Gunshots with Adobe After Effects

During the past couple of months I have been working on pre-production for a short film that will be shot in April of 2013. The film is about a team of Navy SEALs who were deployed in Panama in 1989 during Operation: Just Cause. With the help of a small crew and cast, we have filmed a short trailer for the film. The short production went well and we have enough footage to make a decent trailer. We were able to get a couple guys with recording arts backgrounds to make a song for the trailer. The biggest problem that we are facing right now is the lack of an editor. I have some experience editing with Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and Adobe After Effects. This trailer has a lot of action shots where the SEALs are firing their weapons. These shots require a good deal of visual effects editing such as, muzzle flashes, shell ejections, dust, and color correction.

I have been using Video Copilot as a resource to learn how to make these gunshots look real. Video Copilot is a website that has tutorials on how to use After Effect to build a variety of different visual effects. I had to learn how to create muzzle flashes from scratch with Adobe After Effects.  In one of their tutorials, they take you step by step and show you how to make it look like a real weapon is being fired. I found pictures of different muzzle flashes with black backgrounds online. I learned how to key out, (meaning remove) the background and manipulate the remaining images in order to create a believable muzzle flash. I have also been looking at tutorials on how to create shell ejections. I used one of Freddiew2’s Channel videos called Gun Sound FX and Bullet Shells, to learn how to animate the shell ejections. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCfzZizt8M0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsViAvVYoMQ 

http://www.videocopilot.net/

 

 

Negotiation Interview

Negotiation is a very important part of being successful in business and in the entertainment industry. Foster Lovelace is an independent video editor who lives in Sacramento, California. He primarily edits music videos for local bands and independent artists. Foster is not limited to editing music videos, but has also worked on wedding videos, commercials and documentary films. Each of Foster’s projects are unique and require different amounts of time and effort to complete. Each time Foster meets with a new client, he must negotiate with them and settle on a price for the completion of that particular project.

I asked Foster about the preparations that he takes before negotiating with a client. The first thing that he does is to do some research on the client’s company or band, in order to have a better understanding of their video needs. Foster usually deals with smaller businesses and bands, which normally have a small budget that they can spend on his services. Understanding your client’s financial situation is very important when negotiating over the price of any given service. Foster also said that he does research on other editors in his area and tries to stay within their price range.

During the interview, I asked Foster if he had ever experienced any problems when negotiating with clients. He said that there have been a couple occasions where clients have tried to use tricky tactics in order to get a better deal on his services. On one of these occasions, the client stated that they could only pay a set amount and they couldn’t go any higher. The price that they offered was a good deal lower than the price that Foster would normally ask for on a project like that one. He told the prospective client how long it would take for him to take complete their project and that their offer was too low and not worth his time. The prospective client would not change their offer and threatened to back out of the deal and find another editor. Foster knew that the offer was below his bottom line and had to decline the client’s offer and pass on that project.