Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Charlie Austin] “cool. 🙂 I once did a wild cheat/recut of of a gag in a trailer, and they recut it in the film to match it. Silent validation. lol”
Good on you! Yes, it does happen – surprisingly often. Trailer editors aren’t actually the hapless drones that they’re usually perceived to be – a lot of them that I know can edit way better than a lot of feature editors.
[Charlie Austin] “mmm, dailies…
-studio calls…-
Studio: “Here’s the first 3 daily rolls, we need you to cut a teaser from these. Make it look big”
Vendor: “Great!, you got it!”
-studio hangs up-
Vendor” “*&%*^*#$&%*#^*^#!!!!!!””Brilliant! That totally sums it up.
Simon Ubsdell
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Simon Ubsdell
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[Charlie Austin] “[Herb Sevush] “Seriously and out of curiosity, since I’ve never cut trailers – I would have thought that you would be using the title treatments of the film itself – doesn’t the distributor provide graphic elements for that? Or am I being naive?””
On occasion, I’ve even had the opposite happen – where the production liked our graphics so much they used them for the film itself. In fact, this happened to me again only this week.
(Or the distributor like the trailer graphics so much they get used for the poster campaign, and so on.)
it’s worth bearing in mind that trailer companies are usually working on the movie a very long time before it’s even finished, or indeed completed principal photography.
Other than that, what Charlie said in his response pretty much covers it.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Charlie Austin] “a “flat” title with a 3D bump map/texture and lighting is generally going to look better than the same thing created as 2D.
I’d seriously have to dispute that – it all depends on the skill of the designer. There are a thousand and one techniques for creating extremely subtle, interesting and complex effects in 2D. But obviously the Apple tool makes it a lot easier for the novice to get something that looks almost as good as a well-designed 2D title.
Ironically, by far the most striking and iconic title in your group of trailers is Star Wars – and the thing that makes it truly iconic is the faux-naif flat outline component, which was of course retro way back when we first saw it!
[Charlie Austin] I agree the examples I posted are closer to the over the top Apple Demo titles than anything with taste and refinement. ;-)”
I was only pulling your leg really with that comment (I’m sure Aindreas is just in it for the gags too, if he’s honest!), but my point was not that the movies are all franchises of one kind of another, but that they all hark back to another era. And hence the point was that their use of 3D is not fresh and modern but consciously retro.
There’s a thing here that really bugs me as someone who’s been making trailers for along as I have, and that’s the presumption that all real trailers have 3D metallic titles. As you know better than anyone else this is about as crass as assuming that all trailers still currently employ a big, booming voice-over that begins by announcing “In a world …”.
Yes, it does seem that 3D is making something of a comeback but it’s worth pointing out that this is after a really long period when the dominant aesthetic was flat – except for huge Summer tentpole releases.
But if you want to see some really great 3D titles, here’s a terrific piece (Some breathtakingly good, some breathtakingly bad):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9VOCiPWj_w
For me, the 3D titles that get me excited are things like the Transformers title – it’s about so much more than just the text aspect. The text is usually subsidiary to some really strong 3D geometry that dominates the design – e.g the Narnia title would look pretty weak without the 3D mountain background to give it depth and colour contrast and an epic sense of scale; Mars Needs Moms is made by the cute little rocket animation, etc.
Titles are only ever as good as the designer, as this reel shows.
I absolutely agree that you can create great looks very easily with Apple’s offering – but as you yourself suggested, the less they actually look like 3D they better they will look, most of the time. I’m just hoping we aren’t assailed by a foetid slurry of unspeakable design on the back of this – but I’m not holding my breath.
Simon Ubsdell
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It is of course not without irony that every single one of your examples is a retro franchise in one way or another … so yes, you could say that 3D text is emblematic of everything that’s “old-fashioned”.
On top of that some of them look as though they may have been done as 2D anyway … a texture and a bevel on their own don’t make 3D.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “please Mr. Simon, tell me say… five interesting, generally unthought of things, that can be initiated with the cloud generator, which I guess is basically fractal noise, that you might do. “
I know that my pronouncements are typically short on detail/evidence, so here’s a quick test I knocked up for you that shows how you might use the Clouds generator (alias Fractal Noise generator) to create flames:
If you use the exact same techniques in Ae, you’d get a seriously great effect, but the deficiencies of the Motion Clouds generator let this down quite badly.
I can’t say that these are especially interesting or unthought of cases but here are a few instances where I’ve used the Motion Clouds generator:
Nebula scene (how to try and add a bit of extra detail to the result and make up for the general crumminess of the generator): https://youtu.be/HjOubXh62fY
Atmospherics (subtle quasi-volumetric atmosphere): https://youtu.be/1dzwN5IdA1E
Volumetric fog (quasi-volumetric effect using multiple instances): https://youtu.be/VuBcAAJflX0
Organic wipe: https://youtu.be/IJ_XS_k_0OY
Shockwave (OK, so this isn’t using Clouds cos they’re rubbish, but it would have used them if they were better implemented): https://youtu.be/y77F3fX1rvU
Water: https://youtu.be/6MuiMDYhTQ8
Solar flares (again would have been massively improved if Clouds weren’t such pants): https://youtu.be/hC3R2yoRGzM
Simon Ubsdell
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[Shawn Miller] “Is it just for image sequences like AE, or can Compressor compile frames from different machines into single files? “
I have to confess it’s a long time since I used Compressor having moved over entirely to AME in the last couple of years, simply because it gets most jobs done way faster, but yes, it segments and recombines across multiple machines and not just for image sequences – or at least it used to when I last tried.
Simon Ubsdell
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[Shawn Miller] “I’m curious, can Motion renders be handed off to Compressor? I’m also wondering if Motion can do multi-machine renders. “
Yes, you can send to Compressor and hence create a batch for processing – a workflow I’ve tested but not actually used yet, but it’s a nice suggestion. (Although, sending to Compressor, from my experience, is a bit slow and sludgy and potentially adds a lot more time than you might be saving …)
I’m guessing that you could do multi-machine renders that way, but that I haven’t tried.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Bret Williams] “But when I’m creating a whole graphics package, man do I miss the project and render que.”
Complete agree about that one – that’s a really big productivity enhancer and it would be great to see that implemented.
On the other hand, Motion renders so many things a lot quicker than Ae that the disadvantage of not having a render queue is lessened somewhat. It does mean you can’t take the coffee break though …
Simon Ubsdell
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[David Mathis] “You could have the speed of another layer determine how many particles there are (if any) or determine other physical aspects of the particles such as size.”
Really easy to do with linking in Motion – expressions not needed for that example.
[David Mathis] “Masking tools are a mixed bag. The feather (softness) property affects both the x and y values inside of Motion. “
You can do this the way that VFX folk often do which is to use a blur filter (e.g. the Gaussian in Motion) on the mask so you can control the X and Y blur independently.
Sometimes what’s missing is not the tools but the knowledge of how to create effects – and your own “tools” – out of the simplest building blocks.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com