• Background Image

    News & Updates

October 28, 2017

Lucasfilm Revolutionizes CGI Workflow by Letting You Interact with Virtual Sets

With these VR tools, you can step into your CG set and direct as if it were really there.<p>If Lucasfilm and its visual effects division, Industrial …
Source: CW’s Flipboard Feed

October 28, 2017

5 Horror Lighting Setups You Can Do with One Light


Find out how to recreate the looks of some of the best horror films and TV shows using only a single light source.


Horror films are all about mood and one way to create one that spooks your audience is by using lighting. There are many different ways horror filmmakers light their most terrifying scenes, from creating silhouettes to casting dramatic shadows, but many of these approaches don’t require an entire professional lighting kit to pull off. In fact, you can light your horror scenes with a single light source. In this video, Jordy Vandeput of Cinecom recreates five different lighting setups from films and TV shows like Stranger Things, It, and The Exorcist using only one light and a few cheap or free accessories. Check it out below:





Here are all of the examples Vandeput shares in the video:

Read More

Source: NoFilmSchool

October 28, 2017

Music Track Not Long Enough for Your Video? This Is One of the Fastest Ways to Extend It


You might as well call this technique a magic trick.


This is one of the most frustrating situations to be in when working in post: You’ve got your video—it’s beautiful, it’s gorgeous, and it’s longer than the duration of your music track. Damnit. But no worries, there’s a solution. You just have to figure out a way to extend it. So you go in, find somewhere in the song that can not only be easily looped but can also give you enough playtime to make all of the effort worth it. Then you do this again, and again, and again until your music track is as long as your video, finishing it off with a little crossfade to hide the cut. Boom! Five million hours later you’ve got a pretty decent loop of your desired music and all it cost you was a little bit of your soul.



Back when I was editing videos on the regular, I did this exact process constantly, not knowing that there was a better way. But there is, and it’s super simple and super fast and Peter McKinnon demonstrates it in the tutorial below.



Read More

Source: NoFilmSchool

October 28, 2017

Watch: How to Blur Someone’s Face in Premiere Pro in Less than 5 Minutes


Here’s a super simple and fast way to add a pixelated mask to your subject.


Whether you’re hiding sensitive information or protecting someone’s identity, using a pixelates mask is the classic way to go about doing it. If you’ve never gone through the process before, our own Jason Boone shows you how to apply and animate masks in this tutorial for PremiumBeat. The best part about it all is that the entire process, from start to finish, is going to take you less than five minutes. Check it out below:





In the past, applying a mask and then tracking it with your subject’s movements in the frame was a tedious undertaking, requiring you to add keyframe after keyframe after keyframe while tracking your subject yourself. But the Mask tool is incredibly powerful and allows you to use the Mask Path option to make this process nearly automatic.



As you can see in the tutorial, it’s just a matter of:

Read More

Source: NoFilmSchool

October 27, 2017

The Unedited StoryCorps Interview: Rachael Tsukayama & Susan Aberg

Did you know that the stories you hear from us on NPR and our podcast are excerpts of interviews pulled from the StoryCorps Archive? Participants visit one of our recording locations with a friend or family member to record a 40-minute interview with the help of a trained StoryCorps Facilitator, or record a conversation using the StoryCorps App. We’re sharing this unedited interview from the StoryCorps Archive with you in its original form.

In this interview recorded at the San Francisco StoryBooth, Susan Aberg talks with Rachael Tsukayama about a terrible accident she had on a Hawaiian hiking trail.

AbergBody-636x414

The trip began as a tranquil retreat, with days spent snorkeling and swimming with sea tortoises. But not long before it drew to a close, a short hike quickly morphed into a violent free-fall down a cliffside precipice. “One or two seconds is all it took to go thirty-five or forty feet off the trail… I felt like I was going in slow-motion, and I thought I was dying. There was no doubt that I was not going to survive this, because I was going head-first off the trail,” Aberg recalls.

Eventually Aberg tumbled into a brush of tropical foliage that broke her fall. “It seemed so wonderful that I thought, ‘Is this heaven?’” she says. She survived with a broken finger and five fractures in her shoulder, but the fall most impacted her outlook on life. “I feel in a way the accident was a gift,” she says, “I’ve learned empathy and patience. I’ve re-imagined what my life could become.”


All material within the StoryCorps collection is copyrighted by StoryCorps. StoryCorps encourages use of material on this site by educators and students without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given. This interview has not been fact-checked, and may contain sensitive personal information about living persons.

Source: SNPR Story Corps

October 27, 2017

Watch: 5 Tips for Making a Perfect Action Scene


Action is a movie staple, but how do you do it right?


If you want to know how a clock works, take it apart. You look at the way one piece fits into another, the way the gears turn in relation to each other, how the parts become the whole. Then, whether you can put the same clock back together is irrelevant. You’ve learned something. Films work the same way. If you want to know how they work, take them apart, scene by scene, shot by shot, line by line.



Patrick Willems’s new video essay does just that with an action-packed scene from the short film The Wrong Trousers, in which the beloved Wallace and Gromit chase a duck named Feathers, who’s stolen some very valuable diamonds, to answer a question that’s probably on many young filmmakers’ minds constantly: how do you make a great action scene? Check out the video and read our top five takeaways below.



Read More

Source: NoFilmSchool

October 27, 2017

Pimax ‘8K’ headset bests original Oculus in Kickstarter funding

Although the Oculus Rift might be a supremely successful VR headset, its predecessor, the DK1, has just been beaten by Pimax’s 8K VR headsets, as the most highly crowdfunded HMD to ever hit Kickstarter.

The post Pimax ‘8K’ headset bests original Oculus in Kickstarter funding appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source: Digital Trends VR

October 26, 2017

The Daily Chord Weekly Recap – Friday, October 27

Music is the focus of The Daily Chord, whether it be business developments or cultural phenomena. Six links each weekday provide an unique overview and a time-saving service. Subscribe to the Chord email blast to make your inbox more informative.

Monday, October 23

Tuesday, October 24

Wednesday, October 25

Thursday, October 26

Friday, October 27

The post The Daily Chord Weekly Recap – Friday, October 27 appeared first on SXSW.

Source: SxSW Music

October 26, 2017

25 Years of SXSW Film Festival – Michael Showalter

To commemorate the 25th edition of the SXSW Film Festival, we continue our weekly alumni spotlight on careers launched, artists discovered, powerful performances, and more with comedian, actor, directer, writer, and producer Michael Showalter.

Showalter’s career started with the now cult classic, Wet Hot American Summer. He wrote the ensemble comedy with David Wain and acted the role of Gerald “Coop” Copperberg and Alan Shemper. The film went on to spawn a prequel and sequel series on Netflix.

In 2015, after an active career writing, performing, producing and directing episodics, Showalter brought his second directorial feature to the SXSW Film Festival, Hello, My Name Is Doris, starring Academy Award Winner Sally Field in the title role. The film received the Audience Award in the Headliners category. Hello, My Name Is Doris was praised for its defiance of elderly stereotypes and for Field’s comical and emotional performance.

Showalter co-created the dark, comedy series Search Party with Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rodgers. The show had its episodic world premiere at SXSW 2016 and the series has been renewed for a second season which airs on November 19, 2017 on TBS.

This past SXSW, Showalter directed one of the most exciting and buzzed about screenings at the festival, The Big Sick, which played in the Festival Favorites category and earned the Audience Award. The film was produced by SXSW alum Judd Apatow and Barry Mendel and co-written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani. The Big Sick has received widespread critical acclaim and is one of the highest grossing and most successful independent films of 2017. Watch coverage from the event here, you won’t want to miss the surprise appearance by comedian Hannibal Buress.

We are proud to share Michael Showalter’s #SXSWFilm25 story with you.

“SXSW changed my life by giving my movie Hello My Name Is Doris an amazing launching ground. I remember so vividly the electricity in the audience that night. After the screening, we all knew something special had transpired and we all hugged each other and cried happy tears in the dark as we waited for the lights in the theater to come back up so that we ​could do our Q&A. This little film we’d all given our blood, sweat, and tears to had never been seen by audience before and to have it seen by such an enthusiastic and supportive audience, such a gorgeous theater, and in such a dynamic city like Austin was more than I, as a filmmaker, could have ever hoped for. That SXSW screening stands-out for me as a singular moment in my career. I will forever be indebted to Janet and SXSW for giving us that incredible opportunity.”

Stay tuned to SXSW News each week for more 25th edition stories.

Join Us For SXSW 2018

Grab your Film Badge today for primary access to all SXSW Film events including world premieres, roundtables, workshops, and parties. Register to attend by Friday, November 17 and save. Book your hotel through SXSW Housing & Travel for the best available rates.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SXSW News for the latest SXSW coverage, announcements, and updates.

See you in March!

The World Premiere of My Name Is Doris – Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW

The post 25 Years of SXSW Film Festival – Michael Showalter appeared first on SXSW.

Source: SxSW Film

October 26, 2017

Announcing Our Newest Initiative

The Rockefeller Foundation today announced a $1 million grant to StoryCorps to launch One Small Step, a new project aimed to help bring together a politically divided United States by applying StoryCorps’ methods and recording conversations between people with different political viewpoints.

As part of the effort, StoryCorps will invite pairs of people of all backgrounds, who hold opposing political viewpoints, to record personal interviews with the goal of empowering participants and the people who hear these conversations to cross partisan divides and better understand each other.

Recognizing Americans are in the midst of a pivotal political moment, The Rockefeller Foundation partnered with StoryCorps on this project to help people on opposite sides of the political divide understand one another better as people, build social capital and, ultimately, recognize our shared humanity.

StoryCorps will work with a variety of partners to share One Small Step stories with the nation, including NPR and public media stations across the country.

Read today’s announcement

Sign up here to take part in One Small Step. We will begin recording interviews in January 2018.

Source: SNPR Story Corps