I love when technology works. Simon here, stepping out of the 'royal we' voice for a moment. Many of you editors and designers out there may already be familiar with the facet of Final Cut Pro I'm about to discuss, but even so, this is a feel good story for anyone who has ever pulled their hair out in frustration.
I needed to mask out a logo that appeared in the corner of a whole series of full frame JPEGs. The client had supplied these JPEGs and I'd already incorporated them into the video as overlay, fading in and out over the top of the speaker, flashing in and out with some simple transitions. The logo sat in an isolated corner, surrounded by opaque black and consistent in its position through the whole video. My first instinct was to create a black matte box in FCP and stick it over the top. This became problematic when flash transitions and cross dissolves played havoc with my little square, making it stand out hideously. I could have spent hours finicking with the transitions to make them match, or exported out clips with the box mapped over the top, and put transitions back over them, but that'd suck!
I opened all the JPEGs up in Photoshop and recorded a very simple Action that created a black box over the logo, saved and then closed. I then gave my little Action a keyboard shortcut. After a quick test run, all I had to do was press shift+cmd+F6 for each JPEG. I then closed Photoshop and went back into FCP. The video editing software immediately recognised the changes to the JPEGs and automatically updated my root JPEGs in my timeline. Now all the transitions sat beautifully, as desired, and I barely needed to touch FCP. Huzah!
Anyone else got any nifty little moments like this, when technology did what it was supposed to? Let us know in the comments section.
A green rabbit has been hanging out with another green animal who's been around for decades; Simon has written the script for an adventure series for Freddo the Frog and it launched last Monday! The Adventures of Freddo is now in its second series, and Simon penned the script for the online animation a few months ago, based on the story written by Publicis Mojo, an advertising agency working for Cadbury. The story is a good bit of fun, with a nasty slater captain that our little Simo is particularly proud of.
To see what this is all about, go to freddo.com.au and sign up for the adventure. Day by day a new episode is released, and not only do you get to enjoy the story, but you also play games to help it along. Check out the trailer below for a sneaky peak, and hit up Simon's blog, The Awesome Report, for press clippings.
After coming across a wicked music video Callan has decided to make a sci-fi mini epic in his spare time using Photoshopped images and 2D animation, compiled in 3D space inside of After Effects, utilising particle effects and lens flare plug-ins. We'll get him to update the blog with what those plug-ins actually are, but if you want to see what can be done with them, check out this music video from Coheed and Cambria, made by WEWEREMONKEYS.
A sci-fi short is something Callan has wanted to do for a very long time, and this video really shows what can be created using just Photoshop, After Effects and some 3D. We must warn you, this won't be coming anytime soon... he's only just started pre production.
Cameron our favourite camera operator is about to shoot an interview with the big man himself:
