August 13, 2017

How to Create a Long Exposure Video Effect in After Effects

Pulling off long exposure photos is relatively easy, but doing so with video is another story.

One of the first still camera “tricks” you learn as a photographer is how to create light trails using long exposures. All you do is crank up your shutter speed to five or six seconds (or whatever works), adjust your aperture accordingly, and boom, you’ve got some nice light trails streaking all along some random freeway. But can you achieve the same effect with video? Totally, but you’ll need to head into post to do it.

Photographer/cinematographer Dan Marker-Moore, known for his iconic time-slices, created a video for Toyota that employs this interesting long exposure video effect, and in the tutorial below, he shows you how he did it using nothing more than standard Adobe After Effects tools—no plug-ins required.

And here is the completed ad for Toyota so you can see the effect in real-time:

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 12, 2017

Watch: A List Stephen King’s Favorite Horror Films

What kinds of scary movies does the King of Horror watch?

Stephen King is a maniac. He has not only written hundreds of published works, making him one of the most prolific writers of all time, but he has managed to scare the bejesus out of his readers for well over 40 years with his dark and twisted contemporary horror/sci-fi/fantasy works. But he’s not only renowned in the literary world. He has made an indelible mark in the film industry with 64 of his novels and short stories being adapted into some of the most iconic horror films in history, including Carrie and The Shining. (Fun fact: The Shawshank Redemption was adapted from his 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.)

It makes you wonder what kinds of scary movies catches the attention of such a well-respected and aptly nicknamed author like the King of Horror. Well, Fandor has put together a list of a bunch of his favorite spooky flicks in the video below:

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 11, 2017

Weekly Rewind: Fitbit deals, a fat-burning wearable, a mind-controlled game

In the tech world, a lot happens in a week. So much news goes on that it’s almost impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of it. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of the top tech stories from this week.

The post Weekly Rewind: Fitbit deals, a fat-burning wearable, a mind-controlled game appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source: Digital Trends VR

August 11, 2017

Streamline Motion Graphics, VFX, and VR with MAXON Cinema 4D

With MAXON Cinema 4D, you can produce high-end motion graphics.

The next generation of MAXON’s professional 3D application delivers both great tools and enhancements artists can put to use immediately and provides a peek into the foundations for the future. Scheduled to ship in September of 2017, Cinema 4D R19 includes new features to streamline motion graphics, VFX, and VR content creation workflows.

Powerful developments have been made to viewport performance, a new Sound Effector has been added, and additional features for Voronoi Fracturing have been introduced to the MoGraph toolset. The release also includes a new Spherical Camera, the integration of AMD’s ProRender technology, and more.

It’s designed to serve individual artists as well as large studio environments.

Designed to serve individual artists as well as large studio environments, Release 19 offers a fast, easy, stable, and streamlined workflow to meet today’s challenges in the content creation markets—especially general design, motion graphics, VFX, VR/AR, and all types of visualization.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 11, 2017

How Many Movies Did ‘Game of Thrones’ Rip Off in its Most Epic Battle Yet?

Here’s a drinking game that Tyrion Lannister could get behind.

[Caution: Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4 below.]

As one of our top in-house, self-diagnosed Game of Thrones addicts, I have to admit that I had been a little disappointed by the pace of Season 7. For the first time, I found my mind wandering during heavily expository episodes. That is, until…the battle. Showrunners call it “The Loot Train Battle,” but that doesn’t nearly describe just how extraordinary it was.

We’ve already covered how the incredible battle was created, but just why was it so darned satisfying?

One of our favorite video essayists, Nerdwriter, makes a strong case that it’s because almost every scene within the battle would have been comfortingly familiar to any respectable geek. In his latest work, Nerdwriter lives up to his name by proving with cinematic evidence that almost every scene within this battle was plucked from another movie—and some of the sources may surprise you.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 11, 2017

Watch: What Soderbergh Does to Give Color the Power of Transformation

For a filmmaker who has worked in almost every genre, Steven Soderbergh tends to favor one approach to color. This video breaks it down.

Steven Soderbergh is a chameleon who’s able to turn out big-budget studio fare and experimental low-budget one-offs with equal skill. When you also consider the fact that he frequently acts as his own DP (under the pseudonym “Peter Andrews”), it shouldn’t be surprising that Soderbergh is a director for whom color as a cinematic property is a big deal.

This video from Fandor breaks down just how the director uses hues in his various films.

Soderbergh is a director who employs “striking, strong color casts, with the whole frame often saturated with one particular hue.” He lives within families of colors and does so for different reasons.

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Source: NoFilmSchool