If you’re reading this, you’re probably a filmmaker with access to a video camera. Video The Vote needs people like you and me on Election Day.
What’s Video the Vote? From their website:
Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November.
If, like me, you find yourself in a swing state this year, you might feel like it’s especially important to be a part of this.
It takes less than a minute to sign up, and you can volunteer for just part or all of Election Day. So get involved. And spread the word to your filmmaker friends.
Finally, if you’re not sure why such an organization even exists, check out this interview between Bill Moyers and NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller. Warning: Viewing this will keep you up at night.
The folks at 2.1 Films have just released an iPhone Film Calculator. From the description:
Film Calculator has three basic functions:
Length & Time Converter: This function allows the user quickly convert length to time and vice versa for a variety of film stocks and speeds. Choose from Super-8mm, 16mm, 35mm or 70mm stocks and preset frames per second rates (12, 24, 25, 48) or enter your own. Then enter the time and you’ll get the length or enter the length and you’ll get the time.
Hard Drive Storage Calculator: Select a format and enter a time and this function will tell you how much hard drive storage space you need. Dozens of formats are included. Contact us to request more!
Script Supervisor’s Assistant: This function provides a stopwatch that counts both time and length. Select the stock and frame rate and then operate this like a regular stopwatch. Saves scripty’s from having to use a calculator at the end of each take. Always know exactly how much you’ve shot on a reel!
From an email that I recently wrote to a student suffering from writer’s block:
Have I told you my story about William Stafford, the poet? He made it a habit to write a poem every day. (A great poet, he won the National Book Award, etc.) Anyway, I saw him read his poetry shortly before his death. A budding writer stood up after his reading, during the Q+A and asked, “You said you write a poem every day. What happens on the days when you’re not feeling inspired?”
Quick Feet, Soft Hands will be screening at IndieMemphis this weekend. If you’ve not seen it and you’re in the area, check it out on Sunday.
Sadly, I won’t be able to attend. Instead I’ve got to run to D.C. to do some final post-production work on the Quick Feet television version, which I need to deliver to ITVS by the end of the month.
In addition to missing allthegreatfilms that IM’s new festival director Erik Jambor has selected, I’m also bummed that I’m missing out on an all-to-infrequent opportunity to feast on authentic Memphis BBQ.
If this year’s IndieMemphis is any indication, Jambor is going to do great things for the festival as it chugs into its second decade. Hopefully I’ll be able to be there with the next one. To all that attend — enjoy!
This isn’t for everyone, especially those that don’t own their own equipment or those that are concerned with resale value. But if you’re going to use your camera until the wheels fall off, so to speak, then this article may provide some tips or, at the very least, inspiration.
It is time to put the finishing touches on your new heartbeat. After you animate your beat from left to right I think that adding a glow really makes the path look great. You can flavor the glow to taste but if you make color A a bright yellow and color B a bright green you will make a great looking heart beat. You can also add to your animation by adding a lens flare to the leading edge of your heart beat. You will need to add the lens flare with a new solid and change the mode to overlay or soft light. It is up to you and what looks best to you. The flare will need to be animated by hand with key-frames but it does not take long. If your animations is quick enough you will only need aprox. 15 keys. I like to set the flare brightness to about 60% and use the 35mm lens type. This flare is has many applications and uses so I hope you at least enjoyed building this flare and hopefully you can use it in your productions in the future.
Make sure you look at our hire a Personal Genius page. We will customize any class just for you and come to your location. This is a very unique service the will help you get the most our of you After Effects application.
Now that you have started practicing and perfecting your heart beat it is time to go to the next step. If you have set the beat to music or not it is time to add the stroke effect. The stroke effect is used for many things in After Effects but this is one of my favorites. As soon as you add the stroke you will probably notice the the size of the stroke is too small. I like to set my brush size to around 5 to 7 pixels depending n the size of my composition. I also set the stroke color to green and make sure you set the path to mask or your stroke will not know where to go! The rest of the settings you can set to your flavor except start and end. This is how you animate the heartbeat. Scrub the end setting and watch your stroke go from left to right. Set a key frame at the head of your comp and move down apox. 2 seconds down the time-line. You can adjust the keyframe up and down the timelineto get the timing you need……..stay tune for part three! Sign up for our next After Effects class and do not miss out on a great opportunity to learn the best effect programs in the industry today.
Over the next several days I will teach you how to make your very own heart rate monitor using Adobe After Effects and nothing more than an animated stroke. You first need to make a composition any size that fits your your intended project. When you are constructing project like this it is always important to make the compositions larger than you might need. You can always decrease the size of scale but if you try and increase it will run into pixelation issues.
To begin start with: Layer>New>Solid and create a black solid the size of your composition. (Note: The reason you want to build this on a black solid is just in case you want to lay this over video is some sort of mode the black will allow for this). Next with the pen tool draw out your heart beat across your layer. You can make this a simple or as complex as you wish. If you have a heat rate sound effect you draw your heart beat to match the waveform of the heart beat audio file. Once you have drawn the heart beat you now need to add a Stroke Effect to the solid layer in your composition.
I will let you experiment with the stroke effect for now and try and predict how you might animate the beat. Meanwhile make sure you sign up for our next After Effects class or let us send a “Personal Genius” to you!
If I’ve not sold you on these things – and I swear I’m not a shill – I imagine some of the examples later in the series will. So let me just get it out now: my advice on choosing a tablet if you decide you want one. I’m no professional tablet man, so take my advice for what it is – just one video guy talking to another.
There are a handful of companies making tablet products, but the long-time industry leader is Wacom. Their hardware doesn’t require much TLC, it’s packed to the gills with productivity features, it plays nicely with a whole array of input devices, and it will outlive you. Well, maybe not you, but it will outlive, say, your pet ferret. Having played with friends’ off-brand tablets, and felt how heavy pens can get with batteries in them, and been annoyed by their strange calibrations, I think I’d definitely stay brand-loyal if I were to buy another.
Since I started at GeniusDV, I’ve noticed that I’m one of the only people here who swears by a graphics tablet. Although I acquired my tablet for the same reasons most people do – to work in Photoshop and Painter – I’ve found it useful in the video editing process as well.
Basically, a graphics tablet hooks up to your computer and does the same thing that your mouse does – except that you’re holding a pen instead of squeezing on a mouse, and you’re “drawing” on a rectangular pad that matches directly to the pen’s position on your screen. So if you need to move back and forth between, say, your footage bins and your toolset on the other corner of the screen, there’s no longer any need to drag the mouse over and over again – you just point directly at what you need.
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