IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! My name is Richard Harrington and
today I'm going to be sharing with you some
| | 00:07 | techniques that I use in my studio, RHED Pixel.
| | 00:10 | We do a lot of motion graphics work;
| | 00:12 | however, we're big fans in our studio of
integrating organic and natural elements.
| | 00:17 | Now, before you turn off the channel and
say, "I'm not a motion graphics person,"
| | 00:21 | this is for just about anybody:
photographers, motion graphic artists, video
| | 00:25 | editors, those of you look in just for
a fun project for a rainy afternoon or the
| | 00:29 | day that the client calls and cancels the job.
| | 00:32 | What we're going to today is take a
look at using cameras to capture footage
| | 00:37 | plates and then we're going to combine
that with a little bit of postproduction
| | 00:40 | using popular software tools
to make rich abstract backdrops.
| | 00:44 | Now, you could use these
for a wide range of projects.
| | 00:47 | It's totally up to you how you implement
it. But the whole thing is a lot of fun.
| | 00:52 | So, thanks for joining me,
and let's start to explore the process.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | So what do you need to know before we begin?
| | 00:02 | Well, not much. First off, open up
your mind and be prepared to have fun.
| | 00:07 | We're just going to play with cameras today.
| | 00:10 | It doesn't matter what equipment
you have; just about anything will work
| | 00:14 | for these techniques.
| | 00:15 | We're going to use everyday items that
can gather up for around your studio or
| | 00:18 | your house, and a camera.
| | 00:20 | Now, if you have a DSLR or something
with a wider aperture that's capable of
| | 00:24 | shallow depth of field, that's going
to go a long way, but you can make just
| | 00:29 | about any piece of equipment
work for the techniques today.
| | 00:32 | Also, even if you don't have access to
production equipment, I'll let you get
| | 00:36 | hands-on with some of the files
that we shoot today during the class.
| | 00:39 | You could then learn at least how to do the
postproduction technique and put it all together.
| | 00:44 | I do highly encourage you to watch
this class from beginning to end in order.
| | 00:48 | That's because this is a very linear
process, and I'm going to walk you through
| | 00:54 | how all the pieces work.
| | 00:54 | So, hang in there. Don't jump ahead as
we go through some of the ground material.
| | 00:58 | This is going to help you better
understand how the camera works and what source
| | 01:02 | materials you're going to
need to pull this technique off.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If your lynda.com membership includes
them, there are some hands-on exercise
| | 00:04 | files you could download.
| | 00:05 | It's going to be some of the footage
plates that we shoot today, as well as the
| | 00:08 | postproduction software tools that we use.
| | 00:11 | So when I jump into After Effects and
start to process layers, or Final Cut Pro,
| | 00:16 | you will see how I did that and can
open up the project file and really just
| | 00:21 | sort of deconstruct it.
| | 00:22 | All fun, easy, straightforward stuff.
| | 00:25 | So if you get a chance, download those
files. They'll come in handy as we get
| | 00:28 | towards the end of the exercise.
Plus, you'll be able to take the source layers
| | 00:31 | and use them to create
your own backdrops for fun.
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1. The Technique in BriefOverview: Shoot, blend, stylize, and loop| 00:00 | We're going to start by
looking at some shooting techniques.
| | 00:02 | I'm going to just show you things I
have developed over the years to create
| | 00:06 | these footage plates that are really
useful for these abstract backgrounds.
| | 00:10 | Some will be super practical, some
will be very experimental, and you'll
| | 00:15 | go ahead and be able to use these with your
own footage and items and try some things out.
| | 00:19 | Don't worry. To get you started,
| | 00:21 | I also let you download some of the
footage we shoot today, so you can use that
| | 00:24 | later on in the activities.
| | 00:26 | Once you've done shooting, you get
organized, and we're going to do this with
| | 00:29 | Adobe Bridge, as well as a nonlinear
editing tool. You're basically just bringing
| | 00:33 | the clips in and getting rid of the
slop and saving out the best parts.
| | 00:38 | When that's done we'll go ahead and
stack layers, and by using things like
| | 00:43 | blending modes you can mix those
layers together to get all new looks.
| | 00:47 | So, two or three source layers can be
combined in lots of different ways to get
| | 00:51 | entirely new backgrounds from
a small pool of source material.
| | 00:55 | Once you've stacked and
blended, you could stylize.
| | 00:59 | This will allow you to enhance the blur,
change the color, work in a photo for some texture.
| | 01:04 | There's lots of ways to pull these
things off, and it's just going to vary
| | 01:07 | depending upon if you want abstract
visuals for used in a nightclub or you're
| | 01:12 | designing a DVD menu or you want to make
something for a retail environment or
| | 01:16 | maybe just a PowerPoint background.
| | 01:18 | There are all sorts of crazy things
you could do with these materials and
| | 01:21 | I'm going to show you several techniques
with postproduction to really enhance in design.
| | 01:26 | And you can do this using just about
any piece of postproduction software for
| | 01:30 | video, or even Adobe Photoshop with
CS6, which now supports video layers.
| | 01:35 | Once that's all done, I'll show you the
technique for making the background loop,
| | 01:40 | and this means that you
could repeat the background.
| | 01:42 | That's really cool when you're doing
things like a DVD menu and you want to
| | 01:45 | just have a smooth background, or
you're using these in an installation where
| | 01:49 | people are going to be walking by
and you don't want a sudden jar as the
| | 01:52 | background changes.
| | 01:54 | All in all, this is a really cool technique.
| | 01:56 | We're going to have some fun today,
| | 01:57 | we're going to play with the cameras,
and then we're going to play with software
| | 02:01 | and create some really cool
things that clients just love.
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2. Gathering Source MaterialsCamera suggestions for background plates| 00:00 | So, what type of camera do you need?
| | 00:02 | Well, what type of camera do you have?
| | 00:05 | Chances are you own a camera.
| | 00:07 | I don't care if it's your
iPhone; you have a camera.
| | 00:10 | These days HD video is everywhere, but
if you have a choice or you can borrow
| | 00:16 | some equipment, I really prefer
a DSLR or something like a RED.
| | 00:20 | What you want is a large sensor,
because this is going to give you the ability
| | 00:24 | to get that shallow depth of field.
| | 00:27 | Now, a DSLR on its own won't give you that look.
| | 00:30 | To get there you're going to want a fast lens,
probably something around 2.8 or faster.
| | 00:36 | Now, I've got a prime lens here, an 85
millimeter. We'll also be looking at some
| | 00:40 | other lenses while we're shooting.
| | 00:42 | It doesn't matter; whatever lens
you can afford will work just fine.
| | 00:45 | I am going to show you how even a kit
lens at f4 for an aperture will still
| | 00:50 | work, but if you can get down to the 2.8 or
the 1.8 or even 1.4 range, it goes a long way.
| | 00:58 | Another nice thing besides the prime
lens, if you can get one, is a macro lens.
| | 01:02 | This is going to come in handy,
because you could use it for really tight
| | 01:05 | close-ups on things as you are starting to work.
| | 01:08 | But for the most part today, we're
going to be shooting blurry out-of-focus
| | 01:11 | video, and trust me, it's going to look great.
| | 01:14 | So all we have to do is get a camera
capable of that shallow depth of field and
| | 01:19 | a lens that's going to give us a little
bit of nice bokeh to work with, so we
| | 01:24 | get that bloom or the glow. If your camera
supports it, switch on over to Manual mode.
| | 01:28 | You want to take complete
control over the exposure triangle.
| | 01:32 | This means the ability to adjust the
aperture and the ISO to properly expose the shot.
| | 01:37 | Remember, as you open up the aperture
wider and wider, the lower number, you're
| | 01:42 | going to let more light in.
| | 01:44 | You're also going to get a shallower
depth of field, which is going to give you
| | 01:47 | the blooming bokeh that you like.
| | 01:50 | I might want to put it on
a video tripod if possible.
| | 01:53 | This is going to make it easier, so you
could pan and tilt to adjust your shot,
| | 01:57 | but any tripod will do.
| | 01:59 | However, you must use a
tripod for this technique.
| | 02:02 | Unless you're rock-solid, never drink
caffeine, and sleep ten hours a night, and
| | 02:06 | even then, still consider using a tripod.
| | 02:09 | It goes a long way.
| | 02:11 | But again, use what you have.
| | 02:14 | I'm not telling you to go out and buy a
bunch of equipment just to do this technique.
| | 02:17 | You could use this with just about
anything that you have in your arsenal and
| | 02:21 | get some great stuff.
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| Working with turntables, tanks, and backdrops| 00:00 | So let's talk about the physical stage.
| | 00:03 | If you need to, it could be your
kitchen table, but if you have the option
| | 00:08 | to control the space a bit, I like to
add a few things that really improve
| | 00:12 | the overall quality.
| | 00:14 | First off, you see the curved wall there.
| | 00:17 | This particular one is just a cloud board,
but you can make this with a piece of
| | 00:21 | paper or anything that's flexible.
| | 00:23 | And what it's done here is it's just
curving down to the table, creating a nice
| | 00:27 | seamless backdrop. Because of that curve,
we're not going to see any hard shadow,
| | 00:32 | so it's pretty straightforward.
| | 00:34 | We also have a smaller one
here, and this one's white.
| | 00:42 | I'll sometimes use this if I want the
backdrop to blow out. Usually the neutral
| | 00:47 | gray, the midtone, is nice, because it
could be shadowy or lighter, but the white
| | 00:52 | one is also pretty cool. Plus this is
super small, and when you are done with it
| | 00:56 | you just release the tension here on
these, and it folds flat, and you can store
| | 01:02 | that easily. So, nice and
simple piece of equipment there.
| | 01:07 | Other things that are going to come in
handy are a turntable, if you want to do
| | 01:11 | rotating objects.
This particular one is spinning.
| | 01:15 | These aren't too hard to find.
| | 01:16 | I've seen people use record players of
course, but you can order these online.
| | 01:20 | You're just looking for a motorized turntable.
| | 01:23 | This particular one is a constant-speed
one. I have another one that spins at a
| | 01:28 | different rate, so I can mix them up.
| | 01:29 | It's really easy. And they are going to
be rated for different amounts of weight.
| | 01:33 | Now you're probably not spinning a
motorcycle, so these type of retail-oriented
| | 01:37 | ones that are often shown in shop windows--
| | 01:40 | they'll put products or
jewelry on them and they'll rotate--
| | 01:43 | these are perfect,
and they're not very expensive at all.
| | 01:46 | Other things I'll sometimes do is keep
around some velvet or crushed material.
| | 01:51 | This is just to go ahead
and diffuse that surface here.
| | 01:54 | So you see I've got a nice piece of
fabric here. Really good with the light.
| | 01:58 | Soaks that up. Very silky. And I can lay that
across my surface just to create a better tabletop.
| | 02:05 | Now that's going to help sort of soak
up the light and prevent unwanted harsh
| | 02:09 | shadows, and you can mix that up.
| | 02:11 | Beyond that, if you're going to do
liquid boards like we'll explore today,
| | 02:14 | some sort of fish tank.
| | 02:16 | Here we just have a clear
plastic planter. That's fine.
| | 02:20 | You can get something that's more
square-oriented and shoot with that. An old
| | 02:24 | fish tank, a terrarium,
an aquarium, you name it.
| | 02:27 | Just get something that's big and can hold
a lot of water and is going to be safe.
| | 02:31 | You definitely don't want any water
leaking around your electronic equipment.
| | 02:35 | So, all these things are pretty straightforward.
| | 02:37 | I've also dropped a few sandbags in this case.
| | 02:40 | I've got a sandbag in each
corner holding down my backdrop.
| | 02:43 | I have got some sandbags holding down equipment.
| | 02:45 | That's just because I'm used to
professional sets, and I like to keep
| | 02:48 | things safe and neat.
| | 02:51 | Like I said, kitchen table, fine; basement,
small studio where you live, it doesn't matter.
| | 02:57 | You could run out to the fabric store
or craft store and just get a sheet of
| | 03:00 | black paper or black fabric
and use that. Use what you've got.
| | 03:05 | These extra things just go a long way.
Although I can't recommend enough, the
| | 03:09 | turntable really bumps up the
production value as you're going to see later
| | 03:14 | in the exercises.
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| Choosing objects to shoot for background plates| 00:00 | What do you shoot? That's easy. What do you have?
| | 00:04 | All you're looking for are things that reflect:
sparkly stuff, shiny objects.
| | 00:10 | Now for some of you this is going to be easy--
| | 00:12 | you've got jewelry, you've got crystal,
you've got glass--others not so much.
| | 00:17 | Chances are though, if you get creative,
there's a lot of things you could find,
| | 00:21 | from piles of CDs to paper clips.
| | 00:24 | I've got a whole table
here with a bunch of stuff on.
| | 00:26 | I'm just going to walk you through a
few of the objects and then throughout the
| | 00:29 | exercises today you're going to
get some ideas of what's possible.
| | 00:34 | For example, I've got a whole
plate here just filled with crystals--
| | 00:38 | these are just stones from a pet store--
plus couple of holiday decorations,
| | 00:46 | jewelry and lots of it. It's not mine.
| | 00:48 | I just borrowed it, but I got
permission. And it's nice and sparkly.
| | 00:52 | This is going to work really
well to create reflections.
| | 00:57 | Some everyday household items: pictures,
glasses, vases, candleholders, things
| | 01:02 | with the reflections.
| | 01:03 | Coming to this side, we've got some
household items we're going to use.
| | 01:08 | I've got some soda that we'll use for
some pours, a nice plate of everyday paper
| | 01:12 | clips, as well as some other sparkly
items, and some ink and food coloring that
| | 01:17 | we'll use later on for
liquid pours. You get the idea.
| | 01:22 | The whole goal here is that
you just have a bunch of stuff.
| | 01:25 | Not everything you pick is going to
work and some of the least-expected objects
| | 01:29 | will turn out to be just amazing when
you start to rack focus and play with the
| | 01:33 | shallow depth of field.
| | 01:34 | So raid your desks, raid your
closets, look around the house, ask other
| | 01:40 | friends or family members or employees
to bring stuff into the office, but just
| | 01:44 | go on a scavenger hunt and when you've
got some things, come back, and learn how to shoot.
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3. Set the StageLighting the scene| 00:00 | Just about everything we're going
to do today depends upon light.
| | 00:03 | So I want you to think about how you are
going to create pools of light and shadows.
| | 00:08 | It's not that hard, and you can
use just about any light you have.
| | 00:12 | I like to use some lights that are
relatively directional and easy to control.
| | 00:16 | I recommend that the lights have a dimmer.
| | 00:18 | Some lights will have a dimmer built-in,
or you can get an external dimmer from a
| | 00:23 | hardware store or a lighting supply store.
| | 00:25 | This will allow you to easily
adjust the intensity of the light.
| | 00:29 | You're also going to want the ability to
change the color temperature of the light.
| | 00:33 | You can do this using lighting gels,
or some lights have that ability built right in.
| | 00:38 | Let's take a look at a few things on set.
| | 00:42 | First off, I've got a light over here.
| | 00:44 | It's just a zylight, and when I turn
that on one of the things I like about it
| | 00:48 | is it has a built-in dial here so I
can adjust the intensity of the light.
| | 00:52 | This particular light also offers
the ability to easily change color
| | 00:56 | temperatures, and I can even
assign custom temperatures and roll
| | 01:01 | through different hues.
| | 01:04 | This is going to give me some
flexibility as I work to design an environment.
| | 01:08 | But remember, you can always easily change that.
| | 01:11 | You don't need fancy lights or expensive lights.
| | 01:14 | You just need party gels, and you can
get these at any lighting store, even
| | 01:18 | places like Guitar Center where they
sell DJ equipment. And you see that this is
| | 01:22 | allowing me to easily change the color
temperature of that light from a very
| | 01:26 | yellowish-greenish light to a nice red light.
| | 01:29 | I'm also a big fan of changing the light
as I design, so I'll use handheld lights.
| | 01:38 | These particular lights are small fluorescents.
| | 01:42 | I can turn that on.
| | 01:43 | This is completely cool to the touch.
| | 01:46 | I can also wrap it in a lighting gel.
| | 01:49 | Notice that that completely changes the
color of the light, and I can move this
| | 01:54 | with my source, which you're going to
see more in a moment on how we use these
| | 01:58 | dancing lights to create animated
shadows and really cool effects.
| | 02:03 | So both sides of my set
are pretty much the same.
| | 02:06 | I've got one light here on this side,
and on the other side I have the ability to
| | 02:12 | cross-shoot if needed.
| | 02:13 | Sometimes I'll use two lights, and I
have a second handheld light, giving me that
| | 02:19 | flexibility if I want to have an
assistant hold the light or I just want a light
| | 02:23 | from the other side.
| | 02:24 | The other thing I've done is I've
attached a single light overhead just
| | 02:28 | illuminating my workspace.
| | 02:30 | This is lower intensity, creating a bit
of a backlight, but we have a couple of
| | 02:35 | other lights onset here so that as
you're learning to this class you can
| | 02:38 | actually see me during the teaching parts.
| | 02:40 | If you're shooting, you don't need all
these extra lights, just one or two lights
| | 02:44 | for your subject and then a
handheld light so you can work.
| | 02:47 | You might want some other ambient
light or practical lights to bring up the
| | 02:51 | overall lighting level on set,
but that's just for safety.
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| Staging for safety| 00:00 | So the funny thing is, those of you who
didn't skip this movie probably are already safe.
| | 00:06 | Hopefully though, some of you are
watching this movie, because I want you to not
| | 00:10 | ruin your gear or cause any problems on set.
| | 00:13 | Just want to go over a couple of
suggestions to keep a safe environment as you
| | 00:17 | are going to be working.
| | 00:18 | First off, you're probably going to be
shooting in the dark, so you're going to
| | 00:21 | want to have the ability to
turn lights on and off easily.
| | 00:25 | Make sure you have a clear
path to the light switch.
| | 00:27 | And if you need to do anything major,
turn the overhead lights back on, so you
| | 00:32 | don't trip or drop
equipment or knock things over.
| | 00:35 | Additionally, make sure you keep all
of your things safe at hand that you're
| | 00:39 | going to be switching out.
| | 00:41 | If you're planning on swapping lenses,
put them on a table or a sturdy surface
| | 00:45 | nearby, so you can minimize
having to leave the camera.
| | 00:49 | Just store things so they are easily
within reach and the lenses won't roll
| | 00:53 | or fall on the ground.
| | 00:54 | Another thing to keep in mind is make sure
you have a clear path around your work area.
| | 01:00 | Now, I've got lots of electrical cords running.
| | 01:02 | I've taped them all down.
| | 01:04 | I've got a clear work path as well.
| | 01:06 | This is going to make it easy as I'm
designing or needing to make adjustments to
| | 01:10 | move around the space.
| | 01:13 | I also keep safety gloves nearby.
| | 01:15 | If I am going to be handling lighting
equipment, I want the ability to protect my hands.
| | 01:20 | Even more so, if you plan in doing some
liquid pores, make sure you have a safe place.
| | 01:26 | Know how to go ahead and get things
safely unplugged and make sure that the
| | 01:31 | liquid is not in any danger of
getting poured onto an electrical source.
| | 01:36 | Keep some towels or things
nearby for quick cleanup.
| | 01:39 | Beyond that, it's just a
matter of having things convenient.
| | 01:42 | I've got a table right to my left here,
with all the things I'm going to be shooting.
| | 01:46 | Everything is laid out neatly, so I can
just go over and grab it and come right back.
| | 01:50 | It's going to be super productive.
| | 01:52 | And right here on my left,
I've got some lighting gels.
| | 01:55 | This is great because I could use
these to go ahead and change the color of my
| | 01:58 | light source and get a whole different look.
| | 02:01 | Everything is just easily reachable.
| | 02:02 | Just go ahead and reach over and pull it.
| | 02:05 | You want to minimize the amount of
movement, because you're shooting in the dark
| | 02:08 | with a bunch of different fragile things.
| | 02:11 | Create a safe work environment and
you'll be a lot more productive and this
| | 02:14 | whole thing it will be a lot more fun.
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| On-set monitoring| 00:00 | When you are monitoring on set, you
want to be able to get your body away from
| | 00:03 | the camera and properly
see what you're shooting.
| | 00:07 | Now, you probably don't need a
monitor quite that big, but we have that
| | 00:10 | there available in our studio, and I
put it up so you can easily see what we
| | 00:14 | shoot throughout today.
| | 00:15 | Any monitor will do. The big thing is
you want to get away from the camera body.
| | 00:21 | So this small, little monitor
is going to keep drawing in.
| | 00:23 | You might bump the camera
and get unwanted movement.
| | 00:26 | There are lots of ways of approaching this.
| | 00:28 | You can go ahead and run out the HDMI
port of your camera and into an adapter.
| | 00:34 | In this case, I'm using an HDMI to HD
SDI adapter, allowing me to plug into my
| | 00:39 | professional video monitor.
| | 00:41 | For that matter, you can just go out
the HDMI port and run into a normal
| | 00:45 | consumer television.
| | 00:46 | Chances are you have an HDTV set
lying around; just run the cable to it.
| | 00:50 | Pull it closer to where you're shooting.
| | 00:52 | If you're looking for something
sort of in between, that's easy too.
| | 00:57 | There is a whole wealth of
manufacturers that make monitors like this one,
| | 01:01 | small battery-operated HDMI monitors that you
can easily mount right on top of the camera.
| | 01:07 | This one happens to be from Adorama.
There is a lot of manufacturers out. It's a piece to cake.
| | 01:11 | All you want to do is just attach
that, and it gives you a better higher-
| | 01:15 | resolution screen that you could reference.
| | 01:18 | And in any case, you just want to be
able to see a clear picture that makes it
| | 01:21 | easier as you're
designing and lighting the shot.
| | 01:25 | You can't trust the back
of the LCD for exposure.
| | 01:27 | You really want to look at something
that's more robust, larger-screen, so you
| | 01:30 | can accurately tell what you're designing.
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| Choosing a frame rate| 00:00 | Once you're ready to shoot, you'll
need to determine the proper frame rate.
| | 00:04 | Now, this is ultimately up to you,
because chances are you're going to adjust
| | 00:08 | the speed of the footage
when you post-process it.
| | 00:10 | So think about it this way.
| | 00:12 | Do you want extreme slow motion, to
really extend the action, or do you want to
| | 00:17 | shoot at a frame rate that's
closer to what your end deliverable is?
| | 00:21 | It's ultimately up to you.
| | 00:23 | So it's pretty simple.
| | 00:24 | If you want to slow things down, shoot 60p.
| | 00:28 | However, you probably don't have
that available at all frame sizes.
| | 00:32 | A lot of DSLRs will top out at 720.
| | 00:35 | Now you might get another
camera; it just depends.
| | 00:38 | Heck, you might even be using a Scarlet,
or an Epic and have 5K. Just balance
| | 00:42 | out the frame rate and the frame size
to match what your camera can do and
| | 00:47 | what options you have.
| | 00:49 | Inside my DSLR here, it's pretty simple.
| | 00:50 | I've always shoot with the highest-quality
movie and then under frame rate and sizes,
| | 00:56 | I'll typically use two sizes.
| | 00:59 | I'll shoot at 720 for 60 frames
per second when I want to do extreme
| | 01:03 | slow motion. This comes in handy for
things like ink drops or water pours.
| | 01:10 | On the other hand, I'll typically
shoot at 30 or 24, depending upon my
| | 01:14 | deliverable format, when I'm shooting
the motion background plates, especially
| | 01:19 | with spins and rotations.
| | 01:21 | This works great because it gives you
a plenty of frames to use and you've got
| | 01:25 | the ability of course to
slow that down, if you need to.
| | 01:27 | However, it will play back in real
time right within the nonlinear
| | 01:31 | editing tool.
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|
|
4. Shooting TechniquesCreating dancing shadows| 00:00 | Our first technique is really straightforward.
| | 00:02 | We are just going to set up a scene and
get some objects that are on the table.
| | 00:07 | I recommend something that's fairly reflective.
| | 00:10 | In this case, we are using some jewelry,
and we are going to bounce the light off of it.
| | 00:14 | We are just going to move the lighting
source around to create some dancing shadows.
| | 00:18 | It's really pretty straightforward.
| | 00:20 | Just remember, if you're handling hot
lights, wear gloves, and be careful not to
| | 00:24 | get too close to your
objects so you don't burn them.
| | 00:27 | I am using a cool fluorescent light, so
you can get this light at hardware store.
| | 00:31 | Let's go ahead and turn the lighting
source on, and you see it powers up.
| | 00:39 | Now, as I move that, it creates a
lot of change within the scene.
| | 00:43 | Now, I'm currently at F 1.8 on the camera.
| | 00:47 | That's letting in a whole bunch of light.
| | 00:49 | Let's go ahead and change the F
stop so it's little bit darker.
| | 00:52 | You also see that it definitely impacts
the bokeh of the camera. There we go.
| | 00:59 | We are going to go ahead and modify the
light source a little bit here to get a
| | 01:06 | little bit of a different color.
| | 01:08 | You can always change color in
postproduction, but by changing it during
| | 01:12 | production stages, we can get a
mixing and get very different results.
| | 01:16 | I am just going to grab a
sheet of gel to do that.
| | 01:20 | So I've wrapped that in some
green gel: you see without and with.
| | 01:29 | The nice thing is that the gel also
knocked down the intensity of the light.
| | 01:34 | It's giving us a very different feel.
| | 01:41 | Let's make a little change
to the camera level here.
| | 01:43 | I will adjust the rack focus and
change the F stop to increase the bokeh.
| | 01:48 | I am just going to move the
lighting source slowly in and out.
| | 02:07 | So, a really straightforward technique.
| | 02:09 | All you are doing is moving that
lighting source around, and in doing so you
| | 02:13 | create dancing shadows.
| | 02:14 | Super easy, vary to speed up, try
changing the shutter speed on the camera to
| | 02:19 | get a little bit of different results,
vary the actual focus by racking and
| | 02:23 | getting different positions, and what
you'll find is that by moving the camera
| | 02:27 | or making small changes you
will get a very different pattern.
| | 02:31 | If you're using a prime lens, you
will need to move the camera in and out
| | 02:34 | physically. You can do that by
changing the head of the tripod. Or if using a
| | 02:39 | zoom, just adjust the zoom's distance.
| | 02:41 | Let's make that adjustment. Here we go.
And we will reengage the light source.
| | 02:58 | So there you have it, variety just
by movement. Really straightforward.
| | 03:03 | Let's go explore a few more techniques.
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| Racking focus| 00:00 | For our next background, we're going to go
ahead and do a simple technique, which is just a rack focus.
| | 00:05 | Now we are going to rack between in and out
of focus or in this case, soft to softer focus.
| | 00:11 | Another key thing to change is going
to be the actual aperture, or F stop.
| | 00:15 | This can have a dramatic impact
on the overall look of the bokeh.
| | 00:20 | Now, for this particular scene we are
using a very everyday object; in fact, you
| | 00:24 | probably have them in the drawer:
| | 00:26 | paperclips poured on a plastic plate. And we
are just going to go ahead and rack focus here.
| | 00:30 | Real easy. Let's begin. And I am just
going to show you how we make the changes right in the camera.
| | 00:38 | So I have locked the tripod down very
tight so as I am racking the camera, it's
| | 00:43 | not going to move side to side.
| | 00:44 | If things are loose, you are going to
get wiggle as you start to rack and you
| | 00:48 | don't want that camera to move.
So just frame up your shot and lock things down.
| | 00:53 | In this case, I've opened up my lens all the way.
| | 00:55 | I am at F 1.4, obviously the benefit
of a true prime lens. But we will go to
| | 01:01 | other reasonable apertures later.
And let's just simply do a rack focus here.
| | 01:19 | By keeping two hands on the camera,
I get a nice stable shot, and it cuts down on
| | 01:25 | any unwanted movement.
| | 01:28 | So let's go ahead and adjust the F stop here.
| | 01:31 | We will go to something in the 2 or
2.8 range, which is something that most of
| | 01:35 | you will have on your DSLR lenses.
| | 01:38 | This is going to help you still get the
shallow depth of field, but it's going
| | 01:41 | to change the shape of the
bokeh blur. There we go.
| | 01:46 | At 2.8, the brightness levels also
change, so you might want to adjust the ISO.
| | 01:52 | Here's 640, 800, 1,000, and you see how
different settings give you different looks.
| | 01:59 | All right, that looks good there
and we will just do the same sort of technique of racking focus.
| | 02:10 | Because we've adjusted the aperture,
or the F stop, you'll notice that the
| | 02:13 | circles have changed in size.
| | 02:16 | In this case they're smaller
because the camera's aperture was reduced.
| | 02:21 | So, real easy technique.
| | 02:23 | All we are doing there is changing the
actual focus of the camera by racking.
| | 02:28 | Make sure if you do this you put it
into manual focus so you are not stripping
| | 02:33 | any gears in the autofocus mode.
| | 02:34 | Piece of cake. Just racking back and
forth gives you some great-looking shots.
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| Shooting through objects| 00:00 | We've gone ahead and dropped the
position of the camera here a little bit lower.
| | 00:03 | We are going to be shooting through two objects.
| | 00:05 | In this case, it's just two glass
candleholders, a little bit of pieces of crystal in them.
| | 00:09 | Pretty straightforward stuff. And I've
attached a 50-millimeter lens to the camera.
| | 00:15 | So all we are going to do here is shoot through this 50.
Now most people will call this a nifty fifty.
| | 00:20 | It's a very affordable lens.
| | 00:22 | You'll find it from just about any
manufacturer for your camera body.
| | 00:25 | It tends to be the cheapest prime lens
you could buy because it's one of most
| | 00:28 | popular. It also doesn't have a ton of glass.
| | 00:31 | The 1.8 model is going to be less expensive.
| | 00:33 | You can go all the way down to
1.4, but 1.8 is usually plenty
| | 00:37 | and reasonably priced.
| | 00:38 | Let's see how it looks.
| | 00:40 | Here is our subject, and you get a good
idea of what we are taking to look at.
| | 00:46 | I am going to go ahead and switch over
to the live view. And there is our subject.
| | 00:50 | Now the important thing here
is I've stacked the objects.
| | 00:53 | Let me remove one and you
see with just a single object,
| | 00:56 | it looks very flat.
| | 00:57 | So I want to get some stacking and
overlap, and that creates a nice sense of depth.
| | 01:03 | I could just adjust the angle there
till I get the perspective that I want.
| | 01:09 | Now, I am only using a single light.
| | 01:11 | Let's try adding a little more
light and see how it behaves.
| | 01:14 | I have added that in and
I'll just adjust the intensity.
| | 01:24 | Now, I am using a built-in dimmer on this light.
| | 01:26 | If your light doesn't have
a dimmer, that's super easy.
| | 01:29 | You can get them at a hardware
store and just adjust the intensity.
| | 01:33 | You can also move the light in and out,
but I find having an electronic dimmer
| | 01:38 | makes it easier. And that's nice there.
| | 01:41 | Without, with. Hitting this with light
from two directions is really creating
| | 01:47 | some interesting patterns.
| | 01:50 | Now all I am going to do is
tweak the focus of the shot here.
| | 01:54 | Remember, as I rack it through
different positions, I am going to get very different looks.
| | 02:05 | That's nice and I am going to lower the F stop.
I am currently at 2.5.
| | 02:12 | Let's drop that down all the way in
this lens to 1.8. That looks good.
| | 02:18 | It let in a little bit more light
though so I am going to lower the ISO, and in
| | 02:22 | this case I am down to 100,
the base setting of the camera.
| | 02:27 | If you are unfamiliar with how these
things work, we have a whole DSLR series up
| | 02:32 | here on lynda.com to help you get
familiar with understanding things like the
| | 02:36 | exposure triangle in relation to your camera.
| | 02:39 | It's pretty straightforward, but
essentially you have to balance your F stop and
| | 02:43 | your ISO to achieve the proper exposure.
| | 02:46 | As you adjust one, you will need
to adjust the other, typically in the
| | 02:49 | opposite direction.
| | 02:51 | That works good, but let's enhance
this by taking some of the techniques
| | 02:54 | we learned earlier.
| | 02:55 | I am going to go ahead and add some
dancing shadows by moving the light
| | 02:59 | source and you are going to notice that this
completely changes the feel of the backdrop.
| | 03:04 | In this case, the light source is
even moving into the shot itself.
| | 03:07 | I am going to turn it so it's a
little bit more vertical, and it's moving
| | 03:16 | through the scene almost like a photocopier.
| | 03:22 | Okay, that's looking good, and we are
going to go ahead and use that shot.
| | 03:26 | One other thing I want to add though--and
this is a sneak peek for our next section.
| | 03:30 | This isn't a flat surface here.
| | 03:32 | I actually have this on a turntable, and
watch what happens when we put it into motion.
| | 03:44 | I will make some slight adjustments to
the positions of the objects, tweaking
| | 03:48 | their overlap. And let's
reintroduce that moving light source.
| | 03:56 | Nice slow movements, using the full body.
| | 04:05 | Notice I'm moving and rocking at
the hips to keep it very fluid.
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| Incorporating flat spins and revolutions| 00:00 | In our last movie we took a
quick peek at the rotation shot.
| | 00:03 | I am using a turntable.
| | 00:05 | You can use a record player,
anything of that sort, a Lazy Susan.
| | 00:09 | I prefer a motorized version,
however, because it just gives a nice
| | 00:12 | constant revolution speed.
| | 00:14 | Put an object up there and just experiment.
| | 00:16 | In this case, we are using a glass vase,
and we are going to go ahead and shoot
| | 00:20 | through this and this faceted, so
it's going to give us a lot of reflections.
| | 00:24 | I will go ahead and switch over to a
live view, and let's tilt up a little bit.
| | 00:29 | Here we go. And you will see, as I
adjust the focus, very different look.
| | 00:36 | Let's start with something very abstract,
and I will set that into motion. That looks nice.
| | 00:45 | I am going to adjust the ISO setting on the
camera. Make sure we are in Manual mode there.
| | 00:57 | You see different F stops, different looks.
| | 01:00 | There we are at F4.
| | 01:03 | Now, I put the lens at F4. Most of you
have an F4 lens. Even if you don't own a
| | 01:08 | prime, a basic even kit lens
can go all the way down to F4.
| | 01:12 | So by adjusting the distance to your
subject, you could force the lens out of
| | 01:16 | focus like I've done here.
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| Marking a loop| 00:00 | One way to make a background seamless
is to use a single loop or a rotation, or
| | 00:06 | even multiple loops and rotations, but
just starting the clip exactly at the
| | 00:11 | loop point so you start and end.
| | 00:14 | If you do this and your turntable is
moving at a constant speed and you don't
| | 00:18 | pan the camera or adjust the lights,
you can have a seamless in-camera loop.
| | 00:23 | So as it goes from beginning to end then
you just repeat that clip right after that.
| | 00:27 | So I'm using a grease pencil here, or a
China Marker, and I am just going to go
| | 00:32 | ahead and put a mark right on the
plate to indicate a start/stop point.
| | 00:36 | I am not going to start or stop the camera.
| | 00:38 | I'll do that during postproduction.
| | 00:40 | All I am going to do though is
call it out, so I could both hear it.
| | 00:44 | I am not going to see this mark through
the lens, but I will be able to see it
| | 00:47 | with my own eyes and then I will just
snap my fingers or call mark and get it
| | 00:51 | recorded on the camera audio,
so I could see that point.
| | 00:56 | I am just going to draw a line right on
my plate here, and the China Marker will
| | 01:00 | easily come off with a
paper towel later. There we go!
| | 01:04 | I also want to make sure that my
microphone is on, and I've got it at
| | 01:09 | maximum sensitivity.
| | 01:10 | I am just going to go ahead and start
the turntable spinning and when the red
| | 01:18 | line passes in front here,
I'll just call it off. Start.
| | 01:38 | Stop. So it's really easy. All I need to do
is make sure that I see that start/stop
| | 01:44 | line and call it out.
| | 01:46 | During postproduction we will do a
little bit of trimming on each side to get a
| | 01:49 | perfect loop, but that's just going to make
it easier so you don't have to guess as much.
| | 01:54 | Just let it do a single
rotation and then call it out.
| | 01:58 | That's going to make it really easy.
| | 01:59 | If you want to make this a longer
looping background, let it go two or three
| | 02:03 | times and then call out the mark.
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| Shooting liquid pours and ink chambers| 00:00 | We're going to go ahead and switch
things up at the end here and do some liquid.
| | 00:04 | Ink chambers, different combinations, I've
got a wide range of things, so what I'm
| | 00:08 | going to do here is just explain the
general setup and then we'll start mixing.
| | 00:12 | The goal here is to go
ahead and get slow fluid motion.
| | 00:16 | It might be a good time to switch your camera
over to 60p if you want to go ahead and get this.
| | 00:21 | You can always blow the shots up a
little bit if you need to. This will give you
| | 00:24 | more frames to work with and
really slow that motion down.
| | 00:28 | And what we're going to do is take our
liquid chamber here and start to drop some material into it.
| | 00:34 | I highly recommend when you do this,
be careful. Giant pool of liquid right
| | 00:38 | by electrical lights,
so don't start moving too quickly.
| | 00:42 | Take your time, be careful, turn off the camera.
Move with gentleness.
| | 00:48 | You don't want to pour a giant
bucket of water on your camera gear.
| | 00:51 | So I'm all set and I'm just going to
start to mix the pieces together here.
| | 00:55 | All right, in this case I'm using some
printer's ink. This is just a refill ink
| | 01:01 | cartridge available from your office supply
store. And let's just roll the camera here.
| | 01:10 | I've already filled this with water,
and I've got a small amount of ink.
| | 01:15 | Now don't overdo it here.
| | 01:17 | You don't need to squirt a bunch in;
just put a few drops, and you'll notice that
| | 01:22 | I'll put them at different distances.
| | 01:35 | Then let the action unfold.
| | 01:38 | Okay, I like that. It's a little soft so
I want to do one that's crisp. A fork.
| | 01:45 | We'll just drop it right into this
object here and I'm using a macro lens, which
| | 01:50 | will make this easier and
we're just going to fine focus.
| | 01:52 | That's pretty good.
| | 01:53 | The camera is a little close so
I'll pull it back just a tad.
| | 01:57 | I have a nice in-focus
object in the middle of my bowl.
| | 02:00 | Now we're going to mix in another color
here so we don't have to completely reset.
| | 02:08 | Roll the camera, and I'm
taking some blue food coloring.
| | 02:14 | Now, you can use ink as well, but food
coloring also does a nice trick here, and
| | 02:18 | let's just drop it in a few places.
| | 02:25 | And remember, let the action unfold.
| | 02:31 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 02:32 | And to get a third shot out of this,
I'm going to mix things up a little bit and
| | 02:40 | drop in some Alka-Seltzer.
| | 02:41 | And as we--it gets a little bit dark here,
| | 02:45 | we're going to make a few adjustments to
the camera and open that up a little bit.
| | 02:52 | Now, at this point the water has gone
pretty purple, so I'm going to reset and
| | 02:55 | get some different liquid in there.
| | 02:58 | I've swapped out for a different
source here, just a smaller vase.
| | 03:01 | We'll keep experimenting
here with different types.
| | 03:04 | And what I'm going to do now is take
some dish soap that's been colored with
| | 03:08 | food coloring to give it a little bit of
color that's going to mix in with the water.
| | 03:14 | By experimenting with the different
materials, you'll notice that different
| | 03:17 | densities will mix with different behaviors.
| | 03:22 | This is producing a nice slow-motion drip.
| | 03:28 | I'll put in a larger surface object here.
| | 03:34 | We'll do the classic here
of mixing vinegar with oil.
| | 03:37 | Before we pour, let's just
check focus. There we go.
| | 03:42 | Go ahead and gently pour, and you'll
notice that the two liquids interplay
| | 03:47 | nicely with each other but don't actually mix.
| | 03:53 | And drop in some Alka-Seltzer.
| | 03:58 | Now, as it gets a little bit dark here,
we're going to make a few adjustments to
| | 04:02 | the camera, and let's add some more color.
| | 04:25 | So I hope you had fun--well, I had fun--
playing in the studio and that you're
| | 04:29 | inspired to go try some of
these techniques yourself.
| | 04:32 | Now, I'd like to head into
postproduction where I'm going to process this
| | 04:36 | material and start to build some
looping backgrounds, and there's a couple of
| | 04:40 | ways we could do this.
| | 04:41 | We're going to go ahead and use Adobe
Bridge to get organized, but you can use
| | 04:45 | any software tool you want.
| | 04:47 | Once that's done, we'll jump into
Adobe After Effects and start to build the
| | 04:50 | motion graphics backgrounds.
| | 04:52 | We'll also use other
tools though, so don't worry.
| | 04:55 | We'll take a look at Adobe Premiere
Pro and Final Cut Pro to create these
| | 04:59 | backgrounds, by simply stacking
layers and using blending modes.
| | 05:03 | As long as your nonlinear editing
tool or motion graphics tool supports
| | 05:06 | layered files and blending modes, you're all
set. This technique is really straightforward.
| | 05:11 | So, thanks for hanging out on the shoot.
| | 05:14 | Let's go ahead and jump into
some of the post-production.
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|
|
5. Get Organized for PostUsing Bridge to organize media| 00:00 | I've copied the material off of my
card, to my drive, and I'm going to go
| | 00:05 | ahead and get organized, and one of the
things I like to use is Adobe Bridge to do that.
| | 00:10 | Now, one of the nice things about
Bridge is that it lets you view both footage
| | 00:13 | and stills very easily. Plus, if you drag
the slider here, you see it's super easy
| | 00:18 | to resize those thumbnails
and you could start to audition.
| | 00:23 | Let's go ahead and make things a
little bit bigger here with the Preview area,
| | 00:26 | and I'm just going to select a movie and
you'll see I can click play and it will
| | 00:31 | actually start to update in that window.
| | 00:34 | Now, this is a pretty basic movie with
just a very simple texture, and it's a
| | 00:38 | pretty good one, but it's
not the best stuff we shot.
| | 00:41 | So I've already assigned a rating of two stars.
| | 00:44 | To assign labels you just go into
the Label menu and you could choose one
| | 00:48 | through five stars, as well
is actually rejecting a clip.
| | 00:52 | The shortcut for that is Command+1 through 5,
or if you're on a PC, Ctrl+1 through 5.
| | 00:59 | So this allows you to very quickly
go through and actually apply ratings.
| | 01:04 | If you want to see a clip, you can
just select it and press Play and
| | 01:10 | actually take a look.
| | 01:12 | That makes it really easy to
judge the quality of your footage.
| | 01:16 | Now remember, some of these shots are
going to have slop at the head and tails as
| | 01:19 | we were making adjustments to the
lights or framing up focus, changing other
| | 01:24 | properties, so it's usually a good idea
to jump a little bit further in to look
| | 01:28 | at the clip and make your
decision on the quality.
| | 01:32 | Now, I've gone ahead and I've made a
couple of folders in here to organize things.
| | 01:37 | Everything you do within the Bridge window
is actually happening on your hard drive.
| | 01:41 | So, if necessary, you can make new
folders to organize things, or even open up a
| | 01:47 | new window if you want to have two
windows for the same project, so you can
| | 01:51 | drag in between them.
| | 01:53 | I've made two new folders--one called
Green and one called background (BG)--
| | 02:00 | because on the same card I had some
footage from another shoot, which is
| | 02:03 | actually another course here on lynda.com
that you're welcome to check out on green screen.
| | 02:08 | Let's go ahead and select those clips
that are for the green screen course, and
| | 02:14 | I'll drag those into a new
folder. You see they move.
| | 02:20 | If I've got some bad shots I don't
want, I could select them and press
| | 02:24 | Command+Delete or Ctrl+Delete to
remove them. And I'll just select all of
| | 02:28 | my shots here from the background shoot
and put those in the background (BG) folder.
| | 02:35 | So everything is organized, and I'll
just go through and assign star ratings to
| | 02:40 | make it easier to decide
what material I want to use.
| | 02:44 | Once you've done that,
you've got a couple of choices.
| | 02:47 | If you're going to be staying in an
Adobe environment, you could just jump
| | 02:50 | on into After Effects or Premiere
Pro and these clips will be easily
| | 02:54 | accessible through Bridge.
| | 02:56 | If you want to use another application,
such as Final Cut X or Avid, you can go
| | 03:01 | ahead and simply filter your view by
clicking on the stars here in the Filter
| | 03:06 | tab to just see your four- and five-star images.
| | 03:10 | You could then easily select those
and drag them to a folder on your hard
| | 03:14 | drive to move them as a set of
selections, and that will make it easy to import
| | 03:19 | just the clips you want.
| | 03:21 | Now, this step with Bridge is totally optional.
| | 03:23 | I just find it a nice way to work with
my material because its large thumbnails,
| | 03:28 | very visual, and I've got the ability
to assign quality rankings and even rename
| | 03:33 | files while I'm working.
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| Trimming the slop with subclips| 00:00 | Once you've made your initial
selections, I recommend going into a
| | 00:04 | nonlinear editing tool.
| | 00:06 | In this case I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro,
but you can use any tool at your disposal.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to choose File > Browse in Adobe Bridge.
| | 00:16 | If you're using another tool, just choose
File > Import and navigate to your images.
| | 00:23 | I'll go out to my desktop here and jump
right into the folder, and there is all
| | 00:28 | the images that I've previously selected.
| | 00:31 | Notice I could apply the filters, so only
the four- and five-star images are chosen.
| | 00:38 | So these are my best clips that I
had previously logged using Bridge.
| | 00:43 | I can now select those, and I'll just
choose to open those with Premiere Pro.
| | 00:51 | In doing that, everything has been
added to my project, making it really easy to
| | 00:56 | start to work with the clips.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to go ahead and temporarily
maximize the Project panel by putting the
| | 01:01 | mouse over the window and pressing
the tilde key to maximize it.
| | 01:06 | Let's make a couple of bins to get organized.
| | 01:08 | I'm always a big fan of trying to
minimize the clutter and keeping things
| | 01:14 | grouped by logical affiliations.
| | 01:18 | So, these backgrounds look pretty similar.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to go ahead and drop those in.
| | 01:23 | There we go. And just quickly getting
organized here. You get the idea.
| | 01:44 | These are all liquid,
so I'll put those together.
| | 01:47 | Okay, I've got the base organization done,
and let's start to remove some of the slop.
| | 01:56 | I'll go ahead and open up an individual
bin and double-click to load the clip.
| | 02:02 | This allows me to go through and
mark up the points I want to keep.
| | 02:07 | I could also quickly drag through to
preview the footage. And I find some of
| | 02:12 | these flashes here are good, but that
one right there is little distracting.
| | 02:15 | That's where the light dipped into the shot.
| | 02:17 | So I'm just going to mark an out point
there and come here and mark an in point.
| | 02:22 | I tend to like to have my
durations be a nice round number;
| | 02:26 | it lets me know that I've processed the clip.
| | 02:29 | And I'll just drag that back into the
bin, holding down the Command key, and
| | 02:32 | it makes a subclip.
| | 02:36 | You can also choose Clip > Make
Subclip using the in and out points in the
| | 02:41 | monitor there, and you just continue.
| | 02:45 | Now, this is really straightforward,
and all I'm encouraging you to do is find
| | 02:48 | the best parts of each clip that you
want to use, and as you do that, give it a
| | 02:54 | nice even duration.
| | 02:55 | It will make it easier as you start
to build the looping backgrounds if
| | 02:59 | these are clean, simple duration like 30
seconds or 35 seconds, and then make subclips.
| | 03:08 | You can do this subclip part with any tool.
| | 03:11 | It doesn't have to be Premiere Pro;
every nonlinear editor supports this.
| | 03:16 | And this is pretty straightforward.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to keep down this path of
organizing my footage, and I'll join you in
| | 03:22 | just a second, where we get to media management.
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| Trimming using looping points| 00:00 | You remember during shooting we
actually used a turntable and a mark to call
| | 00:05 | out the loop point.
| | 00:06 | Let's take a look at it here.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to switch over to view just
the audio waveform and you see right
| | 00:13 | there, there's my loops.
| | 00:14 | (clip playing)
| | 00:19 | So I called them out. Now using those as a
guideline, I can go ahead and tweak my in and out points.
| | 00:25 | So there's my in and there's my out.
And you notice they're just one frame
| | 00:34 | off, which is ideal.
| | 00:36 | You don't want the beginning
and end to be exactly the same.
| | 00:40 | I'll go ahead and turn on my Loop
button and play in to out and I want you to
| | 00:44 | watch, because this was a motorized
turntable with controlled speed and I
| | 00:48 | didn't touch my lights.
| | 00:50 | It'll naturally create an in-camera loop
that can be easily repeated as a motion
| | 00:55 | background, and it smoothly just keeps repeating.
| | 00:59 | Now, I wouldn't use the audio there,
but this is definitely a perfect loop and
| | 01:04 | that's the advantage of locking things
down and letting the motion come from the turntable.
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| Making self-contained files| 00:00 | I've gone ahead and done all of my subclips.
| | 00:03 | And in this case you see I've
split two clips into three parts.
| | 00:08 | Now, it's totally up to you how you do
this arrangement, but this is a good way
| | 00:12 | to go ahead and get things a little bit simpler.
| | 00:15 | And you'll see that instead of using
the camera names that were assigned, I've
| | 00:19 | gone with things like Amber, Slow, or Green
to describe the color as well as the movement.
| | 00:28 | Blue Spin is a lot more
descriptive than DSC6910.mov.
| | 00:36 | So this is a useful way to just get organized.
| | 00:39 | Temporarily I've also cut all of those
clips into groupings, just some reference
| | 00:43 | sequences here to make it easier to
indicate which ones I want to keep.
| | 00:48 | You can make a single sequence or all
sequences; it's really pretty easy, but
| | 00:52 | the benefit of dropping them in a
sequence is that by putting them in a
| | 00:55 | sequence, you make your selects.
| | 00:57 | Once you have your selects, it's very
easy to choose Project > Remove Unused.
| | 01:04 | And you'll notice that all of the original
clips have been removed from the project,
| | 01:08 | leaving just the subclips that I
had cut into my selects sequences.
| | 01:13 | Again, you can use one sequence or
multiple, but this is just part of the
| | 01:16 | process of paring down
what's used in the project.
| | 01:21 | By using a sequence, you could then
media-manage with any NLE to only use
| | 01:26 | the selected clips.
| | 01:27 | All right, this is great.
| | 01:29 | I've got everything consolidated here
and I can go ahead and actually gather
| | 01:35 | this on my drive to make things easier.
| | 01:38 | Using the Media Management tool of the NLE,
I could choose Project > Project Manager.
| | 01:45 | Now, some NLEs will allow you to trim
and remove the clips that you're not
| | 01:50 | actually using at this time.
| | 01:52 | In the case here of this media,
it's MPEG-4, so it can't actually have the
| | 01:56 | handles trimmed using Premiere Pro.
| | 01:58 | If I was using Final Cut Pro or other
tools, I could choose to transcode the
| | 02:03 | media here and discard those
handles. Or I could leave it as is.
| | 02:09 | This part is fine, and I can go ahead
and simply choose a new location where I
| | 02:14 | want to gather the material and
then click OK to collect all the clips.
| | 02:19 | Choosing to collect them and copy will
leave my original card alone and create a
| | 02:24 | media-managed project that
has only this material in it.
| | 02:28 | If you want to use another system,
take advantage of transcoding to discard your handles.
| | 02:34 | Otherwise, I'll show you a
workaround for Premiere Pro that lets you keep
| | 02:38 | working native while preserving the
in and out points when you move into an
| | 02:42 | application like After Effects.
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| Prepping footage for After Effects| 00:00 | Remember, we always have great
flexibility and can even copy and paste between
| | 00:05 | Premiere Pro and After Effects.
| | 00:07 | I like to bring things in clean and
simple without any slop on my handles here.
| | 00:11 | So to do that, I'll often go ahead and prep
my Premiere Pro project a little bit further.
| | 00:18 | In this case, what you'll see is that
I've taken every single subclip and put it
| | 00:23 | into a base sequence.
| | 00:25 | So the subclip called Amber Slow
was just dragged into a new clip.
| | 00:29 | To do this, I just select the subclip
and drag it on the new item, and it will
| | 00:35 | automatically make a sequence
with the same name and nest it.
| | 00:40 | The frame rate and all the frame sizes will
match automatically to the original subclip.
| | 00:46 | Now, this may seem like an extra step,
but it's going to make things a lot easier
| | 00:50 | when we get into After Effects and we import.
| | 00:52 | So let's take a look at that process.
| | 00:54 | I'll just save my project here so it's
captured and switch on over to After Effects.
| | 01:00 | I can now choose File >
Import > Premiere Pro Project.
| | 01:07 | So I select the Premiere Pro Project
and I bring it in, and notice I get the
| | 01:12 | option to import all sequences.
| | 01:14 | I'm going to do that but strip out the
audio, since I don't need it for these
| | 01:18 | clips, and I'll choose OK.
| | 01:22 | Notice what's great is that the
structure of the project is preserved.
| | 01:26 | Now let's go ahead and
maximize this window for a second.
| | 01:30 | Notice that the folder structure for the
whole Premiere Pro project is brought in.
| | 01:34 | The advantage here is, using Premiere Pro I
got organized with real-time video playback.
| | 01:39 | Plus, I was able to take my longer
clips and remove all of the slop.
| | 01:45 | So instead of having that Blue Depth
file be 2 minutes and 26 seconds long,
| | 01:50 | I'm able to lower it down to just the best
part, at the 50 seconds that I want to use.
| | 01:55 | So that works really well here,
and it's a great way to just get organized.
| | 01:58 | There is everything in for my project,
and I've got all of my individual layers.
| | 02:04 | I'm just going to use this nested comps
as source layers in my project. But of
| | 02:09 | course I could always go back to the
original clips here if I want an additional
| | 02:13 | handle or need something longer.
| | 02:15 | With everything loaded into After
Effects, we're ready to start designing.
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|
|
6. Creating Backgrounds with Adobe After EffectsBuilding a composition| 00:00 | All right, let's go ahead and
build our first composition.
| | 00:04 | Now, I've got lots of choices here,
but I'm just going to show you how easy this is.
| | 00:10 | I'm just taking a look at
some of the layers here,
| | 00:12 | trying to decide which ones I want to
work with. But that main idea is I want to
| | 00:16 | put these inside a new comp.
| | 00:22 | Let's start with some of these
brighter ones here, this nice Blue Spin.
| | 00:24 | Now, to work with this, I check my
settings. In this case I see that I'm working
| | 00:30 | with 1920 x 1080 and a frame rate of 29.97.
| | 00:35 | Now I could change my frame rate if
needed and After Effects we'll intelligently
| | 00:38 | interpolate, but I'll stick
with this frame rate for now.
| | 00:42 | Let's make a new composition, and I'll name it.
| | 00:47 | Check my settings and adjust the
duration. And I'm going to start with a 20-
| | 00:52 | seconds duration here, which is
actually longer than what I'll end up with, but
| | 00:55 | it's a good starting point, and I'll click OK.
| | 00:59 | I can now drag those other comps in as
sources, and I'm just putting them on top
| | 01:06 | and I'll mix two or three of these
together to create a new overall design.
| | 01:12 | And you're just going to be using
different colors and elements together
| | 01:16 | and we'll create a mix.
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| Using blending modes for design| 00:01 | So here's my base layer, here's my next
layer, and what I want to do is come down
| | 00:06 | to the bottom here and I'll click this
button here called Toggle Switches/Modes,
| | 00:11 | which will show me the blending modes.
| | 00:14 | You see them right there.
| | 00:16 | If you want to leave that up
permanently, you can do is right-click and make
| | 00:20 | sure you turn on the Modes column and
that'll leave it available, and you can see
| | 00:25 | Switches and Modes side by side if that's easier.
| | 00:27 | All right, don't worry about reading
user interface; just select that second
| | 00:31 | layer and use the keyboard shortcut of
Shift+Plus to step through your different
| | 00:36 | blending modes, and you'll see
that the two layers start to mix.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to go with Screen here or
Lighten, and that's just giving us a nice
| | 00:46 | combination of the two layers blending together.
| | 00:50 | Don't worry about colors or combinations
yet; we can even that out in just a moment.
| | 00:54 | But this is just creating the initial
composition and mixing the two layers together.
| | 01:01 | That looks good. Let's see if we want to
add a third layer to the mix.
| | 01:07 | I'll turn that on. And let's just try a
blending mode here like Add, and I'll hit Preview.
| | 01:16 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 01:17 | We're getting a nice complex image
with lots of light and interplay.
| | 01:22 | If it's too bright, I can try other
modes such as Soft Light, which is going to
| | 01:27 | be a little bit darker, or look
at some of the other categories.
| | 01:30 | Everything in the Overlay group is
going to combine the lights and darks.
| | 01:35 | Add and everything below it in
that section is going to brighten.
| | 01:38 | And everything in the Darken
section is going to darken.
| | 01:41 | So it's really pretty intuitive as
you start to mix, that some modes work
| | 01:45 | better than others.
| | 01:48 | You can also press T for Opacity and
adjust the overall mix of the layers if
| | 01:54 | you'd like to blend them a little bit further.
| | 01:57 | So blending modes are super easy,
and don't forget about that great keyboard
| | 02:01 | shortcut of Shift+Plus and Shift+Minus
| | 02:03 | so you can step through the
Blending modes and try them out.
| | 02:07 | The key is experimentation, and just mix
and preview to see what it looks like.
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| Retiming clips| 00:00 | Let's take a quick look at
the speed of this animation.
| | 00:04 | I'll click the RAM Preview button and
it will load in and a couple of seconds'
| | 00:10 | cache is enough to get a good idea.
| | 00:14 | It seems good, but is just a tad fast,
so what I want to do is slow things down a bit.
| | 00:20 | I've got the Stretch Column open here,
so I can change the duration if I'd
| | 00:25 | like, or you can access this in
other ways in other apps; just look for a
| | 00:29 | Stretch or Duration command.
| | 00:31 | I'm going to go ahead and stretch
this, a nice even number, like 200%.
| | 00:35 | Now it's going to slow that down.
| | 00:43 | And let's play that back now. That feels good.
| | 00:47 | I like that it's a little bit more
gentle, and it's not in your face as much.
| | 00:51 | Let's do the same thing here on
another layer. And this is fairly common.
| | 00:58 | Depending upon what you build,
you may want to tweak the speed of elements.
| | 01:05 | That feels more gentle, and I like that.
| | 01:08 | Don't be afraid to go in and tweak
the speed for individual layers to get
| | 01:12 | a better overall mix.
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| Looping the background| 00:00 | Now that we've got the initial elements
loaded, I'm going to create a loop point.
| | 00:04 | To do this, it's a little
bit of nesting and trickery.
| | 00:09 | Let's go ahead and rename this Source.
| | 00:14 | And I'm going to change the Composition
settings just a little bit and make this a bit longer.
| | 00:19 | I'll set this to 35 seconds.
| | 00:22 | Now, once I do that, I want to just
check and make sure that I have enough
| | 00:25 | handles. In this case I need to
stretch that layer a little bit longer.
| | 00:29 | All right, that looks good.
| | 00:32 | I've got plenty of material to work
with, and they're all stacked together.
| | 00:36 | What I'm going to now do is nest
this inside another composition.
| | 00:42 | So I'll just drag that comp onto the
new item and nest that as a composition,
| | 00:48 | and we will just rename this Background 0.
| | 00:53 | So what we have is the source
comp and a new container to hold it.
| | 00:58 | I'm now going to go ahead and shorten
this composition to a nice common duration,
| | 01:03 | such as 30 seconds here.
| | 01:06 | And what you'll notice is that
there's extra material beyond the end.
| | 01:10 | So we're going to create a split
in the middle here that becomes a
| | 01:14 | seamless start and end.
| | 01:16 | If we look right now, you'll notice that
there is the first frame of the composition.
| | 01:21 | There is the last frame.
There is definitely a jump between those.
| | 01:26 | But if we come to the middle and
choose Split, from this point to this point
| | 01:33 | is perfectly seamless.
| | 01:35 | So all we're going to do now is take
advantage of one of the oldest tricks in
| | 01:39 | the book, which is if you
can't solve it, dissolve it.
| | 01:42 | So I'll move that to the beginning.
| | 01:45 | I can do that by dragging, or pressing the
left or right bracket key to move the in or out.
| | 01:50 | I'll select that layer and press the
right bracket key and you see it moves the
| | 01:54 | out point to the playhead.
| | 01:56 | So now it's very simple.
| | 01:58 | Let's select this top layer, and I'll
press T for Opacity, turn on the keyframes,
| | 02:05 | and I'm just going to put a little
dissolve in there between these two layers.
| | 02:10 | So what we have there is a five-second
cross dissolve in the middle that creates
| | 02:15 | a little bit of a seamless blend.
| | 02:17 | We're going to stylize this more in
a second with some adjustment layers
| | 02:21 | and some colorization
| | 02:23 | that will further hide that, but what
this does here is creates a nice loop point.
| | 02:28 | Let's just cache that into RAM,
and we'll watch it play back.
| | 02:33 | Okay, and here it is.
| | 02:34 | Let's watch for the loop.
| | 02:35 | It's going to play through and as it
approaches the middle here, there'll be a
| | 02:39 | gentle cross dissolve.
| | 02:40 | It'll hide the overlap.
| | 02:44 | There it is. And as it gets to the end,
it's going to jump right back to the
| | 02:49 | beginning and be seamless, because the
split point creates a nice clean jump
| | 02:54 | from the beginning to the end.
| | 02:55 | This will make this much more
flexible when you drop it into a video
| | 02:59 | editing tool, because you can just
loop it in the timeline, or into a DVD
| | 03:03 | authoring application
if you want to have a looping background.
| | 03:06 | By making the loop seamless here,
it's a lot easier when you get to other
| | 03:10 | applications that aren't as elegant.
| | 03:11 | All right, we've got our loop.
| | 03:14 | Now it's time to stylize.
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| Coloring the background| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and stylize this a bit.
| | 00:03 | I'll take advantage of
adjustment layers to do this.
| | 00:06 | Now, one of the first things I
like to do is bloom things out a bit.
| | 00:10 | So I'll go into my Effects panel, and I
am just going to type in Fast for fast
| | 00:15 | blur. Drop that on, repeat the edge
pixels, and crank it up a bit, and then
| | 00:22 | change the blend mode to something
gentle, like Soft Light or Overlay.
| | 00:27 | Notice what that does is it just
darkens the colors and improves the contrast a
| | 00:32 | bit, giving it an even more filmic look.
| | 00:34 | I will rename that, just pressing
the Enter key with the layer selected,
| | 00:40 | and give the effect a name so it's easier
to understand. And now let's add some color.
| | 00:44 | There's lots of ways to do this.
| | 00:47 | One method is to use a simple
solid, and you can click OK.
| | 00:52 | Let's just make that the size of the
composition, and change it's blend mode.
| | 00:56 | Notice things like Hue apply a nice
gentle map and will gently colorize the
| | 01:02 | image based on the solid. Or you
could be a little more forceful and use a
| | 01:08 | method like Color, which is more
absolute and forces that to all areas, not
| | 01:14 | just shifting the existing colors, but
remapping the total color to all areas
| | 01:19 | based on luminance.
| | 01:21 | You can use other methods like Soft
Light to just gently push but still
| | 01:25 | preserve some of the original color. Overlay.
| | 01:29 | And remember, the same keyboard
shortcut of Shift+Plus lets you step
| | 01:33 | through and try out different
blending modes, giving you all new options.
| | 01:38 | Another method is to continue to use
the adjustment layer approach, and there's
| | 01:44 | a couple of cool effects.
| | 01:46 | One of the ones that I really like
is Tritone, and the Tritone lets you
| | 01:52 | apply three colors.
| | 01:55 | You'll see that you have a
Highlights, a Midtones, and a Shadows.
| | 01:59 | So for example, I can go in and apply a
nice dark purple here in the midtones,
| | 02:05 | really rich, but not too dark, and
then come here for the Shadows and choose
| | 02:12 | purple again, but go really dark and
start to map that. So it's still a purplish
| | 02:17 | tint, not a pure black.
| | 02:20 | And then the Highlights here will put
just a little bit of purple but very light.
| | 02:28 | And you see that by mapping those,
you get a lot of flexibility as to how this
| | 02:33 | image is going to look.
| | 02:34 | And this is a nice way to create
simple colored backgrounds that are very
| | 02:39 | unified but use gentler mapping,
rather than just one solid color.
| | 02:45 | Plus, because it's an adjustment layer,
you can easily take advantage of those
| | 02:49 | blending modes to remap to the image.
And again, things like Shift+Plus will
| | 02:55 | let you step through modes
and try out different options.
| | 02:59 | Some are going to be very absolute;
others are going to be much gentler.
| | 03:03 | In this case, Hue looks pretty good.
| | 03:06 | Perhaps my favorite effect though is
the Colorama effect, and this is a full-
| | 03:13 | scale gradient map that
allows you to remap the colors.
| | 03:18 | Just go to the Output Cycle method here
and try a nice preset like Fire and
| | 03:24 | you'll see that it starts to map the color.
| | 03:27 | Let's set that back to Normal.
And that's a nice rich color, and what it's doing
| | 03:32 | here is it's mapping white to the
brightest highlights and then going through
| | 03:37 | these yellows, reds, oranges, and
rich burnt colors into the shadow tones.
| | 03:44 | You'll see lots of different options
here, including some really lovely sepia
| | 03:48 | tones and the ability to ramp colors in.
| | 03:53 | And I think that the Colorama effect is
one of the best ways to tint a background.
| | 03:59 | Now, let's just preview that out,
and you'll see we have a nice complex layered
| | 04:03 | background with lots of color,
and it creates a very unified look.
| | 04:08 | This is ready to drop in to a motion
graphics installation, a nightclub, a DVD
| | 04:13 | or Blu-ray menu, a
graphics project, a lower third.
| | 04:16 | There is all sorts of uses, and this
is just about ready to go as a source
| | 04:21 | element for any project.
| | 04:22 | When we come back, I'll give you a
couple of ideas on how to stylize this
| | 04:26 | further, with some specific
techniques that you can use for a project.
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| Exploring stylizing techniques| 00:00 | I've got another project here that has
what we were just working on, plus a few
| | 00:05 | more options, and this is a
good time to get organized.
| | 00:08 | So, I am going to take all of the
multilayered materials I built and drop that
| | 00:13 | into a folder called PreComps, because
those are sources, and let's just take a
| | 00:17 | look at the backgrounds we have so far.
| | 00:19 | Here's the one we were just working on.
| | 00:21 | We've stylized that nicely, and that's
working very well. And a couple of more options.
| | 00:27 | Here's another background.
| | 00:31 | And this is using some
of the same material here.
| | 00:33 | You see we got a nice cross
rotation with a nice gold color.
| | 00:40 | Here is one of our liquid
pours that we worked on earlier.
| | 00:46 | I took a couple of versions of the footage
and laid them in together so they were mixing.
| | 00:54 | And our last one here, and you
see we have a lot of mixing and
| | 00:59 | layering happening. All right!
| | 01:04 | Now, what can we do with these?
| | 01:06 | Well, lots of things. I want to
show you a couple of simple options.
| | 01:10 | First off, you could start to mix
in photographs and solid colors.
| | 01:16 | So let's build this up.
| | 01:19 | At the very back I have the background.
| | 01:23 | I then laid in a photo and took
advantage of the Black and White effect.
| | 01:30 | Now let's set this back to Normal for a
second and you see there's the picture.
| | 01:36 | But by changing its blending mode and
lowering its opacity a bit, I was able to
| | 01:42 | start to mix things.
| | 01:44 | But because I didn't want to introduce
new color, I took advantage of the Black
| | 01:49 | and White effect to create a nice unified image.
| | 01:53 | And the Black and White effect is super useful.
| | 01:56 | Remember you have the ability with the
Black and White effect to adjust properties.
| | 02:01 | So for example here, I could adjust the
red, yellows, greens, cyans, blues, and
| | 02:05 | magentas independently, and what that
allows me to do is to adjust how these
| | 02:12 | images mix together.
| | 02:14 | You see there, I could darken the green
area down for the bird's feathers, and
| | 02:18 | that's creating a better blend.
| | 02:20 | If it's too strong, I'll just back that off,
but it's like a custom blending mode now.
| | 02:27 | To finish this out, nice and simple:
put an adjustment layer on top with the
| | 02:32 | Fast Blur and I just blended it
| | 02:36 | and then put a few solid layers on top,
just stacking those to create an overlap area.
| | 02:45 | And what that's done is created a
perfect area where I could put buttons for my
| | 02:48 | DVD menu or put a title for a segment.
| | 02:52 | A nice big vertical piece of text here
would make a nice section bumper for a
| | 02:57 | video, or I could easily put buttons
here interactive for DVD authoring, and
| | 03:02 | you'll notice that I set that black bar
to line up right with safe title area,
| | 03:06 | making a nice thin but usable strip for text.
| | 03:10 | To finish this out, I did one of my
favorite techniques, which is I put a solid on top.
| | 03:16 | Let's just sample that dark color,
make that full screen. And then I applied
| | 03:24 | an elliptical mask.
| | 03:25 | So there's the Ellipse tool, and
with the solid selected, double-click.
| | 03:29 | That applies a mask, which you can easily
invert, and if you twirl that down, you
| | 03:35 | can feather that out nicely and
create a good transition zone, and then just
| | 03:41 | drop its blending mode to Multiply
and lower its opacity a bit to taste.
| | 03:48 | And what you get is a nice power-
window effect that guides the viewer's eye
| | 03:53 | towards the center and just finishes it out.
| | 03:57 | Let's preview that real quick, and
you'll see we've got a ready-to-use DVD menu
| | 04:01 | or a section bumper background that's
stylized but has a nice unified look.
| | 04:07 | That works out nicely.
| | 04:08 | I have got one more design idea for you,
and that is a simple lower third.
| | 04:14 | And you will see in this case, I took the
looping background that I made and I
| | 04:20 | simply used a shape layer in After Effects.
| | 04:24 | So if we build this up here, it's easy to see.
| | 04:27 | I have a shape layer on top and down
here I'm able to tell that background
| | 04:34 | layer to use the alpha
channel of the shape layer above.
| | 04:42 | And in doing so, what it will do is
turn that layer off and it cuts it out,
| | 04:50 | making a nice shape here.
| | 04:53 | I then put another copy behind with the
same shape, except this time instead of
| | 04:59 | filling it with white,
I filled it with a transparent background--
| | 05:04 | there it is, with Fill Options; I just
chose transparent--and adjusted the stroke.
| | 05:08 | Add a line and some text, and you've
got a really simple lower third with a
| | 05:13 | gentle texture area.
| | 05:16 | Slides on in there and lets that render out.
| | 05:20 | And you see we've got a nice, very
modern type of text graphic that can be used
| | 05:25 | for a video project.
| | 05:27 | So, these source layers are incredibly
flexible and are just meant to be fodder
| | 05:31 | for your motion graphics project.
| | 05:33 | I'm sure you have lots of ideas, and
one of the things I want to point out is
| | 05:37 | remember, if you have access to the
lynda.com project files, you will have all
| | 05:42 | of these downloadable files that you can
play with to make your own backgrounds.
| | 05:46 | And if not, once you do your own shoot,
you will have tons of source footage so
| | 05:50 | the design options are really limitless.
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| Rendering the background| 00:00 | This is just a quick review on
how to render in After Effects.
| | 00:03 | Remember, there is a full course
here on lynda.com, Essential Training for
| | 00:07 | Adobe After Effects.
| | 00:08 | You can go much deeper there if you need to.
| | 00:09 | I am going to select the four
backgrounds I have here and just choose
| | 00:14 | Composition > Add to Render Queue.
| | 00:16 | This will put them into the render
queue, where I could go ahead and set up my
| | 00:19 | settings for output.
| | 00:20 | I will mouse over that window and press
tilde to maximize it, and let's just
| | 00:25 | twirl the first one down here.
| | 00:26 | You've got the ability to adjust your
output settings here, as well as click and
| | 00:31 | choose from some presets.
| | 00:32 | You will notice lots of options.
| | 00:35 | Best is generally okay here for
rendering, because what it's going to do is do
| | 00:39 | the full quality at the full size of
the project, and it's going to use the
| | 00:43 | project bit depth settings.
| | 00:45 | Now, depending upon your project,
you might be set to 8 bits per channel or 16
| | 00:49 | bits per channel, and if you want to
output now at a higher bit depth because
| | 00:53 | you have lots of blending and light
effects, it's not a bad idea to change
| | 00:56 | your project settings.
| | 00:58 | You can simply choose File > Project
Settings and bump your Project up to 16
| | 01:04 | bits per channel for greater color accuracy.
| | 01:07 | This will increase the render time, however.
| | 01:10 | Next is the Output module, and you'll
see a wide preset list here of options
| | 01:15 | that you could choose from what's
included with After Effects.
| | 01:18 | If you want to customize this, just
click the yellow hyperlink text and a
| | 01:22 | new dialog will open.
| | 01:24 | This allows you to choose the output format.
| | 01:27 | Always include the project link, so it
knows what project the composition was
| | 01:31 | rendered from, and then
choose to render out what you want.
| | 01:34 | I am going to do Video, Millions of Colors.
| | 01:38 | There is no alpha channel, so RGB is
enough. And then I can click Format
| | 01:43 | Options to choose my Codec.
| | 01:44 | Animation is going to be absolutely
huge, so depending upon what editing
| | 01:48 | system or workflow you have, you might choose
something like Apple ProRes or Avid Codecs.
| | 01:55 | You can have the third-party ones
installed, like CineForm, or use something like
| | 02:00 | Photo-JPEG or JPEG 2000.
| | 02:02 | Any of these are going to be just fine.
| | 02:05 | As long as you stick with one of the
less-compressed or uncompressed output
| | 02:08 | options. Try to avoid going
back to things like H.264.
| | 02:14 | So, I if went to Apple ProRes 422 in
this case, or if I wanted the greater bit
| | 02:19 | depth, I can go to the HQ
option there for 10 bits per channel.
| | 02:24 | I could then just check the rest
of my settings. Quality is fine.
| | 02:30 | I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:36 | I'm doing no resizing.
| | 02:37 | There's no cropping, and there's no audio output.
| | 02:41 | This means I can go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:44 | When I do that, you'll see
that it says Custom: QuickTime.
| | 02:48 | It's a good idea to click on that,
open it up, double-check your settings one
| | 02:52 | more time, and then choose this and save it as
a preset. At the very bottom is Make Template.
| | 03:02 | This allows you to name it.
| | 03:03 | So I am going to call this ProRes 422
HQ (No Audio). Double-check the settings.
| | 03:17 | They are all in there. Click OK.
| | 03:19 | And you see it's added as a
preset in the output module.
| | 03:23 | I can now apply that to my other projects.
| | 03:29 | With that loaded, all I need to
do is tell it where to render to.
| | 03:33 | So I click the hyperlink text here,
choose the location, and then I can map the
| | 03:42 | other ones to that if necessary.
| | 03:44 | Now, any other movies I add after this
will automatically pick up those settings,
| | 03:50 | so sometimes I'll just go ahead and set
up the first movie before I add the rest.
| | 03:55 | But this is pretty simple.
| | 03:58 | I've got everything targeted;
| | 03:59 | all my settings are ready to go.
| | 04:01 | So I click render and walk
away and let the project finish.
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7. Creating Backgrounds in a Nonlinear Editing ToolUsing Premiere Pro to make looping backgrounds| 00:00 | So we had just taken a look at using
Adobe After Effects for compositing, but
| | 00:04 | I wanted to show you that the same
general principles can be applied right
| | 00:07 | inside of Premiere Pro.
| | 00:09 | Let's just build a new background here,
and I am going to take a couple of these
| | 00:13 | layers and just drag these
onto a new sequence. There we go.
| | 00:21 | Now, Premiere doesn't automatically stack things.
| | 00:23 | It tends to put things one after another.
| | 00:26 | Let's just call this Looping
Background (BG) Source, and I'll start to stack
| | 00:34 | these layers as a bit.
| | 00:35 | I will just trim them so they line up.
| | 00:42 | And if I select this here, I can come
on over to the Effect Controls tab and
| | 00:47 | under Opacity, you'll see that
you do actually have blending modes.
| | 00:52 | Unfortunately, the keyboard shortcut of
Shift+Plus doesn't work, but you can take
| | 00:56 | advantage of the same
modes and start to mix things.
| | 00:59 | So you see there, I used screen mode.
And I'll press play. And thanks to the
| | 01:05 | Mercury Playback Engine, Premiere Pro does a
good job of playing things back in real time.
| | 01:10 | So I can continue to layer in
different objects here, and if I need to, select
| | 01:20 | that and press Command+R for speed
duration, and this is where I could change
| | 01:24 | the speed. So, I could slow this down to
30% of its original speed and it adjusts,
| | 01:31 | or let's try 50 in this case and see
if it's long enough. That looks good.
| | 01:36 | Select that layer and under Opacity,
I'll go ahead and layer that down a bit.
| | 01:44 | Okay, that's looking pretty good.
| | 01:45 | We've got our source layer there.
And back in our project, we are just going to
| | 01:51 | nest that into a new composition.
| | 01:54 | So I'll go ahead and drag that on
the new item. Same general idea.
| | 01:59 | We are going to come here in
the middle and we will split it.
| | 02:05 | Let's zoom in a bit. And we now
basically need to create overlap.
| | 02:10 | So I'll pull this up to a top track
here and pull this one down a little bit.
| | 02:16 | I will just Option+Drag or Alt+Drag
there to select the audio. I don't need that.
| | 02:22 | Then let's just add a dissolve. There it is.
| | 02:27 | With the dissolve selected, I can even
come up here and lengthen it very easily,
| | 02:33 | and you see it creates a nice
transition where I could drag right there in the
| | 02:36 | timeline. And what I've done there is I
am creating the cross dissolve between
| | 02:41 | the two layers in a similar fashion
that we did inside of After Effects.
| | 02:50 | There is the little hide.
| | 02:51 | It looks pretty good. And let's
finish that out with an adjustment layer.
| | 02:56 | Now, Premiere Pro CS6 has adjustment layers.
| | 02:59 | Otherwise, just take advantage of
nesting. But this allows you to apply effects
| | 03:04 | in a similar fashion.
| | 03:06 | I could put that on top. There we go.
| | 03:10 | Make it the length that I need. And using
the Effect Controls panel, I could take
| | 03:15 | advantage of other effects.
| | 03:16 | There is Tint in the Color Correction
category. And I will just map this to
| | 03:26 | a nice rich purple.
| | 03:27 | There we go. A little darker. And let's just take
the white to a similar fashion. That looks good.
| | 03:43 | Remember, you always have
the flexibility to tweak.
| | 03:47 | You don't want to use tint.
| | 03:48 | You can use other effects. Or you could
even combine multiple adjustment layers.
| | 03:53 | I could put another one on top there,
take advantage of a Blur. And let's just
| | 04:04 | do the Fast Blur, repeat the Edge
Pixel, and blur that out a bit, and use the
| | 04:11 | same trick of changing its blending
mode to something like Soft Light, or we
| | 04:17 | could brighten that up a little bit with Screen.
| | 04:20 | And you see what that does is it uses
the adjustment layer techniques to combine.
| | 04:25 | Thanks to the Mercury Playback Engine,
we get real-time performance here, even
| | 04:30 | though I'm working on a laptop, which is great.
| | 04:32 | So at this point,
I've made a looping background.
| | 04:35 | It might stutter a little bit during
that cross dissolve, but that's okay; it
| | 04:40 | will pick back up here.
| | 04:42 | And if I'm satisfied with it, I would
just simply render that out or export it
| | 04:48 | and bring it back into my
project as a self-contained movie.
| | 04:51 | Remember, you can always choose File >
Export > Media. Choose a setting that you want to use.
| | 04:59 | In this case, I am going to go to a
High Quality movie here, an HD preset for
| | 05:04 | QuickTime is fine, choose a destination,
and click Export, and it will spit that
| | 05:13 | out and I could bring it into my
project as a ready-to-use clip.
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| Using Final Cut Pro X to make looping backgrounds| 00:00 | I just wanted to step out into
another NLE tool to show you how these same
| | 00:05 | principles can be applied
in lots of environments.
| | 00:08 | In this case, I am using Final Cut X.
| | 00:10 | I am going to go ahead and select a clip.
| | 00:12 | Let's create a new project here. And I
will just call this Background 1 (BG1),
| | 00:17 | and I am going to place the clip in.
| | 00:21 | Now you see it comes in, and in this
case I'll still want to go ahead and trim
| | 00:29 | away some of the material.
| | 00:30 | So if there's more stuff than I want,
this is a good opportunity to take
| | 00:34 | advantage of basic trimming, and
I'll set that to about 30 seconds.
| | 00:38 | Let's go ahead and put
another layer on top, drag that in.
| | 00:43 | It wants to treat it as a
connected line. That's fine.
| | 00:49 | I will adjust that a bit.
| | 00:52 | With that layer selected, I'll open up
the Inspector here. And you will see at
| | 00:59 | the bottom I have Compositing modes,
so I can go ahead and change that.
| | 01:03 | In this case I'll put it into Add
mode and they combine, or Soft Light.
| | 01:08 | In fact, these modes are nearly
identical to what Adobe offers, and you will see
| | 01:13 | that you could very quickly start
to composite things. There we go.
| | 01:19 | Let's put one more on top.
| | 01:20 | I am going to take this nice red one
here, drop that in my timeline for a
| | 01:27 | second, and let's just
find a good part of the clip.
| | 01:31 | That looks pretty good there. And I'll
put that on top, adjust its duration, and
| | 01:44 | I want to scale that clip a little bit.
| | 01:47 | So under Transform here, let's
just adjust the scale. There we go.
| | 01:54 | And I will scroll down and change the
blending mode to Overlay, and that starts
| | 02:03 | to mix those colors together.
| | 02:07 | Notice we are getting the same sort of
real-time performance, which is nice, a
| | 02:10 | mixing of those layers. All right!
| | 02:14 | Let's go ahead and collapse those here.
| | 02:17 | With that selected, I am going to right-
click and choose to make a compound clip.
| | 02:23 | It drops them in.
| | 02:25 | I've got my background and
all the layers are mixing.
| | 02:29 | I will go ahead with that
selected and press Command+B for Blade.
| | 02:33 | What we need to do is move these so
there's an overlap between the two.
| | 02:39 | So now this point and this point is the
loop and on the top clip here, we just
| | 02:45 | need to keyframe an opacity change.
| | 02:49 | So if I scroll this down,
you see we have Opacity.
| | 02:53 | Let's just zoom in there, so it's
easier to see. And I will add a keyframe and
| | 03:03 | then come a little bit earlier and add
another keyframe, but set this one to 0.
| | 03:12 | All right, there we go.
| | 03:15 | We've got our looping background,
and let's take a look at that from the top.
| | 03:28 | It comes up to the dissolve point there.
| | 03:33 | The dissolve is hidden. And it'll get
to the end of the clip and then we will
| | 03:41 | restart it and you'll see
that it jumps seamlessly.
| | 03:45 | So it's going to get to the end of the
clip here and then it starts over again,
| | 03:49 | and that's a seamless loop.
| | 03:51 | Now I can make things easier, select
this, and tell it to be a compound group
| | 03:54 | again, New Compound Clip, so it's
nested, and then take advantage of any of
| | 03:58 | my effects over here.
| | 04:00 | And if I want to stylize this, it's very
easy to start to go in and process things.
| | 04:06 | So using the Effects browser, I could
take advantage of any of the effects I
| | 04:09 | have loaded and start to
color correct or modify this clip.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | I hope you had a lot of fun today.
| | 00:02 | This is just a technique that's
meant to really spur creativity.
| | 00:06 | I invite you to go ahead and adapt
these techniques, make them your own.
| | 00:09 | Experiment with what you have in the drawer.
| | 00:12 | Now, when you're ready to take a look at
some other new ideas, I've got a lot of
| | 00:15 | classes here on lynda.com,
everything from shooting to postproduction.
| | 00:19 | So, open your mind, get your hands a
little bit dirty, pull that camera out,
| | 00:23 | and start creating.
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