You know, I've noticed a trend from Cazor's videos, some of JediKirby's comments, and just a number of non specific posts. It seems more and more Massassians are interested in doing Digital Video Editing.

While that's a fun and exciting hobby, there are many things about the experience that you may find incredibly...well...frustrating, and/or confusing.

So, I offer my help and services to answer any question about Video Editing as I have quite a lot of experience under my belt.

Fire away.

As do I. I can confirm or offer an alternative opinion on anything you might have a question about. A lot of us have different styles or approaches, so it'll probably be fun seeing our differences.

JediKirby

Either one of you know how to do Sin City type effects using Final Cut Pro? Or something else? Preferably something I can grab for free first.

And by Sin City type effects, I mean going black and white (I don't need help with that!), coloring only certain objects, and highlighting certain things (ie: Marv's Bandages, Hartigan's Tie, etc.)

I'm almost positive SOME of that has to be fairly simple. I just haven't got a clue.

Ok, what kind of software do I need? (Hopefully free stuff) Does your recomended software support multiple audio track editing too?

Windows Movie Maker has been good 'nuff for me.

Mwa ha ha! I just got finished editing a video/slideshow for a woman's husband in Iraq, and I'm right about to go show it to her and get paid.

I have a question: what's the best way to advertise video editing to the public? Not difficult stuff like weddings, but little things. Would an ad in the paper help?

im completey fine with the editing process. effects... i know about most of them. other than that the somewhat negative comments from my videos (if thats what you're referring to) are prolly just cause me and my friends have... a different sense of humor. actually some people on massassi think they're funny, but yeah.

i'd imagine they took the film and made it black and white and upped the contrast(possibly lowered the brightness a bit) and then added the color bits later onto that, phoenix_9286. so i guess it is fairly simple, just kinda tedious if you have a lot of it.



adobe premiere if you don't have a mac G5... but if you happen to have one of those around... final cut pro (HD if possible)... buuut that's not free. eh, i tried.

That and word of mouth should help.

OK, to start out:

I've never even tried it, but I'd assume that the entire Sin City thing ISN'T in black and white. Instead there are color filters that blank out all colors but whatever. Anyway, that's how *I'd* do it, but I'm sure there's a better way that I'm not at all knowledged about. I don't deal with special effects as much as I do the angles, lighting, and other aspects of pre-production. Post production is a pretty simple process for me.

As for programs, I used adobe premeir for a long time until my workplace got a G4 and Final Cut Pro HD. Holy crap is that program powerful. You can get a learner's liscense for cheaper than the steep price tag it usually has.

Although, if you don't plan to do many effects, I'd suggest a Cassablanca. Simplistic editing, cheap to obtain, etc. It's all analog, but can finish in digital if you know how to hook it all up (Which I don't). You can buy a Cassiblanca for probably 100 bucks, 300 if it's a recent distro.

But honestly, post production isn't even a third of the battle. Use windows storyboard if you honestly don't care about effects or indepth color correction. Honestly, focusing on your angles, your lighting, and so on and so forth is far more important. In fact, I think movie makers have completelly forgot about that now adays, what with being able to put a window in a shot that didn't have a window before, adding a second shadow facing the other angle from a new light put in after the shot is taken. All of this without a bluescreen. They've really distanced themselves from the art of film making, and I'm trully ashamed of some of even the better film maker's laziness with preproduction.

JediKirby

Yeah. The stuff we're working on today (which we need to REwork actually since the effing computer DIDN'T SAVE THE CAPTURE) has focused ALOT on getting good angles and pans and whatnot. Standing around is just boring. We're doing this all in Halo by the way. I actually managed to get a Sin Cityish effect by simply boosting the Contrast and Lighting and then heavily desaturating the image. It's not completely black and white, but it LOOKS pretty cool. And that was all taken care of before we started recording.

What I'm really curious about, and you might have slightly touched on, is if I can manually select an object on the film in Final Cut and then alter JUST that area of film for color, brightness, and contrast. I'm PRETTY sure you can, but since I've hardly EVER used Final Cut (iMovie has worked WONDERS for every movie I've done so far) I don't know where to go for half of this stuff.

im pretty sure you can. I know you can add masks to stuff.

Either that or you can import an image created in photoshop for the color.

I think theres a tool called 'mask' that you can choose a certain color range to edit on, and then ONLY edit on that color. Not so sure, and I can't get to my mac at work to see.

JediKirby

Nearly every video editing program worth their stuff supports masking. And masking is how the vast majority of digital effects are created. You can apply filters to said masked source video, and then on the unmasked portion, play the source directly, without changes.

Can't believe I didn't think of masks..... I knew it had to be something PAINFULLY obvious that I was bound to overlook.

Maybe I'll drag my video over to the iMac tomorrow and fool around with it.

Wow. So, when I finally checked the thread, many of you answered your own questions. That's great!

1.) Sin City's effects were unique, as the film was shot with each actor on green screen, and VERY little interaction with each other. Then they took the footage and independantly edited the colors, composition, backgrounds, etc. In one interview, they said Nick the Yellow ******* actually was in all blue, as to let them just chroma key out that blue to make the yellow.

2.) I use Adobe products. I have experience with all the Mac line (iMovie, Final Cut, Motion, LiveType, etc.) but I prefer to do my work on Adobe PC products. That being said, you can do some INCREDIBLE post production work with After Effects, Premiere, or whatever, if you give it enough time. Using masks works very well, and it's awesome looking, though the time consuption is tremendous.

3.) Kirby has a real point with the fact that so much post-production has made the director's and cinematographer's jobs easier/harder. The other point that he made is that all people starting out SHOULD use windows movie maker, or pinnacle studio, or iMovice. That way you find out how to edit a film, and THEN, figure out how to manipulate (effects, motion, etc.) what you've got.

4.) Don't trust free video editing software. Spend a little on a consumer *lite* version, and then get your student ID and buy the full version later. TRUST ME.

Let's see, anything else I missed? continue with the questions!

Yup yup. Adobe Premiere is GOD.

And I also agree with just editing footage first. Tooooo many people think that special effects are what makes a video. I HIGHLY disagree. Even worse, are the people who just throw as many transitions and effects into a movie as they want.

Believe it or not, for every soft fade and wipe found in the star wars movies, there is at least 10 hard cuts. The idea is to make it seemless, and only fade/wipe when a scene change occurs. And most of the transitions you see in video editing programs have very specific uses. A wipe is about as far as I would go on a transition, unless I needed to give a specific feeling about a transition between 2 clips.

Final Cut Pro HD > Premiere.

MBegger, it's literally personal choice for me.

Our station is mostly windows run, due to networking issues with out news writing software, and because we're poor.

So the newest Premiere Pro 1.5 running on a 1.2ghz processor, does what we need it to do better than Final Cut HD on our G4 Mac. Most of the time, I'd rather not work with the mac, since I'm so used to Premiere. At the same time, Final Cut is the better program in a lot of respects, just not ones I particularly care about.

It would be interesting to see if I could edit a show on the Mac as fast as I can on Premiere, taking into consideration the "ramp up" back to where my Final Cut skills were a few years ago....

...oh, well.

Yeah, Final Cut and Premiere both have their strong points, but I much perfer Premiere. Plus, Macs in general can have issues with AVIs... which is a format I deal with heavily.

Vegas Video > Final Cut Pro > Premiere

God, I can't stand Premiere.

I dunno. I havent had too much trouble with Final Cut. Premiere however was not fun to work with.

Vegas is the best solution when working with basic silly effects and straight timeline editing for pennies on the dollar.

Adobe products have better integration and power. They really are limitless. I have yet to find an Adobe product that couldn't do everything I needed, if I spent the time and effort to work with it.

I hope this doesn't turn into a Adobe/Mac/Sony/etc. battle over software, but more a learning thread where true questions can be answered.

Also, ADOBE PWNS!!!!!111