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This weekend wasn't as exciting as I'd expected, but progress was made nonetheless.
2007-11-18 22:26:56
That's one of my favorite words: nonetheless. It's just great.
'Bustin
Pre-edit: 23
Editing: 34
The Good: I FINALLY achieved one kind of difficult (for me) track matte-scrolling text-zoom-fade-glow effect that I've been after for a long time. It's not 100% the way I wanted it to turn out, but I'm hoping betatester folk will be able to see what I'm trying to do and give me advice on how to improve upon it.
The Bad: Er...I'm starting to feel uncomfortably like I was at one point with Sephiration Anxiety, where I had an extremely limited pool of footage to work from and was forced to spend some 20 hours figuring out how to bend two seconds of video to my will. 'Bustin-wise, I've got about a minute of footage to play with relating to a certain scene I need to create that's all of five seconds long, but no matter how I slice it or dice it, things just won't fall into place. Time to think outside the box, I guess. BAH! This whole AMV is outside the box, going further outside will wind me up on the inside again!
The Ugly: I sincerely hope that people figure out that the cheesy artwork I'm creating is deliberately cheesy. I do this for a living - if I was only capable of bad "art," I'd probably be out of a job.
If I didn't have this AMV journal, my friends and family would have to suffer through my bizarre complaints. At least when I'm commiserating with myself, I don't have to worry about being tripped up by impertinent questions like "What the hell is a track matte?" -
Yay! Newsletter mention! Thanks, but...
2007-11-18 13:36:05
It's always disconcerting when people point to my pen tool tutorial as a masking how-to, because technically it's not. I nearly made a how-to section on masking within the tutorial, but I figured it was long enough already, that was not the purpose of the tutorial and anyone serious enough about masking to go through the trouble of reading the entire guide already had a pretty good idea of what's required. Plus, there are so many methods for masking, and so many other places to learn about how to do it, that me reinventing the wheel made absolutely no sense.
Yes, I admit it: the pen tool can be challenging to master and it's yet another hurdle to clear if you want to get serious about rotoscoping....but it was not my intention to make the masking process more difficult ("OMG, I have to learn how to use the pen tool before I can make a mask??!! WHAAA!!"), only to emphasize that if you want optimum results obtained in the most efficient, effective manner possible, you really need the pen tool. If you don't care what your mask looks like or don't particularly care about spending five times as many hours on your frames as necessary...then by all means keep using the magic wand and magnetic lasso. Don't say I didn't try to warn you. :P
One of these days I really need to use some impressive masking in an AMV. It's kinda funny that, thus far, I haven't touched the pen tool for any of my projects. ^_^ -
This weekend is going to be interesting...
2007-11-16 12:24:55
'Bustin
Pre-edit: 23
Editing: 30
The Good: So yeap, 'Bustin it is unless some better title pops into my head. "Bad English" is a possibility, but only if I play up that joke. *makes note to play up that joke*
The Bad: Currently I'm stuck in an AMV low, one rather important scene is driving me up the wall, it's just not working. Hopefully beta tester folk will be able to assist if I still haven't straightened it out a few weeks from now.
The Ugly: I need to try and replicate this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsKmZURSFTs kind of camera accident. After Effects is already gloating in the corner about how much it's going to enjoy saying NO to me.
If there is anyone who has ever made a 5-star snide comment about the Advent Children universe, the characters (whatever) or would like to give Advent Children a Daily Show/Colbert Report razz - PLEASE LET ME KNOW. (Example: Denzel's slitted eyes prove the dangers of watching too much TV.) I would be more than happy to give credit for any items that come my way. Statements about Sephiroth or Kadaj are, unfortunately, not acceptable. They're not planning on appearing in this AMV (well, ok, Sephiroth does, but he's booted off early, stage right). -
Massive revamping of time ahead
2007-11-14 10:22:30
AC: Kicked Below the Belt (working title...)
Pre-edit: 23
Editing: 29
There, that's better. I forgot that I consider "editing" hours spent exclusively on the video end of things. I have (obviously) spent a good chunk of time outside of Premiere getting things ready for the timeline. Gives a new perspective on how fast I'm editing, that's for sure, 29 hours for about 2 minutes of footage that at least is a good representation of what I'm aiming for - apparently I HAVE gotten much more efficient, the halfway mark is still a good 20 hours away (heck, maybe this will come in under 100 hours!! wooo!).
On the AE front, last night I attempted to achieve some effects that have been difficult in Premiere. The program laughed in my face and gave me the finger. I do not have time to argue with it, so it looks like I will be unable to fully implement all the things I want to do with this AMV. Not good!
I'm starting to come up with other titles:
1. 'Bustin - this is what I find myself mentally calling my AMV, so that's an obvious, if uninspired, choice.
2. Live from Downtown Midgar - more interesting, but problematic in that I have not yet pushed the envelope on this concept, something I really need to do as it's the "thing" that is intended to set this AMV apart. -
The halfway mark is coming into sight
2007-11-11 13:11:46
AC: Kicked Below the Belt (working title...)
Pre-edit: 8
Editing: 44
The Good: This AMV is actually working. It really is. It's coherent, it's amusing, it's entertaining...
The Bad: I foresee that, just like Sephiration Anxiety, I will spend more time fine-tuning this AMV than putting it all together in the first place. Judging by my progress thus far, that means I will spend about 100 hours putting it together and over 100 hours tuning. :( Hey, I'm slow as molasses, so this isn't 200+ hours of stellar editing going on, this is 200+ hours of screwing around. My general pattern is:
Ok, I need to create X scene over the course of the next 15 seconds...
*one hour later*
That looks really cool! Oh drat, that wasn't the scene I was supposed to be creating.
*one hour later*
That's way cooler! Er...wait, this still isn't getting me where I need to be.
*two hours later*
Do I really need to create this scene? What if I tried X instead?
*half an hour later*
My back is killing me. I hate AMVs! I'm going to go read a book.
*15 minutes later*
I KNOW I can get this scene right...
*one hour later*
Damnit, time to bring the horses in...
*Two hours later*
What was I trying to do again?
The Ugly: See above.
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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