Film Burn

OK, so you've bought your 35mm lens adaptor for your DV camera and you've shot your requisite things-coming-in-and-out-of-focus backyard test footage. You've even got it all cut together to some nice mopey guitar music. But something's missing.

play

filmBurn.ffx is an After Effects 7.0 Animation Preset that automatically creates the overexposed "roll-out" effect, where the tail (and the head if you want) of a clip flickers into overexposure. It's aware of the in- and out-points of your footage layers in the After Effects timeline, so you can experiment with different effects just by trimming your layers differently.

When you apply the preset you'll see several control sliders. Here's what they do:

Overall Flicker Amount controls a general exposure flicker that runs through the whole clip. Set it to zero for no flicker.

Overall Flicker Speed (fps) controls the flickers-per-second. Larger number = faster flicker.

Cut Flicker Speed (fps) controls the speed of the flicker effect that happens at the head and tail of the clip.

Cut Flicker Amount controls the intensity of the flicker effect that happens at the head and tail of the clip.

Max Burn (stops) controls the exposure, in f-stops, of the burn effect.

Tail Burn Max Time (frames) controls the length of the burn effect at the tail. Note that the length is randomized, so this value represents the longest burn you'd ever want to see, measured in frames.

Head Burn Max Time (frames) is the same thing, but for the head of the clip. Set it to 0 for no head burn.

Burn Tint allows you to select a color for the burn effect.

The last effect is the Exposure effect that makes it all happen, and you should not touch any settings here.

The fun thing about this preset is, if you have your edit assembled in AE, you can simply select all the layers and apply it. Easy!

This effect works really well with Magic Bullet. Just apply Look Suite to an Adjustment Layer over top of all your trimmed layers, and select the preset of your choice!

Download filmBurn.ffx (4kb ZIP file)

And remember, you can subscribe to ProLost TV in iTunes.

Music: Life From Afar by Oswald.

The Last Birthday Card

play the trailer

The Guide comes with a DVD featuring The Last Birthday Card, a short film I directed in 1999. Birthday Card is the first original Orphanage production, and the first public appearance of Magic Bullet.

The 20-minute short, which played at numerous festivals and on iFilm, is presented on the DVD along with a commentary track and visual effects breakdown. The many effects in the film are used as examples throughout the book.

The Future of Web Video

Scott Kirsner (CinemaTech), who interviewed Jonathan Rothbart and I not long ago, has compiled our interview, several others, and his own insights on web video, viral media, and the economy emerging around them into a must-read ebook.

The Future of Web Video: Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers

I applaud Scott on three fronts for this: 1) Self publishing is cool. 2) Writing a book is hard. 3) There's some crazy shizzle going on right now, and it's a great time to be a filmmaker.

FlipFlop

FlipFlop

FlipFlop is a small, free Mac OS X application designed to assist filmmakers with on set monitoring/previewing using a laptop and a firewire connected camera. The features came mostly from reading many peoples requests on various forums such as DVXUser and Redrock Micro.

Wicked cool! I'm all excited about ScopeBox, but FlipFlop is free and available now, which are two of my favorite software features.

The importance of full-resolution monitoring and scopes is something I cover in The Guide.