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NewSpock said:
I think we'll have to agree to disagree that it's not as distracting as the credits. But you do what works for you. It's your edit
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Buffy - The Prophecy
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I think we'll have to agree to disagree that it's not as distracting as the credits. But you do what works for you. It's your edit
heatherly84
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NewSpock said:
Yeah, that is the drawback with Adobe products. :/ You should check 'em out on eBay, though. They may not be as bad as you think. I saw a used copy of After Effects 7 (which is old, but still pretty darn good, and can still use current plug-ins and presets) on eBay for $3.99 this morning, and one of After Effects CS5 for $23. There's a lot of deals like that around eBay, especially during the summer- kids take film in college, realize they don't want to be filmmakers, and then sell the copies they bought for school. Look around sometime, you might be surprised what you'll find.
heatherly84 said:
Which old version of Adobe Effects has this brushing technology and which not yet? I'll then look for it if I can get a used Mac-version of it on ebay... It'll probably be too late for this edit, but future edits might benefit from it.
heatherly84
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NewSpock said:
I know it goes back as far as CS3, since CS3 is what I have. (The newest After Effects is CS6.) So CS3, 4, or 5 would. I'd bet CS2 would as well, but you might want to doublecheck with Google.
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ThrowgnCpr said:I think we'll have to agree to disagree that it's not as distracting as the credits. But you do what works for you. It's your edit
FWIW, I think that oval is super distracting. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it would keep me from approving the edit. But who knows, maybe the rest of the staff and/or The Academy might disagree with me.
If you're almost final then I'll wait for that. If you're looking for feedback (and there's a bit of time... I have kids!) then I'd like to watch the preview.
In general, the concept of shortening a buffy season is a good idea, they have good season story arcs. But it would be quite hard for other seasons which have long story build ups. The one exception to that might be a "Willow the Wickan" movie. That'd be fun.. Buffy herself was always about the 5th best character.
In general, the concept of shortening a buffy season is a good idea, they have good season story arcs
. But it would be quite hard for other seasons which have long story build ups. The one exception to that might be a "Willow the Wickan" movie. That'd be fun.. Buffy herself was always about the 5th best character.GregAlex said:
Thanks for your interest, I'm indeed almost final. The feedback from heatherly84 (thanks a lot man
) regarding the preview helped me see things from an outside perspective. The result is that I streamlined it a bit and made some subtle changes here and there (and incorporated two ideas of heatherly84) resulting in a movie with a length of 2 hours and 1 minute, about 12 minutes shortened.
The other three previewers haven't yet offered feedback though.
A technical note: The last few months I used Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 on mac and didn't update it even though the updates are free, but a week ago I finally did it and updated it to 10.0.8 (skipping .4-.7) and boy do I wish I updated it earlier. A whole slate of new features found its way into the app and more important, it became much faster and more stable. It's like the handbrake got loosened. Kudos to Apple for considerably improving the app through these free updates, but too bad for me that I didn't use them before, a lot of time could have been saved.
I have found another way how to camouflage the credits in the midst of the movie. The black ovale might be better than to read the credits but it stands out a bit too much.
The brushing method with After Effects presented by heatherly84 is still the best way to go about it but without that app and only using Final Cut Pro X, I use now this method:
I take a few seconds before or after the credits appear and copy that footage. Then I trim it to the size the credits are and overlay it on top of the footage where the credits appear as a second layer. That way the credits are gone. It's far from ideal, cause when the picture is moving while the credits appear, the video-information in that overlay is not in synch, so it works best when the picture is standing still while the credits appear.
Still, even with that out-of-synch-issue in moving pictures, imho it's better than the black ovale (,which is better than the credits).
The brushing method with After Effects presented by heatherly84 is still the best way to go about it but without that app and only using Final Cut Pro X, I use now this method:
I take a few seconds before or after the credits appear and copy that footage. Then I trim it to the size the credits are and overlay it on top of the footage where the credits appear as a second layer. That way the credits are gone. It's far from ideal, cause when the picture is moving while the credits appear, the video-information in that overlay is not in synch, so it works best when the picture is standing still while the credits appear.
Still, even with that out-of-synch-issue in moving pictures, imho it's better than the black ovale (,which is better than the credits
).Good news, I finally made the last few touches to the edit and it's now finished. I planned for another preview-round, but I think it's redundant. The first preview already made clear where the problems may be and I think I addressed most of them without compromising my vision of the story.
The final cut of the edit is now 2 hours and 2 minutes long. By the weekend I will probably have it uploaded.
The final cut of the edit is now 2 hours and 2 minutes long. By the weekend I will probably have it uploaded.
Here are the details for the final cut:
Point 1 is actually an idea I had after I already made the final cut, so it's basically "final cut-now for real".;-)
All the changes for the final cut reduced the length, it's now about 2 hours and 1 minute long. Unfortunately that last change to the final cut, postpones the uploading, so I can't make it available for this weekend, but it's definetly for the better.
Besides I still have to edit an inspiring trailer.:faint:
1. I reworked the way Jenny gets introduced: It was one of the most difficult things to get right, because without that awful Robot-episode she doesn't have a true introduction. But eventually I found a way, a very subtle way how to bring her in. First Jenny and Giles have that discussion regarding technology and books and then she discovers that book of Moloch without anything in it. Giles breaks up the discussion fascinated with the book and Jenny looks at him supectfully. Of course in this edit, the book of Moloch has nothing to do with Moloch.
Later on after the earthquake happened Jenny visits Giles again, but now she has some papers in her hand and she says to Giles: "Something is going on and I'm guessing you already know what it is" and then she talks about occult stuff she found on the internet and that she thinks the apocalypse is near and Giles nods silently... and then she mentions something about the anointed one and some monk talking about prophecies.
That's the point where Giles decides to let her in as he obviously needs someone to travel to that monk and find out everything he knows, but he doesn't tell her much and says to her "Later I explain"... and later he indeed explains everything about the master to her... That way she gets subtly and smoothly introduced into the story.
2. I reworked Xander's affection for Buffy. Before the final cut I had that scene in where he confesses to Buffy directly how he feels about her and that he wants to dance with her... It's a nice enough scene and I like it alot and that's why I kept in for so long, but it disturbed the pacing and flow of the movie. So under some pain I cut it out and now Xander merely confesses to Willow about his affection for Buffy in the Bronze and then later on it is Angel who clearly sees that Xander is in love with Buffy... The cut not only helped the pacing/flow, it actually helped the story-arc of Xander and Angel.
3. I reworked the flashback scene where it's shown how Buffy kills Luke and how Xander kills vampire-Jesse. I cut out the later, as imho it was not necessary to bring up Jesse again in a flashback, and I placed the Luke-killing-flashback, way earlier, and made it into a flashback of one of the vampires who reported to the master: "Master, we had her trapped" and then the short flashback comes. And in this short black-white-flashback we see Buffy standing before Luke and grabbing a metal thing and Luke says "You forgot something, metal can't hurt me" and Buffy says: "You forgot something, too... sunrise" and then she destroys that window. In the original it is merely a trick and it's buffy that stakes him, but for this movie-version I thought it to be more cinematic-like to actually have sunlight kill Luke, and so I edited in such a way that it seems like sunlight killed him.
4. I reworked the dreamsequences sprinkled throughout the movie. Before I only chose a dreamlike picture effect to tell that Buffy is dreaming, but then I thought it might be better actually showing Buffy sleeping in her bed, in a very short sequence, before the dream is shown. Another little change is that I show how the appointed one leads Buffy by the hand in the first dream at the beginning of the movie to give a better foreshadowing to the important reveal near the end that "Billy" and the anointed one are one and the same.
Later on after the earthquake happened Jenny visits Giles again, but now she has some papers in her hand and she says to Giles: "Something is going on and I'm guessing you already know what it is" and then she talks about occult stuff she found on the internet and that she thinks the apocalypse is near and Giles nods silently... and then she mentions something about the anointed one and some monk talking about prophecies.
That's the point where Giles decides to let her in as he obviously needs someone to travel to that monk and find out everything he knows, but he doesn't tell her much and says to her "Later I explain"... and later he indeed explains everything about the master to her... That way she gets subtly and smoothly introduced into the story.
2. I reworked Xander's affection for Buffy. Before the final cut I had that scene in where he confesses to Buffy directly how he feels about her and that he wants to dance with her... It's a nice enough scene and I like it alot and that's why I kept in for so long, but it disturbed the pacing and flow of the movie. So under some pain I cut it out and now Xander merely confesses to Willow about his affection for Buffy in the Bronze and then later on it is Angel who clearly sees that Xander is in love with Buffy... The cut not only helped the pacing/flow, it actually helped the story-arc of Xander and Angel.
3. I reworked the flashback scene where it's shown how Buffy kills Luke and how Xander kills vampire-Jesse. I cut out the later, as imho it was not necessary to bring up Jesse again in a flashback, and I placed the Luke-killing-flashback, way earlier, and made it into a flashback of one of the vampires who reported to the master: "Master, we had her trapped" and then the short flashback comes. And in this short black-white-flashback we see Buffy standing before Luke and grabbing a metal thing and Luke says "You forgot something, metal can't hurt me" and Buffy says: "You forgot something, too... sunrise" and then she destroys that window. In the original it is merely a trick and it's buffy that stakes him, but for this movie-version I thought it to be more cinematic-like to actually have sunlight kill Luke, and so I edited in such a way that it seems like sunlight killed him.
4. I reworked the dreamsequences sprinkled throughout the movie. Before I only chose a dreamlike picture effect to tell that Buffy is dreaming, but then I thought it might be better actually showing Buffy sleeping in her bed, in a very short sequence, before the dream is shown. Another little change is that I show how the appointed one leads Buffy by the hand in the first dream at the beginning of the movie to give a better foreshadowing to the important reveal near the end that "Billy" and the anointed one are one and the same.
Point 1 is actually an idea I had after I already made the final cut, so it's basically "final cut-now for real".;-)
Point 3 I was inspired to do after heatherly84 found the original flashback not well placed and Jesse's reappearance unnecessary. Point 4 was directly a suggestion made by heatherly84. Thanks a lot for the preview-feedback!
All the changes for the final cut reduced the length, it's now about 2 hours and 1 minute long. Unfortunately that last change to the final cut, postpones the uploading, so I can't make it available for this weekend, but it's definetly for the better.
Besides I still have to edit an inspiring trailer.:faint:
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Definitely like this trailer way more than your first one. Fantastic music choice! But it feels a bit too long, almost evolving from a proper trailer into a montage/summary/tribute video. But it held my interest as a viewer, which is the most important thing. Congrats of finishing your project.
Congrats of finishing your project.bionicbob said:Definitely like this trailer way more than your first one. Fantastic music choice! But it feels a bit too long, almost evolving from a proper trailer into a montage/summary/tribute video. But it held my interest as a viewer, which is the most important thing.
Thanks, bionicbob, the trailer may be a bit long, but I still made sure that the important things are not spoilered in any way, that it is merely an introduction for the movie.
I have given in and used cropping to get rid of the last few instances where credits appeared. The videooverlay-method unfortunately wasn't completely seamless, except for one instance where the camera stood still. So I left the video-overlay-effect in for only that instance, while I cropped out in the other instances.
While doing that I discovered a nice feature in Final Cut Pro X called "Ken Burns". Using that I can define how the camera moves, which is pretty awesome in and of itself. For example I take a start-point of a clip defining the camera to focus on the left bottom part of the picture and define the end-point of the clip to focus on the right top or any side of the picture, zoomed in or out. And then the "Ken Burns"-effect gradually calculates the pictures inbetween so as to make it a smooth movement between those two points, like you would control the camera while filming the movie.
While doing that I discovered a nice feature in Final Cut Pro X called "Ken Burns". Using that I can define how the camera moves, which is pretty awesome in and of itself. For example I take a start-point of a clip defining the camera to focus on the left bottom part of the picture and define the end-point of the clip to focus on the right top or any side of the picture, zoomed in or out. And then the "Ken Burns"-effect gradually calculates the pictures inbetween so as to make it a smooth movement between those two points, like you would control the camera while filming the movie.
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The pan/zoom tool in Sony Vegas has similar functionality. By inserting keyframes in the timeline at the bottom of the tool, you can define exactly what that frame should show and it will smoothly interpolate the pan/zoom from keyframe to keyframe.
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