Special Effects Programs

[fedorable1]

I apologize if this isn't the place for this question, but I'm not sure where else it would be.

I'm trying to find some good special effects/movie editing programs. I am making a low-budget independant film with some friends and colleagues, and would like to know what options we have cinematically.

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

[clockwork]

Avid is the industry standard for editing though its software and component peripherals - tape decks, computing technology and processing power and someone with the necessary skills to operate them - will run a high price. Check out their sight, avid.com, I think, and you'll see that they have literally hundreds of products. You can edit digital video quite nicely using a DV camera with a firewire connection using Adobe Premiere though some find it needlessly pernickety. There are other editing packages you can obtain, some for free, some at a moderate price, which will perform simple editing tasks.

A university running any kind of media production/film school will have its own editing suite running (hopefully) an Avid package though tonnes of people do very nicely with Premiere. Maybe you can scout out places local to you and see if they rent out their facilities. Better still, see if you can pitch your idea to someone already working there and get them to edit it for you. Most people (especially students) will be happy to work on good projects for little or no compensation as long as the finished product is good, the people they work with are professional and, of course, they get the necessary kudos and a copy of the film for their demo reel.


As for special effects, it depends what you require. What techniques are you wanting to incorporate? If you want to matte actors into shots using a colour/luma/difference key (like greenscreen) you need software to handle that. Adobe After Effects 6.5 is reliable enough though I'd recommend a plug-in called Key-Light For After Effects by The Foundry which is superb and has been used in countless films to combine images.

If you're interested in 3D, an accessible product for the low-budget filmmaker would be 3D Studio Max which is used within the industry to a degree but not at a big budget level. The big boys play with Maya or Softimage - a subsidiary of Avid. You can purchase both in staggered price packages running from the mid hundreds to upwards of many, many thousands of dollars.

The list of special and visual effects software packages is endless really. A digital effects house (ILM, Digital Domain, Weta) will employ many different packages to complete a single shot. They might motion track the shot using Softimage, build a 3D model in Maya, paint it in Alias Studio Paint and Photoshop, light it with Houdini, combine bluescreen elements with other layers and composite the shot in Composer and finally render it out using Renderman. A lot of high-end facilities also develop and code their own proprietary software, custom-written for specific tasks. BTW, I'm not trying to patronise you, it's just there are so many options for this kind of thing and it depends heavily on what you're trying to achieve.

One piece of advice regarding digital artists (because I am one) - if you find yourself in a position where you're looking to hire someone to help with your visual effects, go with someone who's a good artist in the traditional sense. Software packages can be learnt but someone with a good eye for photography, an understanding of light (so important for vfx) or, I don't know, someone who can actually draw, is far better than someone who knows the ins and outs of a package but has a standard-looking portfolio.


Hope it helps. And yeah, this isn't really the right forum for this kind of question. Not because no-one wants to help, it's just you might find better information on a low-budget/indie forum.

[dpaterso]

Wow. I feel educated, not patronised.

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57)
Take the critiques you get with a grain of salt. Invariably, some of the critics will be kooks, bitter curmudgeons, or complete fools. ~odocoileus

[fedorable1]

Awesome, thanks! I'll check on those programs when I get a chance.

[clockwork]

Wow. I feel educated, not patronised.

Well, if my degree was anything to go by, education is about patronising your students until something sticks. ;-)

[shutterspeed]

Now I'm intrigued.

What degree might that have been?

[clockwork]

I did a Ba Hons degree in Computer Art at a university in Dundee, Scotland. To be fair, it wasn't that bad but it was the first year the course ran so we were very much the guinea pigs. I believe they have most of their wrinkles ironed out now.