PVC Exclusive
Written by a collection of the best writers in the industry and covering topics ranging from editing to motion graphics to live production. This channel features an incredibly diverse collection of authors and articles. Find out more about each of them...
David Torno is a Visual Effects professional based in Los Angeles at Ghost Town Media. David has been creating Visual Effects since 2000 and has worked on numerous commercial, feature, music video, and multimedia projects. He is most widely known for his work for such artists as Linkin Park (...
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Remote Control and Wi-Fi Enabling your GoPro Camera
By Jeff Foster | August 20, 2012
The controls on your GoPro camera are no longer out of reach!The new GoPro Wi-Fi BacPac and Wi-Fi Remote allow you to control your GoPro camera from up to hundreds of feet away - which includes powering up your camera, changing all the menu settings, triggering the camera to shoot and powering it off again to preserve battery life. The Wi-Fi BacPac and Remote have their own built in rechargeable batteries, so they're no further drain on your GoPro camera. I've got two GoPro Hero2 cameras already so I wanted to test out the new Wi-Fi BacPac and Wi-Fi Remote on both of them shooting at the same time while my hands were otherwise "full". I'll share my results plus point out some very important items you need to be sure to look at when setting up your system - plus some things to be aware of.
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A must-have tool for every DSLR shooter!
By Jeff Foster | August 13, 2012
Today's DSLRs and HD Camcorders allow us to shoot at higher ISO and lower light scenarios than ever before - but with the smaller sensor sizes typical in prosumer cameras, this capability also introduces a great deal of noise. Thankfully, Red Giant has updated Magic Bullet Denoiser II (v 1.3) - available as a stand-alone plugin or part of the Magic Bullet Suite to help eliminate the noise while retaining the details.
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An exclusive four-part video interview with John Brawley, the professional cinematographer who's been helping Blackmagic Design with their upcoming 'Blackmagic Cinema Camera'. In the 4th and final part, John talks about post-production with the camera, and the implications of working with 12 bit RAW images.
By ChrisZwar | August 08, 2012
Blackmagic Design attracted a huge amount of attention with their plans to release a digital camera. John Brawley, an Australian cinematographer, has been helping Blackmagic with the development by using the camera in real-world production environments to give them professional feedback. In our final part, John talk about post-production with the camera and the benefits of a RAW workflow.
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An exclusive four-part video interview with John Brawley, the professional cinematographer who's been helping Blackmagic Design with their upcoming 'Blackmagic Cinema Camera'. In part 3, John talks specifically about the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, covering everything you've ever wanted to know.
By ChrisZwar | August 08, 2012
Blackmagic Design attracted a huge amount of attention with their plans to release a digital camera. John Brawley, an Australian cinematographer, has been helping Blackmagic with the development by using the camera in real-world production environments to give them professional feedback. In this four-part video interview, we chat about the art of cinematography, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and answer all your questions.
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An exclusive four-part video interview with John Brawley, the professional cinematographer who's been helping Blackmagic Design with their upcoming 'Blackmagic Cinema Camera'. In part 2, John talks about digital cinematography and his experience with digital cameras in general.
By ChrisZwar | August 08, 2012
Blackmagic Design attracted a huge amount of attention with their plans to release a digital camera. John Brawley, an Australian cinematographer, has been helping Blackmagic with the development by using the camera in real-world production environments to give them professional feedback. In part 2 of this four-part video interview, John talks about his experience with digital cameras and digital production.
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An exclusive four-part video interview with John Brawley, the professional cinematographer who's been helping Blackmagic Design with their upcoming 'Blackmagic Cinema Camera'. In part 1, John talks about the art of cinematography.
By ChrisZwar | August 08, 2012
Blackmagic Design attracted a huge amount of attention with their plans to release a digital camera. John Brawley, an Australian cinematographer, has been helping Blackmagic with the development by using the camera in real-world production environments to give them professional feedback. In this four-part video interview, we chat about the art of cinematography, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and answer all your questions.
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Sr. Vice President of of Advanced Digital Imaging at Panavision
By Jeff Foster | July 26, 2012
This is the third installment in a series of interviews with the pioneers and masters in the compositing/VFX film & television industry. I originally recorded these interviews for my published book "The Green Screen Handbook" (Sybex/Wiley, pub) and had intended to produce one full-length documentary from the materials. But after a couple of years past now, I thought they would be better served as individual parts of a series to help educate and inform people about these historic times from the early days of VFX compositing through modern-day techniques.
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Making the hardware leap, safely, from Mac to Windows
By Stephen vanVuuren | June 28, 2012
INT: CREATIVE STUDIO - NIGHTSweat beads off the forehead of the steely CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL and splashes on the keys of his 4 year old Mac Pro tower setup. He white-knuckles his Apple Mouse as he stares down dozens of browser tabs open to sites "Apple's announces new MacPro update", "Should you switch platforms", "Has Apple abandoned the Creative Professional?" etc...
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By Eric Renz-Whitmore | June 08, 2012
When Hobbit Director Peter Jackson surprised theater owners and distributors at CinemaCon this April by screening 10 minutes shot at 48FPS, he ignited a controversy about shutter speeds, changing technology and more. The reaction was mixed at best, with many comparing the look to soap operas and bad television, while Jackson lauded the higher frame rate's advantages for 3D and its lack "of the strobing, the flicker and the artifacts" present at the standard 24FPS. With better equipment to shoot and screen becoming more widely available, filmmakers like Jackson and James Cameron are exploring higher frame rates for their increased ‘sense of reality'.
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Want to know where things are going in our industry, here's some of what I learned.
By Terence Curren | May 10, 2012
I attended this year's Hollywood Post Alliance retreat that touted the theme "Snowflake Workflows". In this episode of "The Terence & Philip Show" we cover some of the more interesting things I learned there.Besides covering some cool new technology previews, we had a side discussion on how disruptive technologies often come out of the consumer divisions of the large conglomerates rather than their professional product division.So click below and join the conversation.
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Learn how the loop expressions work.
By David Torno | May 06, 2012
Looping is a very common task in our industry and is mostly associated with video footage of some form. In this episode I will explain the loopOut(), loopIn(), loopOutDuration(), and the loopInDuration() expressions. We'll learn how they function with video footage as well as how they can work when applied to animated properties.
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3 interesting products that passed under the radar
By Mark Spencer | May 01, 2012
While I was once again teaching at Post|Production World at NAB this year, with classes every day, I did manage to make it to the show floor a few times. Since the big headline products have already been well covered here on PVC, I thought I'd share with you a few choice morsels I discovered at the show this year that you may not have heard about. Post|Production World was packed this year - great fun. I still managed to steal away for some time on the show floor.
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I give the new 3D Camera Tracker some pretty crazy footage to track
By Jeff Foster | May 01, 2012
Since the announcement of the Adobe CS6 Production Premium was made, there are a lot of great tutorials and examples made with the product to show off the new features. Most use nicely shot footage with dolly shots or smooth steady-cam work with lots of great contrasting detail to track, which provide great results. Naturally had to try it with some of my own horrendous handheld DSLR video clips to see if I could put it to the test and how it held up. Let's see how it did.
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I take-apart a real-world project to show you how it was created
By Jeff Foster | April 29, 2012
In the days of early motion picture making the art of "matte painting" was a process of actually painting with oils on a plate glass that was then shot in position in front of a scene on location or in the studio where the film would be exposed by the combined images through the camera's lens, creating an illusion that the actors int eh scene were in a totally different location or that the surrounding set or location was enhanced greatly. This process has evolved over the years and with modern day digital compositing and illustration/animation techniques, there's little that can't be created or replicated with computer graphics or manipulation. In this video tutorial, I show you how I used simple photographic components, combined with masked elements extracted from the original footage and re-timed - all using After Effects & Photoshop, along with some CG elements from a simple plug-in call Psunami from Red Giant.
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Sophisticated Simulated Glass Filters, Lenses, Film Stocks, FX and More...
By Jeff Foster | April 27, 2012
Tiffen has released the latest version of their popular sophisticated filter effects. Unlike most other plug-in effects for After Effects, Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro that often cater to creative whimsy and visual effects, the Tiffen Dfx v3 Video/Film Plug-in offers more real-world simulation of glass filters, lens effects and film stocks in a sophisticated and easy-to-use UI. This filter set will bring back memories of film cameras and glass filters we've all be familiar with in days gone-by, but with much more control, finesse and options beyond your wildest dreams!
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Will post production move to the cloud? That was just one of the many questions speculated upon during the ninth annual Editors' Lounge Pre-NAB panel discussion on where the future of post is headed.
By Terence Curren | April 15, 2012
The panel was hosted by Alpha Dogs, Inc. and Key Code Media, and the event drew an audience of well over 100 production and post-production professionals, all eager to learn what's in store at NAB 2012. attendees were welcomed by panelists that included; Debra Kaufman, Associate Editor at Creative COW (as moderator) Terence Curren (Editor/Colorist and Founder of Alpha Dogs Post), Mark Raudonis (VP of Post Production, Bunim/Murrary Productions), Steve Cohen (Film/TV Editor and author of "Avid Agility) and Michael Kammes (Senior Technology & Workflow Consultant, Key Code Media).Some of the subjects covered in part one include:0:00 Introductions1:39 Who is under NDA?2:25 Editing for the internet7:15 Drawbacks to the 3D experience10:28 Apple in the "post PC world"15:47 Quality of internet content18:08 How do we monetize internet content?
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Manhattan Edit Workshops booth SL12805
By Jeff Foster | April 14, 2012
Adobe announced the unveiling of their latest video production tools this week prior to the NAB Show, featuring the CS6 Production Premium suite, which includes After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, Encore, and the newest additions, Prelude & SpeedGrade.I will be giving hands-on mini-workshops for After Effects CS6 and Premiere Pro CS6 for the Manhattan Edit Workshops several times a day during the show. Of course you can stop by any time and just watch, but to get a seat and take CS6 for a "Test Drive" yourself, be sure to sign up ahead of time!
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A behind the scenes look at two different building projection projects, including the largest building projection ever staged - the massive Alfa Bank show in Russia.
By ChrisZwar | April 12, 2012
This two-part video presentation looks behind the scenes at two different building projection projects - a small scale production for New Year's Eve in Melbourne, Australia, and a large scale event for the Alfa Bank in Russia - the largest building projection ever staged to date. In part 2...
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A great new tool and workflow for compositors/roto artists & video editors!
By Jeff Foster | April 05, 2012
Wacom hits another home-run with this innovative and user-friendly pen tablet and touch-sensitive input device. You can greatly reduce the need of a mouse and keyboard for general editing and compositing/roto/paint workflow with custom Express Keys, stylus controls and finger-input gestures directly on the surface.
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A behind the scenes look at two different building projection projects, including the largest building projection ever staged - the massive Alfa Bank show in Russia. If you've ever wondered how these events are created then this is the video series for you...
By ChrisZwar | April 02, 2012
If you have any interest in motion graphics at all, you'll have noticed the increasing popularity of building projections all around the world.
This two-part presentation gives a behind the scenes look into two different building projection projects - a small scale production for New Year's Eve in Melbourne, Australia, and a large scale event for the Alfa Bank in Russia - the largest building projection ever staged to date.
(click the 'full screen' icon for best results)
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DBA Createasphere