[Nate Boston]

Ah, okay this all makes sense now! Thank you for all your help! I’m off to find a dongle!

Nate

[Nate Boston]

Well that is a bummer!

Okay, here’s another queestion:

I have a copy of Avid Express Pro sitting in front of me, but this copy is currently installed on another machine on our network. If I install it on my machine, will it cause conflict with the other machine? If it causes conflict, is it only while we are both trying to run Avid?

Also, is there a physical dongle that I would need to borrow to run this software? I’m familar with the concept of a dongle, but I wasn’t aware that machines running Avid had one installed/physically connected to it. It sounds like this is the case, correct?

Thanks!
Nate

[Nate Boston]

Matt,

I cannont see the effect when I playback within After Effects. I have done what you instructed (interpret the movie Alpha as: Straight – Unmatted), with no improvement.

The “Alpha” box is checked within ProAnimator. I just exported a QT movie with the Animation codec – same result.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!
Nate

[Nate Boston]

aaron who? i don’t think i do know you…or do I?

i know i’m not familar with 118 fanueil street in boston though.

[Nate Boston]

Hey all,

Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions thus far. I have just fnished uploading a copy of my demo reel for everyone to view. I know there is a demo reel forum, but I thought I’d let everyone here know it’s up as well. If you have any feedback, please move on over to the demo reel forum and comment there.

Thanks again!
Nate

https://www.postofficeeditorial.com/movies/nate_reel.mov

[Nate Boston]

The goal of the website is to show all the other stuff you can’t fit into the 3-4min demo reel. Sort of like the “show me all you’ve got” dvd you had talked about. I like the idea of creating a seperate montag-y thing for the site and the DVD, leaving it out of the actual demo.

But that makes me wonder what direction I should take the demo? Currently I work for a small post house who’s clients are generally corporate or inudstrial. The stuff I’ve edited is just that – corporate and industrial. It’s also not very exciting (good edits, but the subject matter is kind of slow). Do you think this matters? I know a good edit is a good edit, but I’m looking at this demo reel as a way to sell myself in a short period of time – and I only get one shot to make a good impression.

So is slower, maybe not as interesting stuff worth showing, as long as it’s good? Or should I just focus on flashier, faster stuff to keep the attention of a possible employer?

Nate

[Nate Boston]

Steve thank you! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. My only concern is that I’m working on making a demo reel for my website, so I want that one to be a little bit of everything. On the site I’ll also include a bunch of other works, but the demo should shine on it’s own.

I really like the idea of the full feature DVD, opening with a killer demo, so that is what I’ll be working on.

I’ll keep you all posted as to when I finish it, because I’d love real feedback.

Thanks again!
Nate

[Nate Boston]

Thank you Shane and Chaz. I want to do some combination of music montage with selected video clips. Opening the entire reel with a :30sec montage sounds good. But what do you think of Intercutting the two idea’s together? For example, the piece starts with a :15sec montage, but on the last video clip the music drops and all of a sudden you are in a scene from a fully edited video? As the scene comes to a close, you fade to black then quickly back to another short montage. The next montage would preface the next fully edited video clip (so if the next clip was about sailing, the montage would be a bunch of sailing/ocean images). Then back to black and so forth.

I have a number of great edited pieces, but they are corporate work and not very fast paced. I like the look/feel of a fast paced demo reel, so I’m trying to incorporate both together. My general feeling is that a demo should feel quicker than it actually is, and it should leave the audience wanting more – in this case wanting to employ me 🙂 I also want to highlight some graphic/3D skills I have, so I’m thinking of dropping in some of that work for the montage sections.

I really like the idea of everything you see in the reel being my own work (from graphics, to editing, to music selection, and in most cases to shooting). First and foremost I’m and editor, but if they ask, “Yes I happened to shoot that as well.” You know what I mean?

Thoughts?

[Nate Boston]

Get a new job.

LOL, okay but seriously, get a new job. This is not an easy task by any means. But if you want to take stab at it, keep reading…

You have to buy a domain name yes (something http://www.mynewwebsite.com). Once you have that, you need to find a company to host your website. I suggest Globat.com, or you can search google for others who provide the same service. But basically, you pay a company like Globat money each month to hold your website on their computer, so the rest of the world can stop by and view it.

Then you have to build the website. I posted this basic process about a week ago, but here goes again:

The basic (and this is very basic) breakdown of how a website is made is this:

1. Create a design in Photoshop or some other imaging software.

2. Export (this is where photoshop comes in handy) your design with “slices”. Photoshop even creates an HTML document for you.

3. Import your HTML file into a web creation application (such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver), and edit it to your liking.

4. Upload your HTML, image, movie, etc files to your web server and you’re all set.

If you are trying to update a website, I would get your hands on Dreamweaver (or a similar program) and go from there. You can do quite a bit of “point and click” editing, and you don’t have to know how to code. This will probably make all the real web guys on here cringe, because from what I gather Dreamweaver creates really ugly code. However, from a simplistic standpoint, it will get the job done for you and hopefully make you look like you know what you’re doing 😉

There are also a lot of books out there on this specific software, as well as others. You really have to have a good familiarity with computers to do this. If you run into problems it’s good to know how computers work, so you might be able to fix them.

If all else fails, you can check this out:

https://www.ehow.com/how_2034851_build-website-company.html

Good Luck!

[Nate Boston]

Have you tried going to the compressed file you made and opening it up in Quicktime? Skip over DVDSP entirely and see if the files plays in Quicktime alone. If it plays back fine, go ahead and burn it.

I know in the new versions of DVDSP the preveiw looks like crud. But when you burn it things look great. You might even try burning it once and see what kind of results you get.

Another option is to de-interlace the video before you compress it. This can easily be done in Final Cut Pro by using the de-interlace filter.

Nate