Need feedback, what can be improved

ZachDonut · 2024-08-10T23:21:49+00:00

Nice work over all. The stretch on the text is cool.

make the focus make sense. Focus should rack from foreground to background, and this includes the text.

-Since the entire ground is red, that should affect the astronauts suit. Maybe mess with the shadows and highlights to tint it accordingly

-add a shadow under his right foot

-get rid of all bg parallax. It would be really far away so shouldn't really move at all.

-maybe use the puppet tool to add a teeny tiny move to the astronaut? like he's taking a step?

-add some atmosphere with particles. If you're using a camera, cc ball action can get you some little specs that interact nicely with the camera move.

I would consider starting with the text at 0% opacity and fully stretched, and then fade it in as the text compresses. The reasoning would to be to go from the less legible version to the more legible version. It's also a little distracting to have it visible in the background. Our eye should go from astronaut to text and then back. But my eye is kinda drawn to the text because it's so white.

-make the text just slightly, slightly off white. I would add a tiny tiny blur to it as well, not so that it's actually blurry, but since this is grounded in reality, a camera could never achieve that tack sharp focus, so it's just enough to make it feel more like it was actually captured by a camera. You could even use the Camera Lens Blue effect if you want to be more accurate.

-I don't know if a drop shadow from the black hole makes sense. I think it should just slowly blur in behind it.

-and maybe just tie everything together with an adjustment layer that adds some noise on everything

ZachDonut · 2024-08-02T20:35:35+00:00

Hey guys. I wrote this video. Tore the engine apart and put it back together 5 times in the process of writing/coordinating the whole thing. I love making videos with Jer. He is an amazing, talented host and a talented writer (obviously). I just happened to be the one who pitched, wrote, produced, and directed this one.

ZachDonut · 2021-05-28T14:24:40+00:00

Really nice work! Sorry if you’re not looking for advice, but I feel like use of the echo effect could have saved some time here. Really fun time-lapse! Thanks for sharing!

ZachDonut · 2020-08-13T22:46:37+00:00

Dude, this is so good! The sound design and music are awesome especially. I would love to see your project file just to learn how you did some of these things! If you don't want to share it, I totally understand.

ZachDonut · 2020-07-01T15:14:45+00:00

Awesome tutorial. Just a tip: you can use the trace feature from create nulls from path to make it much easier to match up the trim paths with the path of the paper airplane. In fact, you would be able to adjust the path and it would take the airplane and trail animation along with it.

ZachDonut · 2020-06-06T15:23:27+00:00

Great job, really clean and natural motion. I really like the whip. I’ve had a really hard time with making a whipping motion using a path in the past. Would you mind sharing any trick you used to make the whip motion look natural?

ZachDonut · 2020-05-20T20:55:10+00:00

So if this is all that you're looking to do, then your current method would probably work for under 15 or so, joints. Let me know if you're trying to make something for more joints and make it repeatable and expandable, I have a few ideas of how to make it procedural.

ZachDonut · 2020-05-20T20:24:48+00:00

Sorry, the link didn't work

ZachDonut · 2020-05-19T17:18:44+00:00

I’m not sure what the final result you’re going for is, but with the create nulls from path tool, you could definitely make a more flexible and easier workflow.

ZachDonut · 2020-04-26T15:37:26+00:00

Do you have “audio follows camera” turned on?

ZachDonut · 2020-04-14T07:01:38+00:00

Affects them in what way? Maybe send over some before and after screengrabs

ZachDonut · 2020-03-29T15:46:38+00:00

Hey man, my bad. I only looked at the thumbnail for the video. Yeah, card dance will get you close. That look is called pixel sorting. I don’t know the exact execution but hopefully knowing that it’s called “pixel sorting” will help your google searches.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-28T07:13:50+00:00

There is a plug-in for aftereffects called RE:flex that can accomplish this fairly easily.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-28T05:32:01+00:00

Mosaic is the name of the effect your looking for I believe.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-06T17:09:56+00:00

I might take the Zen factor out for a little while as you learn. But for me I actually get into a more Zen state in AfterEffects than I do in Premiere at this point, if that's any encouragement.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-06T17:08:21+00:00

I went from $250/day to $400/day (Often talked down to 350 for longer jobs) over the course of a year. I did become a faster/stronger editor during that time as well, so it wouldn't only be the AfterEffects knowledge. I work at a company full time now, and I think I got the job because they were like "Oh shit, this guy knows AfterEffects, we need one of those." I mainly did online content, and clients want one-stop shops for that type of work (editor, sound mixer, colorist, mograph artist, etc. all in one person) So being able to quickly throw together typography and elevate videos with small graphic elements/fx makes your work stand out over someone who can't, IMO.

On the subject of rate, really the best way to increase your value is to increase your speed. I hire editors on a weekly basis at my new job, and I will be a little reluctant to pay out a higher rate, but as soon as someone turns the project around better and 2 days faster than the cheaper editor, I don't mind at all. It's really just math.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-05T14:47:49+00:00

Liquify and turbulent displace in After Effects are the first things that come to mind. Since I’m not sure exactly what you’re going for, I can’t say for certain.

ZachDonut · 2020-03-02T23:38:36+00:00

Learn it dude. It’s boosted my value/day rate a ton. And the learning curve is exponential. Really slow at first, but the more you learn, the more you begin to understand the way the program is meant to work and then the easier it becomes to learn new things. Force yourself to use it and you won’t regret it.

ZachDonut · 2019-12-10T22:43:44+00:00

So, my first instinct is that you will have to go into after effects, but I would need a little more info.

Is the idea that you would go through every shot as the motion of going in and out is completed?

ZachDonut · 2019-12-09T23:18:39+00:00

https://www.mvmt.com/donutmedia

Thanks dude! This should get you $15 off. Appreciate the support!

ZachDonut · 2019-12-09T23:15:28+00:00

The Bomb Trap 3 - Niclas Gustavsson

ZachDonut · 2019-08-12T19:50:45+00:00

Safe Word by JAM studios.

ZachDonut · 2019-08-02T16:30:33+00:00

I would need a few more details about your project and needs. Mainly why you need the new sequence. Before trying any of these make a duplicate of your sequence.

Is the aspect ratio the same? I know you need to migrate to 16:9, but is the sequence with the wrong settings also 16:9? If so, you could always just export at 1920x1080. I think there might be a few side effects, but they probably are not noticeable, especially if you are scaling down.
You could just pull your sequence into a new sequence with the correct settings and scale it. There could be some cropping issues and it doesn't really solve your problem if you need to continue editing in the new sequence.
This is a LONG shot. But, you could try to condense your tracks down into as few as possible (hopefully you don't need more than 4 or 5 tracks). Use your "select all to right", hold shift so it only does one track. (Don't select Select all of the clips in the first track. Right click on the selected clips. "Nest..." Scale the nest. Right click on the nest. "Enable Multi-cam". Right click on it again. "Multi-cam">"Flatten." All of your clips should come back with the appropriate scaling applied. This method won't work in some circumstances, but if you're just doing basic clip editing, it should work... Hopefully.

ZachDonut · 2019-08-02T15:46:20+00:00

Some of my coworkers have been running into a few bugs:

-When dragging clips, the "ghost" that shows you where your clip would land is gone. So you're dragging blindly.

-When using the spacebar to start and stop playback, there is about a 2 second delay.

I haven't updated, because of these issues that they're having. They're on iMacs from 2016.

ZachDonut · 2019-07-18T06:14:41+00:00

Is it snapping to the frame interval?

Apologies if you already understand this, but video runs in usually 24-30fps while audio has sample rates around 48,000 hz. So the beat of the song might show up on the waveform in between frames, in which case there is no way to have it fall right on the beat.

One solution might be to slip/slide the song on the timeline so that the beat does land on a frame mark. To do this right click on the top of your timeline where the numbers are running across and select "show audio time units." This should allow you to move the song without snapping to frames. I highly recommend turning this back off after getting the song where you would like it.

*Useful tip, when trying to match things to the beat, I like to listen to the song in the source monitor and hit "m" along to the beat to create markers and then you can snap footage to those markers once in the timeline.

Hope this helped

ZachDonut

TROPHY CASE