Advanced Special Effects: How do they do them?

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 1:57 pm

If you got money to blow, like 50 bucks, then get the Adobe Premiere or After Effects classroom in a book or the premiere or AE bibles.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 2:56 pm

Here's an idea...

Why don't you just e-mail them in private and ask them? I don't think any of us know exactly what they did. The only people who would know are the people who did them.

I'm also with Trythil on this one. I don't know where you get this idea of "as professional" as possible. If that were the case, you'd probably have to be limited to cross-dissolve, straight cuts, no speed changes and very few digital effects.

Flint the Dwarf · Post by **Flint the Dwarf** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 3:00 pm

doughboy wrote:Hurray for mistakes and no ability to edit them.

Hurray for the preview button.

Onideus_Mad_Hatter · Post by **Onideus_Mad_Hatter** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 3:06 pm

For most of my work I find it's a lot about combining the effects that different programs can achieve and then using them together. Like when I do head motion lip synching I use Paint Shop Pro, Animation Shop, ACDSee, and Adobe Premiere (not to mention a lot of paper to write down and keep track of the frame timings).

On a side note, and no offense to anyone, but the kind of stuff your asking about is kinda what I like to call Flash Bang effects. Sure they're neat and all in a siezure inducing sorta way and certainly impressive to an amateur, but if you want a challenge, try making a video where the animation of the video itself is blended seamlessly into the beat, lyrics, melody, etc. Very few people that I've seen ever take the time to do that. Overlaying video segments, video motion effects, flashes, all that stuff doesn't take much time nor effort to pull off (unless you're crazy and doing it by hand, frame by frame). True editing, using techniques like splicing, reversing, speed shifting in order to sort of remaster the animation to match the music, that takes some skill. Relying on scene splits with flashes to force the animation to match into the music, yeah, it just looks cheap when all is said and done, at least by my standards. *shrugs*

FrostedFlakes · Post by **FrostedFlakes** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 6:53 pm

I have made a few videos and the truth is you just have to have the time. You can't just sit down and say time to make a AMV you have to plan out how you want it done.

FrostedFlakes · Post by **FrostedFlakes** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 6:55 pm

Oh yea and also Media Studio is not the best software in my opinion. Try Adobe Premiere.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 7:13 pm

FrostedFlakes wrote:Oh yea and also Media Studio is not the best software in my opinion. Try Adobe Premiere.

Argh.

The editing software you use really doesn't matter...

Onideus_Mad_Hatter · Post by **Onideus_Mad_Hatter** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 7:21 pm

trythil wrote: Argh.

The editing software you use really doesn't matter...

Erm, to an extent it does, I mean there are simply some thingts that you cannot do with Windows Movie Maker. o_O

And if you're going to be doing frame by frame editing, the software you use REALLY matters. I couldn't imagine doing it with anything other than animation shop, in fact I can't think of any other programs off the top of my head that can split video files apart and display the durations like Animation Shop can. Later versions of Premiere can let you export and import single frames for editing in Photoshop, but the control, precision, and preview just isn't as precise as doing it with Animation Shop and Paint Shop Pro.

FrostedFlakes · Post by **FrostedFlakes** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 7:32 pm

well it all comes down to what effect you are trying to acomplish[/quote]

A.H. · Post by **A.H.** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 9:19 pm

I was aware that this was a Premiere-biased community, but now I feel as that it's so biased that there are no alternatives.

That's probably the biggest problem I'm having with finding answers around here: every solution is based on Premiere. I find it pretty mind-boggling that almost every last person here spent over $500 ($699.99 according to Adobe.com) for a movie-making program, $500 for an image editing program, and $500 for a special effects program.

So now there's an even bigger question:

Should I take up BeoWulf's offer to get Premiere and After Effects for free?

P.S.:

Onideus_Mad_Hatter: What's this Animation Shop you speak of and how can I get it?