An animated background calls even more attention to the foreground title.
The Title Background animates over a particle system and animated title.
Normally, when we add a title to a video, we want the background video to remain stationary. But, there’s no rule that says it must.
When you create a title using Motion, Apple displays a special kind of drop zone (or placeholder) called “Title Background.”
This placeholder is automatically filled with whatever video is located under the title. (All other drop zones require you to specify the video you want inside it using the Inspector.)
Well, though this placeholder automatically fills with the background video, you can still animate it. For example, in the screen shot, it starts full screen, then, using keyframes, I scale it to 85% and raise it up so that the title slides in underneath, floating over the Simple Background particle system.
Once you realize that you can animate the background as well as the foreground of a title, there’s no end to the creative opportunities.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-15 01:30:002021-07-10 10:07:00Tip #1783: Animate the Background of a Title
This video, narrated by John P. Hess, first appeared in FilmmakerIQ.com. This is a summary.
Yellow! It’s everywhere, especially in television graphics. But why? Well let’s seriously over-think this and explore some color theory concepts on why this color is the king of graphics color.
This video goes in-depth on the science and readability of color.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-09 01:30:002021-07-09 01:30:00Tip #1759: Why Are All Video Graphics Yellow?
Difference creates a surreal, intense color effect
Blend modes are set using Inspector > Properties. The lower arrow indicates where.
Motion, like many graphics applications, includes a variety of blend modes to provide more dynamic blending between objects; especially moving objects. Difference is a rarely-used blend mode that creates eye-catching effects.
Difference displays the arithmetic difference between overlapping color objects. In general, I’ve found it creates a surreal, intense color effect.
The cool thing about Difference is that the colors change depending upon both foreground and background colors. As well, colors animate as objects move around the frame.
To apply the effect, select the foreground object in the Layers panel. Then go to Inspector > Properties and change Blend Mode to Difference.
If you haven’t played with this recently, it’s worth taking the time to experiment.
Multiply superimposes dark areas while removing lighter areas – automatically.
Foreground (top), background (middle), combining the two using Multiply. (Image courtesy Wewe Yang, Pexels.com.)
Multiply is a blend mode that drops out a white background while superimposing the darker portions of the image on a background.
It’s like a very fast luma key without having to make any adjustments. Here’s how it works.
In the Layers pane, stack the element with a white background on top of the background image.
Select the foreground image and go to Inspector > Properties and set Blend Mode to Multiply.
There’s nothing to adjust. Light areas are removed and darker areas are superimposed – instantly. The screen shot illustrates the process.
NOTE: The black edges in the top screen shot are from the Motion background, they are not part of the signature image itself. (The signature is Benjamin Franklin.)
The Color Burn blend mode makes darker colors more intense.
Color Burn is a blend mode that intensifies the dark areas in two superimposed images.
Before you read the description below, taken from Apple’s Help, look at the screen shot.
Whites in the background image replace the foreground image, while whites in the foreground image become transparent. Midrange color values in the background image allow midrange color values in the foreground image to show through. Lighter midrange color values in the background image allow more of the foreground image to show through. Darker midrange values in all visible overlapping areas are then mixed together, resulting in intensified color effects.
To apply this effect:
Select the foreground element in the Layers pane.
Go to Inspector > Properties and apply the Color Burn option in the Blend Mode menu.
The order of two layers affected by the Color Burn blend mode is important. In the screen shot, the yellow sun is foreground.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-08 01:30:002021-07-08 01:30:00Tip #1768: Color Burn Makes Colors More Intense
TVBEurope reports that UK-based Strictly Come Dancing has introduced augmented reality into this year’s series. Here’s a detailed look at what they did.
It’s not been easy to bring the ballroom back in the year of the pandemic, and the production team deserve all the plaudits they’ve received for their hard work to get the show on air. Strictly’s production team has been particularly innovative by bringing augmented reality into the mix. From the racing cars in week one, to the elephant that appeared during Bill Bailey’s Quickstep, augmented reality has featured every week during the live shows.
The use of AR has been a real team effort, involving both the lighting and audio teams, as well as companies, Mo-Sys and Potion Pictures. While this year is the first time AR has been employed in the show, it’s something the team has been considering for a while. “We’ve previously used perspective in the floor to create the illusion that the dancers are standing on top of a lighthouse or wedding cake, or skyscraper,” explains Potion Pictures’ managing director David Newton, who also serves as the show’s graphics designer.
“That’s been really effective but the big drawback is you can’t move the camera.”
Newton was asked by Strictly’s producers to look into the possibility of AR, and chose to use Unreal Engine as they were already starting to use it for real time rendering. “Mo-Sys’s name kept coming up in relation to AR and camera tracking, and Epic Games said Mo-Sys have a plugin that works great with their software and we were comfortable with using Unreal so it all sort of added up.”
Using AR looks great on screen, but there’s always the possibility that the couples will end up dancing right through it. How do the team ensure that doesn’t happen? Newton cites Clara Amfo’s recent jive, which featured an AR record player. “The first draft of the record player had it much further down stage, we thought the original starting position was going to be camera right. So we sort of changed how a record player works to actually have the arm on the other side. But it all changed, and it went further upstage and there were a few more meetings about where it was going to go, what colour it should be, what side the arm was going to be, how many letters of complaint we would get if the records spun in the wrong direction,” he laughs.
As well as the graphics, Strictly’s lighting is a key component of the augmented reality employed in the show. David Bishop, the show’s lighting director, says it’s been interesting to explore the relationship between lighting and AR. “In my mind there are two routes with AR, you have to either make something that is real, and therefore it has to appear on the screen as being absolutely real, or you have to make something that’s very clearly an ethereal dimension and isn’t meant to be real,” explains Bishop. “For example, if you’re inside an AR-created house, as we’ve used this series, and there’s a light bulb inside then the person that’s standing inside that house needs to be lit as though it’s coming from that fake light. That means I have to find a real light in the same direction, which sort of does the same job.
Bishop continues: “The tricky thing about that is that our spot ops can’t see the things they’re trying to point the lights at. So they’d be pointing the spotlight in one direction and then I would be saying left a bit, down a bit. It’s that sort of workflow that’s become quite new to us but it is absolutely key, getting the lighting angles right is what’s making the AR even more believable, and that’s certainly something that’s improved throughout the series.”
https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-07 01:30:002021-07-07 01:30:00Tip #1763: The AR Elephant in the Ballroom
Robbie writes: “Please learn from our misfortune.”
Robbie Coblentz’s QNAP server.
This article, written by Robbie Coblentz, first appeared in ProVideoCoalition.com. This is a summary.
I’m heading to a shoot and my phone rings. It’s Jake, my senior producer.
“Boss, I think we’ve been hacked.”
And with that starts a loooong week of recovery, troubleshooting, and formatting. Our QNAP actually had been hacked.
Quick background. I have a small video production company that produces commercials, brand films, and TV programming.
We are a PC-based shop, with all machines connected to 48TB NAS via a closed 10 gig ethernet network. The NAS, a QNAP TS1685, is stocked with 4TB drives and striped into a RAID 6 configuration. That gives us 40 TB of usable space with the safety net of being able to survive 2 drive failures. The QNAP services four edit suites and a few other computers for browsing and offloading
The QNAP has four 1-gig ethernet ports and a single 10-gig Ethernet port. The 10-gig port services the edit suites. One of the single gig ports connected to our traditional network and was outward-facing to the internet. That was part of the problem.
Up until now, my backup strategy was based around the idea that a hardware failure was the most likely — and dangerous — problem we would face.
Typically, we have at least four copies of all footage shot.
We burn footage cards on an iMac via ShotPut Pro to a bare hard drive (copy 1) along with a copy to a locally attached RAID 5 (copy 2). Then, the footage is loaded into an active project folder on the NAS (copy 3). Once the bare drive (copy 1) reaches capacity, we make an LTO copy (copy 4). When the project is complete, we archive to another bare drive (copy 5) for mastered projects. When that drive is full, it gets an LTO copy (copy 6). The RAID 5 and NAS copies get deleted once everything is mastered off.
We make a Chronsync backup of the NAS every night using an older RAID system to give a near-line-identical copy. Technically, that would be the seventh temporary copy. In this case, 7 wasn’t our lucky number.
The Chrosync backup was made after the hack had occurred, so the ransomed files copied over the last known good copy. And we didn’t have archiving on.
So if you are keeping score at home, that’s a bunch of copies of the footage, but only one copy of projects, image, animation, and music files — all typically smaller than 20 MB. That was our Achilles heel.
Read the full article as Robbie describes how they recovered, how his backup strategy changed and how they are moving forward.
You don’t need to be a big company to get hacked. You just need to connect your servers to the Internet.
“It’s not either / or. There’s room for both.” (HBO)
“The Mandalorian” image courtesy of Disney.
This article, written by Chris McGowan, first appeared in VFXVoice.com. This is a summary.
At the start of 2020, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streamers were already reshaping the movie and television-watching experience. Then came the pandemic. As home entertainment demand soared, movie theaters shut down and film and TV suffered a slump in production. Studios postponed premieres and tinkered with movie release strategies. Streaming services benefited from the increased demand and grew across the board. Due to all the disruptions that followed – either because of or accelerated by COVID-19 – the new decade seems set to become “the Streaming ’20s.”
Netflix continued its remarkable rise in 2020 and dominated Nielsen’s top 10 lists of most-streamed titles, with both old and new titles. The streamer continues to pump out original programming. It will launch 70-plus original movies this year, 10 of them in languages other than English. Netflix added 37 million paid subscribers in 2020, to stand at 203.7 million worldwide at the end of the year, according to the company.
The Walt Disney Company reported that Disney+ had nearly 95 million subscribers worldwide as of its first quarter of 2021, according to research firm Statista, which reports a growth in the service’s subscriber base of almost 70 million since the start of the fiscal year of 2020. The service launched November 12, 2019. Meanwhile, Hulu (controlled by Disney) reached 39.4 million subscribers by year’s end.
This year, some streamers are charging “premium” fees to access certain new films early, while others are offering tiered subscription pricing. Disney+ charged a $29.99 one-time “Premier Access” fee for Mulan last September and Raya and the Last Dragon in March of this year that offered exclusive access to the titles before they became free to regular subscribers.
Gregory K. Peters, Netflix COO and Chief Product Officer, has a different view about tiers. “We really believe that from a consumer orientation the simplicity of our ad-free, no additional payments, one subscription [is] really powerful and really satisfying to the consumers around the world. And so, we want to keep emphasizing that.”
EXTRA CREDIT
The article – linked above – has more interviews and thoughts on how the streaming wars are changing both theatrical and in-home entertainment.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-02 01:30:002021-07-02 01:30:00Tip #1740: Streaming Media Reshapes Entertainment
Alfred HIghcock (left) and François Truffaut (right)
This article, written by Jourdan Aldredge, first appeared in PremiumBeat.com. This is a summary.
These insightful documentaries about filmmaking can offer more inspiration and advice than most film classes.
If you really want to learn about how films are actually made, you should watch films about filmmaking. There are tons of incredible documentaries that cover the art of filmmaking, ranging from director retrospectives, famous “the making of” documentaries, as well as comprehensive studies about filmmaking itself.
Here’s a list of some the author’s favorites:
Lost in La Mancha. We’ll start with one of the best documentaries about the sheer insanity of filmmaking. Lost in La Mancha is a 2002 documentary that tells the story of Terry Gilliam‘s (first) attempt to make a film adaption of the famous Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote de la Mancha. SPOILER: He ultimately fails at his endeavor.
Hitchcock/Truffaut. Premiered in 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival, Hitchcock/Truffaut is any cinephile’s documentary dream, providing an in-depth exploration into the work of two of the most famous, iconic filmmakers of all time.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. For those who have ever wondered how Cannon Film favorites ever came to existence in the first place, this will give you the best primer on how one audacious company financed, produced, and distributed such a wide array of eclectic films, ranging from action to horror to sci-fi.
Room 237. The film is presented through voiceovers as various film theorists provide their interpretations into why Stanley Kubrick made The Shining and what he was trying to say with his many profound, yet confusing, filmmaking decisions.
My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. The acclaimed director granted unprecedented access into the filming of his 2013 action/crime drama Only God Forgives to one of the most intimate documentary filmmakers ever—his wife.
The article – linked above – provides more details, plus links to all these videos.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-02 01:30:002021-07-02 01:30:00Tip #1744: The Best Docs About Filmmaking
We focus on the main plot, but subplots give a film life.
An example of a film script, from Tootsie.
This article, written by Jason Hellerman, first appeared in NoFilmSchool.com. This is a summary.
So much of the time we spend writing is focusing on what happens in the main plot. As a result, we often forget other things have to happen as well. Writing movies and TV shows is not an easy thing to do. You have to juggle characters, their motivations, and make sure the audience cares about all of them.
In this article, Jason Hellerman goes over the stuff that happens outside of the main plot, the subplots, and the B-stories that make your movie or TV show feel whole.
In screenwriting for film and television, a subplot is one of the threads of the plot that is supporting the main plot.
There can be more than one subplot, and they can have crossover scenes with the main plot. Subplots usually have their own supporting characters besides the protagonist or antagonist. They have their own wants, desires, and arcs.
If you want to add a new dimension to your script to deepen your theme, a subplot can greatly help. Most scripts, whether film or television, have a few subplots. Now, you don’t want so many that they distract from the main story, but lots of time they can support what’s happening on the main pages.
The best subplots build out the world of the story. They help expand the universe, the themes, and the overall mission and intention of the story.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-02 01:30:002021-06-26 10:23:14Tip #1745: How to Make Script Subplots Shine
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