges, you’ll be interactive and socratic learners, getting way more out of what he has to teach you. You’ll already know where your comprehension of subjects is weaker, and can direct him to work with you more in those weak areas and skim past the concepts you already have down pat.

I’m a hands-on guy; if you’re teaching me new software, I need to be the one pushing the buttons as you explain something, or I tend not to retain it very long. See it, hear it, DO it, explain it back to the teacher, that’s how I learn best.

Likewise, if I went to a power-seminar right off the bat, without prep work ahead of time, I would tend to get dazzled by the teacher blasting thru the examples, and wind up getting frustrated if I could not control the pace to my needs.

If any of this sounds like you, maybe this is the way for you to go. Everybody learns a little differently, finding a teacher to match your learning style is worth the effort, But IMO coming into ANY course already slightly warmed-up is what accellerates the learning and makes it more worthwhile…

[Mark Suszko]

Considering your clientele, Max is inexpensive and powerful and you have access to a HUGE user community, with years worth of ready-made tutorials and guides handy. Plus, a vast array of pre-made models and accessories make it easy for you to get right into some advanced work by just buying and downloading models, plug-ins and things from places like Turbosquid or web rings of suppliers. C4D, while very nice, can’t boast the same depth of support in user groups and the like. Consider too the wider user base of Max makes it easier for you to hire-in part-time help or collaborate online with contractors that can model or rig for you when the schedules get tight.

I remain a Lightwave fan, but I jealously hate the fact that models and stuff for Max outnumber the same items for LW out there by something like 5-1. Translators like Polytrans can help a little.

[Mark Suszko]

You could buy some stock stills of Famous Italian things, and do some 2.5-D animated layering of them, making them “get skinny” with warps, morphs or DVE moves, while the VO talks about the weight loss ideas.

You can do the same with pictures of food items mentioned in the text, like fat round ripe tomatoes turning into Ferrari-red sensual shapes, or whatever your imagination can suggest.

I’m a fan of that style of collage that creates a “cut paper” look, with the cut pieces being bits of photographs of other kinds of objects to derive the textures. Cosby’s kid show “Little Bill” was a terrific example of this on the relatively realistic-looking side… another kid show that’s really popular has characters of a guinea pig, duck, and turtle that sneak out of the house on secret advantures, and this show, whatever it’s called, goes crazy with the photo textures being usd to illustrate other things. It’s really quite inventive graphically.

You could create a romantic couple, Mr. Basil and Ms. Oregano, made up of food textures, and they can converse using buzzwords from the book or something like that.

[Mark Suszko]

The closest thing I came to doing something like that was a series of spots that went along with a print campaign (small ad cards inside every CTA city bus) about checking out the latest new books at your local public library. Each ad and spot concentrated on one genre, mystery, horror, money, etc. I didn’t have a specific title to promote, what the producer and I came up with were graphic and audio treatments to give the same graphics a different “flavor” for each genre covered. For the suspense/horror version, I remember I poured chocolate syrup onto the top of a white foam core card and recorded that, then layered it in as a luma key with red color and a slight edge shadow to add dimension. So it looks like a normal bunch of graphics on the screen, while the narration gets all scary-sounding, and we throw in organ music and recorded female screams as the fake “blood” runs down the screen… very effective spot for the $5 I spent to make it. Chocolate syrup smells WAY better than paint or ink or theatrical blood, has the right consistency, and cleans up with water, plus, you can teake the rest home and put it on your desserts!
🙂

For your book, whatever it is, you need to find one iconic, totemic type object that people will instantly associate with the title and/or genre or author’s name. Then work up your graphic and compositing treatment to play with that. IF you offer up some details, I might suggest a few ideas.

[Mark Suszko]

I’ve read that the 2-pager propectus should distill the idea and format for the execution to it’s essence, such that, you can successfully present the entire pitch contained in this document in the length of time you share an elevator ride with the exec you’re courting. Pitches are like the Gong Show: you have seconds to hook them, or you’re out.

It would also be good to have more and more detailed pieces ready and waiting if they bite on the 2-page and start asking you questions. Have some “leave-behinds” that clarify and brand anything that might get garbled by someone relaying your pitch to a third party. You know the kids’ game of telephone: the more steps away from you the information takes, the more chances somebody will screw it up, yet you never get to tell everybody the information one-on-one, so have ready a short guide you can leave behind that keeps the concept pure as you delivered it. But don’t insist on handing that out at every opportunity, only where it will do some real good.

[Mark Suszko]

You could perhaps use some open-source software and browser, or just crop that out or create an overlay in photoshop to hide the identity of the browser. If this is not about training for use with a specific platform, then hide or eliminate as much of that extraneous visual information as you can.

I wonder if the Linux people would be as legalistically contentious about such things?

One other point of fact; in national-level spots, often the web sites shown on screens within the spot are completely faked up in AfterEffects or another compositor anyhow, so as to increase the display quality. While it may in some cases look just like the real application, chances are it’s a higher-res mock-up you’re looking at anyhow.

[Mark Suszko]

I’ve seen that done, but most often for national level spots and theatrical releases.

I gotta suggest though that if the viewers are concentrating on what browser the content is being watched on, you have bigger problems.

[Mark Suszko]

Brad, you misunderstood regarding your point 5. I said I always tried to run on AC, *with the battery attached and ready to take over if the AC failed*. At the point of the final departure back up the aisle, soon as they cleared the door, I’d unhook the AC and tripod, and scoot out tot he vestibule to get my hand-held, knowing I had a full battery ready on the camera.

Like I said, this was before lithium ion or Nimh technology was affordably available.

(Get off my lawn, you darn kids!)

[Mark Suszko]

It’s all right Debe, everybody has a bad day once in a while. Why not post your list of PPT-making friends here, maybe some work will come their way.

[Mark Suszko]

Offsetting the camera starting times to stagger when you make the changes is good standard practice. Depending on what kind of ceremony it is, you have different options for good places to makea tape change without losing anything vital. In a Catholic weddin mass, for example, once the bridal party has had communion, you can change tape while everybody else is going up for theirs, and not miss anything vital.

Don’t forget to think about changing batteries in staggered phases as well. When I shot weddings I ran AC power wherever practical, saving the batteries for handheld post-ceremony and reception stuff. I come from a time when battery capacity was much less than it is now, and you really had to have plenty of extras, plus a few on the charger in some corner, to cover everything on the Big Day.