New guy with some questions!

Infinity wrote on 5/18/2003, 9:00 AM
Read my reply with the topic "READ THIS!!"! Beneath this line is my OLD post!!

"Hi there!

This is my first time posting here at these forums! :)

Some background story on me:
I've always been a movie freak even since I was a kid, we rented movies almost everyday when I was younger. When the time came I got 13 and could go to the cinema instead (yeah they mistook me for 15). So movies has always been a great part of my life, and so has gaming.
When I was about 13 - 14 I wanted to become a game producer, work at the big companys like Nintendo, Sega, Squaresoft and so on, and create my own fantasy worlds and let others join them. That was all I ever thought about back then, fortunatley almost all of my friends shared my burning passion for gaming so we always hade something to talk about, both during lessons and on our breaks.
When I got about 15 - 16 (somewhere in the middle) my dreams about being a gaming producer started fading away, and a new intrest took its place, I wanted to become a movie producer. I more and more started analyzing movies that I had seen and everytime after I went to the cinema me and my friends/my girlfriend talked about the movie, if it was good, what was more or less too unrealistic and so on. And people started noticing that I looked more further than them, I saw what they didn't see, thought about what just flashed by for them and so on.
Someone told me "you should really become a movie producer".

Today I'm 17 years old and I still share my desire of becoming a movie producer.
Just a few days ago I got myself a copy of Vegas Video 4 and I have to say that it's looking very good. Altough I don't have too much knowledge yet I really enjoy the program!

Now, I don't know if any of you have played the game Counter-Strike. But that's the game I'm focusing on right now.
I want to do movies using this game, and I do not mean movies with a plot and script (that is for later projects hehe) I'm talking about shooting people when they play.
How do you do this? Well you don't need a camera, all you have to do is get the "demo" from a player. You see, when you play this game you can type in the command "record demoname" and the game will record when you play, you can later wtch in thru the game and re-experience the exact same movements and everything as when you played before.
There are even a nifty feature called HLTV. This program is installed on some servers and records EVERYTHING. Which means that after a match is done you open the HLTV demo just as a regular one, but now you can watch every player that were playing. You can see them in 1st person, 3rd person and you have the ability to "fly" around in this 3d world everywhere and set up great angles for making a movie.

This is what I want to do, a mixture of a movie showing off the worlds greatest players and at the same time have great effects and a mini-plot. A mixture of a regular movie and a gaming movie so to say. I hope you are following me here hehe.

By searching the forum I got my Slow motion problem solved! But there is still a few things that is unclear to me (very many actually since I'm new but just a few fo this project).
My current project (first one actually) is making a trailer, just like a trailer for a movie showing off at the cinema.
This is how I've planned it so far:

Starting off the screen is just black for a couple of seconds then it fades away and a blurry shot of a gate is shown (from one of the maps from the game) then it clears up a bit and starts slowly moving towards the gate. To the music here I want the effect seen in Adobe Premiere called "ghost", which makes the picture shake with a blurry effect. Like seen in some movies/games when someone is on drugs and you get to see it from his/her point of view. Once the camera reached the gate and goes thru it you see 4 players in action, but they are standing still. Like a somewhat matrix effect, it's paused. The camera continues past them and the screen flashed white and a new angle of the same scene appears, the camera goes past the players again and then flashes white once more to show the last angle of this scene, it's from behind and the camera goes straight into a wall and at this point the music gets quite loud and it's time for some effects.

This is the intro of the movie! What I am wondering right now is;

1. How do you do this "ghost" effect using Vegas Video 4 ??
2. How do you make the screen flash in black very very fast? More than one time per second. This can be used as an cool effect to some techno/trance track.

Thanks for reading this, it got quite long hehe. I'm happy to have found my way here anyway!

//Infinity"

Comments

Paul_Holmes wrote on 5/18/2003, 11:18 AM
A start with this might be to keyframe the brightness/contrast FX on various sections of the scene. The dialog that comes up when you place the filter on top of the track or cut will show you the length of that cut at the bottom. You can then click in various portions to set keyframes. So you might want to start a flash at 2 sec. You place a keyframe at two sec with brightness at 0. Then at 2.1 sec you place a keyframe where brightness is 100, then at 2.2 back to 0, etc. (you'll have to adjust it to your liking of course).


For the ghosting effect you might want to try something Douglas Spotted Eagle posted at the DMN forum. Duplicate the event to a track above. Reduce the opacity of the top event to 40 to 60%. On the lower track click properties, then set the framerate at .2, .4, or something of that nature. Creates a cool effect but I don't know if that is at all near what you want.

One thing you'll discover with Vegas is that almost anything is doable as a workaround, if not a direct available effect and many people here will be able to come up with excellant ideas.
BillyBoy wrote on 5/18/2003, 12:28 PM
I didn't see SPOT's tutorial so I don't know if this is similar, in addition to what Paul suggested you may want to mess around with the motion blur envelope too setting key frames which could add to the blury or ghosty effect. (requries version 4).

If you want to have more far out effects you could chop up one of the tracks into small events, then zoom way in and deliberately shift one track a fraction of a second left or right where the opacity of the above track bleeds through the images not lining up exactly and you get something like an out of body thing going depending on how far out of sync the tracks were and the opactiy which you could fool around with setting key frames.
filmy wrote on 5/18/2003, 4:56 PM
Wow...I like it. the idea I mean. :)

Get the Spice filters plug ins for VV.

Ghosting - When you get them use the "Pixelan Step Motion" and/or "Pixelan Step Time"

For the screen flash - try the same plug. 'Pixelan Step Time' has a "strobe" effect. You just drop it on and adjust to your liking. Settings for color, frames and tempo are the important ones for you based on what you want to do. Try the 1 - 1 (Tempo -1 / Frames - 1) and put some trance music to it - it is a great place to start.

For the hell of it you should start getting Computer Graphics World and/or Game Developer mags if you don't already.
Infinity wrote on 8/25/2003, 12:19 PM
Hello everyone!

It's been some time since I made this thread. What happened was that I got caught up in school and lots of different things and my mind just went off video producing.
Well, now I'm back and I'm here to stay! ;)

Where can I get the Spice Filters plug ins and "Pixelan Step Motion" and/or "Pixelan Step Time" ?

I went on with my vision and made my little trailer without reading your answers, and as you could expect, it sucked.
After that I haven't made any movies or video editing at all, so now when I'm going to start again I'm going to be fairly new to Vegas all over again.
I'll have to wait a couple of days now, hopefully within this week, so that I can get my new computer, then I'm going to start with design.
I was thinking about learning some basics in PhotoShop, the very basics in 3ds max and then go all the way with Vegas Video. I'm really intrested in producing movies, both realtime and gaming movies, and Vegas Video definatley seems to be the better choice to do that with.

For my first project I've already chosen a subject and a person. It's going to be a Counter-Strike movie where the player "tMa" gets to be the center of attention. Altough I realize that I probably have to train and play around with the program alot before I actually try to do a movie, since I really want it to be good.
Please, if you have time and will to help me out as much as possible here, please take the time to download this movie: http://www.csflicks.net/newsite/database/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=352

The creator of this movie has only made 3 Counter-Strike movies with Vegas ever. He has only been doing design for 2 years and Vegas Video for 1 year.
Is he a real talent or can I be as good as him/or even better?? :)
I don't have the same visions and thoughts as he does but you can see how advanced effects he's doing and go from there.
Also, if you have ANY tips for me now when starting out I'd love to hear it. Anything at all!

If you have taken the time to read all of this I truly thank you. If you've chosen to download the movie and help me out I'm forver grateful to you! I really appreciate it!

Have a nice one!