We have an unlimited amount of episodes remaining. If anyone would like to be a sponsor for some of these episodes….hit me up! You want their music you can download it here…order a CD here…Decoration Ghost home page here. Listen and fall in love with an amazing album.

You Down With FCP? Yeah you know me! Head over the the golden nugget of info about Final Cut Pro on this great blog. Another editor turns his frustrations into information that you and I can use.

He created two apple scripts to help keep your Final Cut Pro project organized and in order. Rather than all over your desktop and 2 HDs. It’s smart, easy and a great time saver. Go get yours now.

With the generous support of Noise Industries, PHYX Inc. has launched PHYX Keyer for FxFactory, which supports Apple Final Cut Studio, Apple Final Cut Express, and Adobe After Effects. Finally a plugin that rocks so well anyone will look good grabbing a key with this plugin. PHYX knocks it out of the park with this plugin. Not only do you get a great keyer but the additional filters takes a step further and makes it a necessity if you ever have pulled a key before.

It is so simple to use.

Keyer
First drop the keyer plugin and select the color you want to pull with the eye dropper tool and then increase the Yuv Threshold until you have the color keyed. Then increase the Yuv Smoothing until the color is smoothed out around the subject.

Despill
If you can’t get rid of the slight green halo around your subject grab the despill plugin from the PHYX effects folder and apply to the footage. If the color you pulled was green select green in the drop down menu from the Despill Method and adjust the Despill Amount unti the green halo around the subject is gone. Now you need to be careful of your subjects skin color doesn’t change too much from the Despill filter.

Lightwrap
I’m using a cloud generator behind my subject and I can add a small blur from the clouds around my subject with the Lightwrap filter. Drop the filter on the video file and in the filter under the background image grab an image that you would like to give a nice glow around your subject. With the clouds it makes a really nice glow and adds so much more to the key.

What took me 5 minutes, if that long, used to take me 20-45 minutes in Motion using many different filters and exporting footage. I could never remember the steps because there were so many. This filter is a dream and will help you key in a faster fashion. Don’t worry I won’t tell your clients, keep charging for your time.

Final Key

Other features that I’m looking forward to using…

DiffKeyer
Creates a matte based on difference between two images. For example, film an empty room (clean plate), then film the same room with actors present. DiffKeyer will create a matte of the actors, as if the actors were shot in front of a green or blue screen. This gives you the ability to effectively key without a green or blue screen. Here is a tutorial showing you how easy it is

Screencorrector
So let’s say you shoot on a big green screen and the lighting is not even on the green screen well this filter compares a clean plate, and a solid color (green or blue) and creates a perfect green or blue screen. Excellent for keying with, this processor corrects unevenly lit screens, removes tracking markers, and repairs other ‘garbage’ which makes keying difficult, tedious, and expensive. Tell your clients you can do it. Another tutorial showing you how easy it is.

Go purchase this plugin and enjoy it.

Moviemaker.com has a great list of blogs that are relevant to moviemaking. Here are some of my favorites…

FreshDV
The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog
The Documentary Blog
Twitch
StudioDaily
FilmSound.org
The Editblog

What are some of your favorite blogs?

I love the look, community and functions of Vimeo. They are the first choice to upload my videos. They have some growing pains and I have been patient with them in the past. That was until recently when I began uploading our Often Awesome Web Series there to showcase. Everything was great until Episode 3 embed stats just stopped working for us. Tracking the data is important to show potential sponsors and it does us no good if our stats freeze up. Not to mention the fact that I threw $60 down to be a plus member to get the most out of Vimeo. We emailed them over a week ago and we only got back an automated response and still no fix.

We are now pushing the episodes on Youtube and are very happy with the results. I hope they fix the small bugs that are eating away at the foundations of a beautiful house.

Looking to collaborate with musicians on these episodes. Anyone?

Yes the name of the plugin is FxAndy and I did not name this plugin, but I do love it. First off, I’m not a film person. I’ve learned how to shoot in the digital realm but I do understand the beauty of film. This plugin gives some of that beauty back to the video world and with ease.

Here is a ridiculous list of the simulators from FxAndy.

Even if you have no idea what setting does what, play around with the simulators you will come up with a better looking video with this plugin. Here are some examples of FxAndy in action.

How does it work?

FxAndy translates the digital image you captured into a realistic simulation of a film camera complete with full color filter control, exposure control, film type selector with latitude adjustments and processing variations, darkroom and enlarger, classic print emulsions and papers with variations and adjustments — and a few digital-world tweaks to add even more versatility.

Never run out of stock!

And unlike real films, FxAndy makes it easy with perfect exposure compensation, no dangerous chemicals, simple latitude adjustments and — most importantly — no wondering where you’ll find the next warehouse stash of long-discontinued film.

Not presets; real software inside.

These simulations aren’t presets FxAndy is a full simulation suite with thousands of simulator combinations available, plus infinite variations of parameters, almost all of them keyframable for subtle and dramatic effects.

Famous in still photography

FxAndy is the brother of Andrea – Film Simulation for Bibble 5, the pre-eminent film simulator for the RAW processor Bibble 5. Andrea is an essential part of the style of professional still photographers all over the world, and now with the completely rewritten and speed optimized Final Cut plugin, the same looks are finally available for cinema.

Not convinced? Download it now!

When you purchase a new Mac you have the option of transferring data from your previous Mac to the new one in the welcome setup. By all means do it if you are working with the same processor. Do not use it if you are moving from a Power PC chip to an Intel based Mac. You will be able to migrate your Hard Drive from your G5 to Intel machine, but it will not warn you that it is a big no no. Of course I’m here to relay that mistake so you can make the move easy…I mean easier than how I found out.

There is a great article in Apple Support that helps G5 and earlier macs make the move over to Intel macs. You will be able to move all your movie, pictures, itunes and documents over with ease. With this document it tells you how to move over your settings and info for your address book, mail, ical and other data that is important. The hard part is re-installing all of your applications and re-registering the applications. I hope you have all the documents handy because it is time consuming. But once you make that move you will be happy and ready for a smoother and faster editing experience.

My G5 could not be fixed so I purchased the baseline iMac 21.5″ 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, it is fast, the screen is bright and very affordable.

Often Awesome The Series is a web series about Tim and Kaylan’s battle with ALS. It’s a story about love, friends, strength and courage. Join us every two weeks for a new chapter in this amazing adventure.

Episode 3 : “The Luckiest Man” July 4th, 2009 Tim and Kaylan are invited to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park for Tim to recite Lou Gerhig’s retirement speech during the game on the 70th Anniversary of Gehrig’s retirement from baseball. While there, Tim and Kaylan meet another couple that are battling ALS.

For more information about Tim and Kaylans fight visit : oftenawesome.org
If you are interested in funding research, please make tax deductible donations to the ALS TDI at: oftenawesomearmy.alscommunity.org

For more information about the filmmakers visit:
allacesmedia.com/oftenawesome & allacesmedia.com

How You Can Help

There are many ways you can help us out with this adventure. First and foremost is passing this video to your friends and family members and create an awareness of this horrible disease and the battle that Tim and Kaylan have ahead of them. If you are a part of the media help us and reach out to your audience with this story. Bloggers, post a video and tell your audience of an amazing love story that will move you. If you are a musician and would like to donate any music for future episodes we would love to hear your tracks. We are mostly looking for instrumental music to use as scores but open to all.

If you are a vendor or professional and would like to donate equipment for sponsorship we would appreciate it. We are looking for…

• JVC HM100 or HM700 we are shooting in 1080i and are using a Panasonic HVX200 with 32GBs of p2 and only have 36 minutes of recording time.
• Drobo loaded with Terabyte drives. Our drives are getting full fast
• An audio field mixer and additional wireless lavalieres.

This is a very special web series and hope that people want to become a part of it in any way. We are open to suggestions and hope you become a part of the Often Awesome Army.

If you frequent this website you might have noticed that I’m not blogging as much. I’m putting more focus on production and this web series moving forward. I will still post great products that I come across but with less frequency.

In this episode we introduce you to the Often Awesome Army. The Often Awesome Army is a group of Tim’s friends who put on benefit shows, art auctions and help raise money to help provide for Tim’s quality of life care.

For more information about Tim and Kaylan’s fight visit : oftenawesome.org

If you are interested in funding research, please make tax deductible donations to the ALS TDI at: oftenawesomearmy.alscommunity.org