I was directed to you By Dr. Pat Jackson and Dr. Martha Gorzycki from SFSUto see if you would be willing to point me in the right direction, help answer a few questions. I'm attempting to put together a five minute video project next semester, and most of my questions are in regards to video FX. From what I understand, your mastery of the art makes you the perfect person to talk to. And Actually, after seeing clips from The Crimes of Mr. Lowry, I know you're the right guy to ask.
From your website regarding The Crimes of Mr. Lowry:
"Here is a visual effects/compositing breakdown of the wide master shot of John Lowry's apartment from my short film The Crimes of Mister Lowry. Matte paintings were done in Photoshop, snow and fog animations in After Effects, and the virtual set was modeled in 3D Studio Max. The shot was composited in Shake then color-graded and filtered in After Effects."
Honestly, it sounds great, but I barely understand a word. That's probably bad. I love the realism that you used, but I'd be willing to lose some of it in order to save time, and therefore cost. I've compiled a few examples of the type of look that I'm going for, in the hopes that you can show me a few good resources to learn from, supposing of course that the look is faster and easier to create. For starters, I'm interested in using DV, live actors and a green screen. I've found a couple of simple tutorials, but I don't know much of anything yet. I plan on using 2 dimensional stationary backgrounds, and a rotoscope (is that what it's called?) type animation for the characters, but hopefully without any frame-by-frame work. (is that even possible?) After seeing a few examples, I understand that lighting is key, but there are plenty of other pit-falls that I'm unaware of I'm sure.
I have some Photoshop experience, but I just recently learned about layer masks and actions. I'm still not very good with either. That gives you some frame of reference about my level of understanding on the subject. Is there some easy way to do batch rendering? I there a good example of what I'm looking to do that I can copy, or adjust as opposed to creating myself? How much would it cost for me to hire someone to create a template for me to work from? I can tell what looks good, and what doesn't look good, and my renderings thus far don't look good.
Would I be able to use an image like this as a background shot if I matched the lighting properly? Let's say I'm taking the photos of the places myself, what should I be looking for to make my job easier? Could I render the background in a similar way to make it match the character, or is there more to it to make it blend better?
If I've only got a small studio, how do I make my characters small enough to have the establishing shot. (I can do it as a still frame -- except for the green screen stuff -- I'd do it by hand), but I don't know if it's the same for moving characters.And more than anything else, how can I do it extremely quickly and cheaply, with a lot of batch rendering, and not a lot of manual editing, frame-by-frame. Is there a way to use green screens, batch processing, and intelligent lighting to cut time and costs?
The hope is to use this primarily as a podcast and web-media, so cost-effectiveness is a very high concern. I would hope eventually to be able to put it on DVD and have it look really nice, so I do need to make sure that the resolution is high enough.I would eventually like to be able to use special FX to add supernatural abilities to some of the characters. The hope is that these effects will take less time to render and/or look more "realistic" in the sense that they fit into the world that is being created. Is that assumption anywhere close to correct?
When it comes down to it, I'm much more of an audio guy than a video guy, and much more of a writer and producer than an animations expert (obviously). If the answer to my questions is "Go to school for three or four years, then talk to me," then I hope that you could point me towards someone who can do the process, in part or in whole, for me. This five minute project is designed to help with the pitch to get grants and investors for a longer body of work.
I feel fairly confidant in the style that I'm looking for, and I hope that I have been able to give you clear examples of what it is that I want. If there is any confusion, please do not hesitate to call or e-mail me.Thank you so much for taking the time to read through the information here, your help is greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you.
-Sean
PS: On a similar but completely unrelated note, the editing style is also very comic book like, with more pan wipes and such. I know it may not be your primary field of expertise, but any pointing in the right direction would be much appreciated. A very low-budget example of what I'm looking for is here. (starting about 30 seconds in.) I plan on using a full audio track since all of my experience is in audio, but the thing to focus on is the moving animated characters during the transitions. For some reason, I just can't figure out how to do that effectively.
