editing Question about hiring post people.

[harmonica44]

I have been attempting to do the post work on my first short myself by doing as much research as I can. I am more than halfway done reading that Purcell's Dialogue Editing, which was recommended on here. But even the book is helping quite a bit there are still variables and dead ends, which it does not get into too. Same with other things, such as color correction and rotoscoping. It's just something I need to be taught by another person, rather than by reading, without being able to be shown, or not being able to ask all the questions that would come up. I have been trying to look for a tutor, or someone to do for the past few months. I posted adds on Kijiji and Craiglists, but no one has responded to them.

There have been a couple of guys but they only have basic knowledge and say they do not know enough about what I need done. Aside from sites like that, are there any other much better sites where these people would subscribe to, that are better for hiring? Thanks.

 

[PaulGriffith]

Most post professionals will most likely not want to teach. Take a class or two at a college?

 

[Alcove Audio]

You hire them, sit in the edit room with them and watch/listen to what they do for hour after boring hour. The biggest problem is that most of the time you will not have the tools these professionals are using, so although you may learn process much of what you experience will not be immediately applicable.

 

[WalterB]

Reading without doing, doesn't get you anywhere...
While you read, you should try to do what you are reading about. Just to get a sense of how it works.

Did you try this?:

Masking in AE:

- select layer you want to make mask.
- press [G] - the pen tool for masks is selected
- everytime you click the mouse you add a point to the mask. If you move the mouse whill doing this the point will have a curve instead of a straight corner.
- the mask is compleet when you click the first point again: everything within the mask is now visible, the rest is not.
- in layer properties a new 'tab' has popped up: Mask
- open it
- you can now set keyframes 'on' in shape. (click the stopwatch-icon)
- now you can move the points, and change the curves in every frame
- once finished you can set the mask feather

Other things to know:
- you can change the color of the mask-line by clicking the yellow box in the masklayer on the timeline. Can be usefull to make the maskline and points stand out more against the background
- you can use several masks together to achieve what you want
- you can set mask to :add, subtract,nothing and intersect.

Tips:
- dublicate the layer before you start: this way can always see the complete picture when masking the toplayer
- add a solid (press CTRL+Y) to the composition with a very saturated color that stands out against the scene: place it beneath the original layer. When disabling the original layer, you now get to see the masked part against a contrast background.
- when masking movement I useally start with keyframing the mask every 4 or 8 frames (depending on movements and my educated guess). You will see the mask will gradually change in the in between frames. Now I check the frame halfway between the keyframes and change it to fit.
After that I move to the other frames and change the mask when needed.

- to make a mask ineffective while the shot still lasts you can do 2 things:
A) keyframe the mask opactity: from 100% to 0%
B) move it with the shape keyframe out of the frame


Have fun!
This may take you several days to do.

The rotobrush needs clear lines and contrast to make the 'guess', but you also need to point the program where the lines are.

I hear you think: I need to rotoscope, not mask.
Well you want to rotoscope to select a part of the screen, so in essence that is masking.

This may help understanding the above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G15FFYWWBRo

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. I find the pen tool and the rotobrush difficult to learn and I keep having to start over. If there was a tool that could just draw manually, that would be easier.

I can take classes next year on things like that perhaps, and will look into it. But I would like to get my first short film edited by this year if possible, and not have to wait till the winter after next before I can take a class. I will take a loot at those online courses but hope they can still help me with the variables I need help with, since I am not speaking to an actual person I can just ask questions to when I hit a dead end. The actors say they would like to work with me again from what I have showed them so far, but it would be nice to be able to let them know I can get the whole thing done for them.

I thought the point of everyone telling me to get the Adobe CS5.5 package is that I would have the tools available though, after I learned.

 

[WalterB]

The pen tool is almost like drawing.
Did you have those drawings in your childhood were you had to connect the dots in the right order to create a piciture?
Making a mask is the opposite: place a point at every corner to change the direction of the line.
It's really something you learn by doing.

You can make 2 kinds of points in your mask:
- a point with lines with straight angles: no curves at at
- a point with curved lines.

The latter you'll get by clicking the mouse and hold the button while moving the mouse a bit.
At the point with curved lines you'll see 2 extra lines, like handles.
You can move that handle to change the shape of the curve: changing the angle changes the angle of the start of the curve. Changing the length is changing the height or curviness of the curve.

It takes time to master this, so don't give up. (I told you so )
(Understanding math helps to understand how the handles work. But you don't need to do any calculus )

Btw, you can always change a point from straight to curved with the pen tool selected and pressing ALT, while clicking on a point.

Once you know how to make a mask, you'll need to know how to keyframe it.

-----------------------------
If you really want to draw....
Do you have a tablet and a pencil instead of a mouse?
Otherwise you'll get RSI...

Export all frames to photoshop.
Make a mask in the layer.
Use black to make the things you want to be invisible invisible.
Do this in every frame.
Import them as sequence in AE.

BUT! The edges of your mask will probably seem to dance because you had to draw every single one of them and it's never precisely the same.
With keyframing a mask as described earlier you can get smoother moving edges.

-----------------------------

You have the tools.
But having the tools is not the same as using them properly.
That takes time to learn.

Why do you have to start all over every time?

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. I will hire someone who can do it better. I have to keep starting over for a variety of reasons. Either editing it wrong, and having to start over and reformat, or some piece of sound wasn't polished properly and have to recut it and put it in. Or the rotoscoping just isn't done well on any of the frames, and keep going back and redoing them, or I formatted that wrong to begin with, etc.

I am also kind of jobless right now. I had to quit my day job, along with several other employees, cause the boss was being literally an irrational l jerk and harrassing bully to everyone. After a few years of it, we all just couldn't hold out anymore. But I don't have a lot of time to go through hours and hours of trial and error on this movie, and have to get back into the more urgent world, and spend a lot more time looking for a job.

But I can't find anyone to hire to fix this for me, at least no one that is responding to my adds that lives close enough. I could put the movie on a data card and ship it to someone to work on it for me, but I would have make sure that is is all formatted and everyone properly, which I am still constantly learning. But as director and producer, I feel it's an obligation to actually sit down and work with the person, instead of seeing my work being done, without being able to be there to give any approval or debate. But I could do it that way, if that's the way, in the microbudget world.

 

[Alcove Audio]

But as director and producer, I feel it's an obligation to actually sit down and work with the person, instead of seeing my work being done, without being able to be there to give any approval or debate. But I could do it that way, if that's the way, in the microbudget world.

I have done three (3) features and numerous shorts via long distance (email and FTP). On one of the features I never met the directors or producers face to face, on the other two they came for the initial walk-through talk-through, a half-way meeting/critique and the final two days of the mix. Most other projects, even if they were close were similar, although there were a few more meetings (with the exception of the weekend special projects).

 

[harmonica44]

Well it seems like I either have to do that, or I have to wait till next year to learn it in school and put my first short on hold till then. How much would one be looking to be paid, to do some out of town work, if they realized it was a microbudget project pretty much?

 

[Alcove Audio]

I have to ... put my first short on hold till then.

Just finish this one up and move on for Bogs sake. I have a relatively new client who has completed six shorts in the last year. (You haven't even completed one.) Were they all great? No, but the last one was pretty good for a micro-budget project. You get better by doing it a lot of projects, not by agonizing over every last detail of a single project maybe 60 people will see. Chalk up the FUBARs to experience and move on!!!

 

[harmonica44]

Okay. How do they edit the pre-produce, schedule, edit and polish all the shorts that fast though when they are doing everything themselves? I could do my next short that fast, but I would have to do a rushed quickie job and a quickie edit. Perhaps only one edit and that's it. Is that they way to go, or what's their secrets? I guess I just want it to be good, instead of doing everything very fast, and then moving on, without much fine tuning.

 

[PaulGriffith]

Polishing a turd...

Not that your production is a turd, it's just there's only so much "fine tuning" you can do before any extra work is negligible.

The reasons pros are fast is they know what they're doing AND are confident in their decisions. When you know what to look for, how to fix things and the difference between something you can and can't fix the work goes a lot quicker. The second half, confidence, also comes with experience.