Upgrading to After Effects CS5.5?

As Adobe and their various vendors have been offering a variety of discounts and incentives this year (as well as floating the idea that you’ll need to own at least CS5 to get discounted upgrade pricing on the next Creative Suite), we’re guessing a lot of After Effects users who have been getting by with older versions may be thinking about upgrading.

To help inform your potential upgrade decision and ease the subsequent transition, we thought it would be helpful to round up some resources - many free; some costing just a nominal sum - that explain what’s changed between versions. In addition to links to relevant articles and reviews, we’re including a selection of free videos from relevant courses on lynda.com (if you have trouble playing any of them, reload the page); if you don’t already have a subscription to watch the rest of the courses, click through this link to get a 7 day free pass to evaluate these courses and others as part of your potential new subscription.

We’re going to assume you have at least After Effects CS3, which was released in 2007. We’ll give an overview of major changes in CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 in each of these three pages.

Is This The New Model of Financing Your Project?

Sponsored movies of the 70′s and 80′s were the precursor to Branded Entertainment, and it’s a major way of getting funded today.
But is it the future? 
Philip and I discuss examples and why it might be more successful in the new paradigm of commoditized content creation.
Click on the link below and join the conversation on the latest episode of The Terence & Philip Show.

Is “Good Enough” Killing Our Industry?

I contend that the “it’s good enough” mentality is killing quality, and especially in our industry. Philip sees it differently. What do you think? Episode 20 of the Terence & Philip Show.

How Would You Build The Entertainment Business From Scratch?

Philip & I originally talked about the concept of starting over in production with a green field – no established starting points – in episode 11.
In this episode we take it a little deeper as there is a lot of ground to cover.
How would a new studio look? What would distribution look like? Would it be a return to the studio system approach of old?
These are just a few of the many areas we tackle in this episode of the Terence & Philip show.

Film-Office Tax Credits Scandal!

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article about Iowa’s “alleged abuses of its film tax credit program.”  I don’t know how surprising this is, given that the Iowa film office apparently described their program as “half-priced filmmaking.”

It would be wrong not to note that the LA Times has a horse in this race - there is more than a hint of schadenfreud in this piece - but on the whole, this revisits well-trodden ground.  Jeez, even I wrote about it!

Not to pile on, but there is yet another article on the subject this morning from the New York Times (registration probably required), regarding New Jersey’s film subsidy program, which Republican Governor Chris Christie is looking to gut.  The intense problem of gauging these programs effectiveness is summed up in this one excellent paragraph, written by NYT reporter Michael Cieply:

Studies about the efficacy of film credits, which became widespread in the last eight years, have been maddeningly divergent in their conclusions, depending on methodology, the structure of the credit and, sometimes, who sponsors the report.

I believe we have a BINGO!

When I wrote about Wisconsin’s film subsidy program back in 2009, things were tough for state governments.  By all accounts, things are worse in 2011.  If I were a betting man, I’d wager that film subsidy programs are going to become an even more endangered species in the near future.

What do you think?

2010 Motion Graphics Design Census

The unofficial, web-based Motion Graphics Design Census for 2010 is now available from their web site. It compiles over 5500 responses - distributed roughly evenly between the US and non-US - into a series of responses about age, software, and - primarily - income. Of course, it’s only a survey of those who responded rather than the industry as a whole. Also, not everyone responded to every question - for example, only 219 self-employed artists offered how much they charged per hour, and most of the charts are based just on US respondents. With those caveats, here’s what stuck out for us:

Breaking The First Rule Of Non-Linear Editing, Part One

When last we spoke, I had announced my intention to break The First Rule Of Editing - to actually upgrade my editor in the middle of several ongoing productions.  My reasons were threefold:

* Against all odds, I had the money;

* My 4-year-old dual-Pentium Dell XPS600, which had been rock-steady, had suddenly become pretty flaky, with USB ports disappearing and reappearing at unpredictable times - and when your keyboard, mouse and ShuttlePro are all USB devices, that can be a bad thing;

* And as a Adobe Creative Suite CS4 user, the demo of the upcoming Abobe Mercury engine in combination with new-technology CUDA video cards and a hot Windows machine is quite impressive.  Check it out.

For the last ten years, I have made something of a specialty out of taking inexpensive, low-to-midrange computers and making DV editors out of them. Back in the days of the Canopus DVRaptor, I could take the puniest machine, add RAM and a hard drive for media, and build a pretty functional editor (by the standards of the early 2000’s) for less than $700.  I built more than 50 editors like this over several years, but times have changed.  The budget this time was going to be a whole different beast.

Filmmaker posts $500 short on Youtube, nets film deal worth millions

Move over, Robert Rodriguez. It’s the stuff of independent filmmaker legend…a virtually unknown director posts a short film clip on Youtube, shot in his own spare time on a shoestring budget…and is discovered by a major studio, who offers said filmmaker a massive movie deal. In this case, the filmmaker is Federico Alvarez, and the movie deal is reportedly worth $20 million. Read on…

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