Cheap, Good Resources

Isn’t that something we all can love?  Some great quality resources, used on regular productions all the time, never get used.  Did you ever wonder what happened to those surplus materials?  Well, here they are!  I’ve found them for you!  (Thank me in the comment box).  This link I stumbled across through a video I found on the Filmmaking.com website and a video called Lights, Camera, Action.  It’s part of an apparently new video series with quite a high production value, though, to be honest, a pretty crappy website.  It can be seen here, but more importantly, the pilot episode can be seen here.  I’d let the flaws of the site go for now, just to see if they’ll pull off a decent web series on making good quality video.  The hosts were a bit cheesy in my opinion, but they had some good sounding promises for the future of the show.  Anyway… back to business… The Expendable Recycler is a company that buys leftover production materials, and stocks new materials (in case they run out of surplus stuff) and resell it all at “2/3 of their average prices elsewhere.”  This is a promising deal, so I went to check it out.  It turns out they stockk all kinds of things, from fluorescent tubes to tracing paper and duvetyne which, when I looked it up, sounded like a diffusion material.  The site seemed aimed toward lighting instruments, like diffusion and coloring materials, but that stuff is often expensive and for the low-/no-budget filmmaker like me, it’s a welcome deal.  The only thing I didn’t like about the site was that they don’t have a catalog online, which means that you have to call them to get any kinds of prices or idea of specifically what their products are.  Not to be taken as a down side, they seem like plenty happy people, based on their photo gallery on the site, however, you do need to live in the area and drive to the store or call them via their phone number listen on the site.  You can also email or snail-mail them a little something about your humble production and its oh so humble needs and its even humbler budget.  As for me, I’m going to stick with regular stuff I can find around here for now, but if the need arises (and it certainly will), I’ll scout them out for some lighting supplies when I have the resources to pursue some lights on my own.  Enjoy.

Link: http://www.expendablesrecycler.com/

What’s Your Flow? – StudioDaily Article

 

Here’s an interesting workflow idea for you guys out there juggling multiple programs for your video production needs.  I found it on the very interesting site StudioDaily, whose email newsletter I receive and always find something interesting, and it talks about combining Final Cut Pro and After Effects as well as Automatic Duck, “the leader in timeline transition between the worlds most powerful NLE and compositing systems.” Basically, it translates with more detail than a regular EDL (edit decision list) the information in your timeline, creating an After Effects composition based on your timeline in your editing system (FCP, Avid, etc.). Essentially, it does what the integration of Adobe’s Production Suite does on it’s own, since it’s an Adobe package. But this is for those of you who have different programs, like FCP and AE, for example, and don’t have that tight integration built in. So, what Ivan Miller says he does is lets the editors make the cut in Avid, then he uses Automatic Duck to import the entire cut into After Effects where he noodles around with it and comes out with, say, a McDonald’s commercial, as he did recently. It’s an interesting method to read about, and even though it would apply to me since I have Adobe’s full video suite, it’s interesting to read about what other people are doing and how they adapt their own workstations to fit their needs, especially when it’s on a lower budget than what some would assume (using Flame instead of After Effects, for example, which would be the industry standard). For those of you looking for a lower-budget way to do things and maintain a high-quality end result, this may be a key thing to think about when setting up or upgrading your system.

Link: http://www.studiodaily.com/studiomonthly/currentissue/7741.html

Hello world!

Hey and welcome to the AnimiVirtus Productions blog. I didn’t feel like I had enough time to set up a whole website and automated blogs do a lot of the work for you, so I figured I’d start it off there. I’ll just do what I can for this, but try to make more of a commitment to it than I have in my past blogs. Heh, right, or lack thereof. But this one’s about promoting myself and my talents and products (not for-sale products, the final products of my efforts in the filmmaking field). I love making movies and hope to do so professionally someday, but for now, welcome and enjoy your stay. Feel free to comments, leave any kind of questions or notes for me on any of the pages or posts, and watch the videos as they come, subscribe by clicking the link where it says “Entries RSS” on the bottom right hand side of the menu, under the title “Meta.” I look forward to hearing from you, check back every now and then to find some new updates, and tell your friends. Thanks for visiting .