Black and white, day for night, muzzle flashes... Ugh

[mr_goodbomb]

I had a guy that was supposed to do my B roll for the documentary I'm doing on zombie cinema. Instead of getting all the copyrights to various movies (even for an educational documentary, IE, Richard Rubinstein is a jerk), I shot my own footage and figured I'd edit it down into little clips. I had another guy that was going to do the digital effects for it, but... They've sat on his shelf for months and he hasn't touched them. I'm running closer and closer to the date, so now it's my problem to do it all myself. I don't know any other digital effects editors in the area, and I can't afford to pay someone else.

Here's the basic list of what I needed:

- Black and white (easy enough, but to look convincing enough as actual old black and white film footage)
- Day for night (often times, coupled with the black and white)
- muzzle flashes
- blood hits (mainly headshots and blood sprays)
- changing clear water to red

There may be a few more, but at this point... I'm so screwed, that I'm going to have to simplify everything. All I have personally is Final Cut, my college has a few other programs but I'd have scarce access to them. I can find tutorials on Google myself if that's mainly what is going to be posted, so that's not nessicary, mainly I'm just looking for any insight (constructive, not rude, snide, or useless) that might be helpful. Thanks a lot, guys.

(I don't mean to make any rude comments, they're not directed at anyone here, but other forums, I have to dig through pages of useless and mean-spirited responses to get any real input, so I'm just being... proactive.)

[GraySunProductions]

Step 1: Download trial version of After Effects from Adobe.com

Step 2: Follow these 3 tutorials.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/old_film_look/

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/assisted_suicide/

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/day_to_night_conversion/




I know you said you could find tutorials on Google, but really what I'm suggesting is that you use After Effects instead of Final Cut. You can get things done much faster, and there are great Video Copilot tutorials to help, when in Final Cut you'd have to search around a bit more to find all the tutorials and techniques.

[mr_goodbomb]

Thank you. I'm not sure if I can get access to After Effects aside from the trial version (which is limited, obviously), but I'll try.

A headshot and muzzle flash tutorial without motion tracking would be nice. We were sure to lock the camera for those shots.

I'd also like to make the zombie's eyes glow (at night, probably a similar effect to the headlights in day-to-night) and make their pupils white (during the day). Any ideas there?

[GraySunProductions]

Yeah, basically it's just a matter of picking the right color and then motion tracking the eyes... as for the pupil effect Videocopilot has a tutorial for that too.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/eye_replacement/

Seriously, just look here:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/

Andrew Kramer's got the bases covered.

On another note, the trial version of After Effects allows you to use all the features, and even render stuff out...
The only limitation is a 30 day trial period, but with a whole month, I think you could get a lot done, if not everything.

[mr_goodbomb]

Thank you very much. I'll have to see what I can do.

[cyrax037]

really? I'd think the learning curve alone, even with tutorials, would take about half of that. I've heard the AE is a VERY memory intensive program. A friend of mine, he's a big computer wiz, have a very powerful computer, and even it has some issues with A.E.
I downloaded the trial once, and I could barely get it to work with low quality footage, cuz it is just too much for my PC.

[mr_goodbomb]

Fairly new MacBook. I can hope it'll work.

[GraySunProductions]

I've had my fair share of After Effects woes, but as long as you've got a computer with a good 2+ gigs of RAM (although preferably 3+), a 2.2ghz+ CPU, and a decent video card, you're set.

As for the learning curve, there really isn't one when you're just following along with the tutorials. Believe me, when I was an After Effects noob, I had no idea what I was doing, but I was able to do it. Just a matter of clicking the same things you see being clicked in the tutorial.

Once you follow a few tutorials, you'll find yourself predicting the next steps - learning "monkey see, monkey do" style.


With a relatively new Macbook it'll run decently.