Horizontal bloom & kickdrum blur

Rob B

Rob B

.. man I am feeling like the million questions guy.

I know most people achieve the look through AE and I've found some tutorials to the effect.. I'm just wondering if that is the industry standard.

I'm looking to add an anamorphic bloom to some moving lights, and I am looking for an effect that is tasteful, yet cool for when the drum beat hits.. Almost like the reflection on the back side of a kick drum as it hits..

..As usual, seeking advice from the great folks here. I can't thank you guys enough :D .. hopefully I can do the noob moniker justice on this vid.
 
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I guess, I was hoping for someone to reply.. 'Oh, get that all in 1 perfect pluging for vegas ... only 19.99'... Hahahaha.. it will only take you 5 minutes to do with that!!
 
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knightly said:
Keyframe the amount on a horizontal zoom blur to the beat... done... magic filter is the keyframes.
Click to expand...

I have done that to a degree of success on an earlier project. I found it to be a tad less elegant than I wanted. Off my head, I'd like the ability for highlights to blur farther, than shadows. Speaking in photoshop terms, I'd also like the blur to be closer to a color dodge, than normal, or screen.


another workflow question..
How long is appropriate for a clip in After Effects? ..I'm kinda assuming I might have to do the effects on small clips.. then edit. I'd much rather do effects over the edit if possible, as all the footage needs to line up to a vocal track. ..that would make a 3-4 min clip though.
 
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Apply the effect to the high mids and up only using a luma mask and brightness/contrast controls on the original image to make a luma travel matte, set that to a smallish value... duplicate the effect this time targetting only the higher luma values with your matte and give it a much higher blur. This duplication of effects and targetting of specific luma ranges should get you the effect you're looking for. You could even set it, then link it to a controller using expressions and keyframe the controller as a multiplier to make it easier to animate a single value rather than multiple values.
 
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If you have a still frame or short sequence you could post, I'll take a stab at it for you... you could even link the multiplier control to the audio track at a specific frequency to target just the kick drum if you'd like ;)
 
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stv_frame_02.jpg


Here is the footage.


stv_frame_01.jpg


Here is, kinda what I have in my head for a goal.




I did see a tutorial on how to get the objective, so I figure i'll be following something close to that. Do you think I need to do the effect before or after I have my final edit? The entire clip is 4 mins long, 1080 24p.
 
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after, then you can just apply the effect to the parts you'll be using saving yourself all that rendering time. I'm pretty sure videocopilot.net has a tutorial on how to drive an expression with the amplitude of a sound file... if you can filter your audio down to just the frequencies that contain the kick drum, the amplitude of the file will be driven by that... then just apply the audio driven expression to the slider control that the box blur or whatever you're using in AE is attached to as a multiplier.

The multiplier is a number 0.0 to 1.0 that you multiply against your maximum value to make an effect pulse to the beat... a value of 0.5 will make it have half the maximum value. I could show you in Shake, but that's not that valuable to you, there are VC tutorials on both the audio driven effects and the controller doohickies.
 
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Rob B said:
stv_frame_02.jpg


Here is the footage.


stv_frame_01.jpg


Here is, kinda what I have in my head for a goal.




I did see a tutorial on how to get the objective, so I figure i'll be following something close to that. Do you think I need to do the effect before or after I have my final edit? The entire clip is 4 mins long, 1080 24p.
Click to expand...



Well, you certainly got my attention! WOW! :D
 
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knightly said:
after, then you can just apply the effect to the parts you'll be using saving yourself all that rendering time. I'm pretty sure videocopilot.net has a tutorial on how to drive an expression with the amplitude of a sound file... if you can filter your audio down to just the frequencies that contain the kick drum, the amplitude of the file will be driven by that... then just apply the audio driven expression to the slider control that the box blur or whatever you're using in AE is attached to as a multiplier.

The multiplier is a number 0.0 to 1.0 that you multiply against your maximum value to make an effect pulse to the beat... a value of 0.5 will make it have half the maximum value. I could show you in Shake, but that's not that valuable to you, there are VC tutorials on both the audio driven effects and the controller doohickies.
Click to expand...

Wow! I didnt even know that was possible. The ability to automatically connect an effect to sound spikes would be HUGE for me.
 
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knightly said:
http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/tutorials/09.Expressions/
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/audio_to_animation/
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/dynamic_bar_graphs/

I can't find the tutorial I've seen on adding controllers to AE (sliders and dials and whatnot) on VC.net, so perhaps I saw it over on creativecow.net
Click to expand...



I just watched this one.. http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/audio_to_animation/ ... wow.. ..just wow.

Can't thank you enough Knightly.
 
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knightly said:
Hopefully this is enough to get your mind clicking on blending these techniques together to get what you're looking for.
Click to expand...

It totally got me thinking!.. I'm versed in Maya, Photoshop, so the venacular fits into a lot of my experience. I'm a matte painter by trade, and have always seem film from Concept art, and Matte painting perspective.. Now I'm trying to experience the craft from the 'other' side.. Once this project is done, I really look forward to combining the skill sets into some really cool clips.
 
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