Special Effect? Please Help!

potsofclay wrote on 5/11/2005, 4:57 PM

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone knows how to render the video to make it "look" like a REAL theatrical movie. The video always looks like it's a "home movie" quality. I don't know if it's because the vid is not "soft" enough... I don't have enough money for the I believe it's called the bullet rendering software?... Is there a way to do it in the program (movie studio)?

Comments

IanG wrote on 5/12/2005, 3:04 AM

I don't know what would count as "real", but I think most of your efforts (and money!) need to go into producing high quality source material. Having a good camera obviously helps, but I think the "amateur" quality mostly comes from shaky camera work and poor lighting. The audio often contains a lot of unwanted background noise, but that's difficult to avoid - you need to be careful with your editing and try and choose the quiet bits.

Even with good source material, another issue is the way people edit. Watch a professional documentary and look out for the length of the clips and the transitions between them. Leaving out the establishing shots, which are much longer, you'll rarely see a clip longer than 2 seconds and the transitions are very simple. Also notice how often the audio and video are split in different places (J and L cuts) so that the viewer is led into the next clip rather than there being an abrupt jump - having a music and or commentary track makes a big difference too.

Ian G.

Superman wrote on 5/12/2005, 6:27 AM

I agree with IanG, input is the biggest factor. Crap in, crap out.

But one effect that gives video a more film-like look, even in movie studio, is to save the file as a DVD-Architect 24p mpeg2. 24 frames per second is how film is shot, as opposed to 30 fps. There is something about it that gives the video a more lush look. I've done it. However, in my opinion, you lose quality this way too. So you need to decide if you want a film-look, or a super quality look.

gogiants wrote on 5/12/2005, 9:32 AM

Ditto to what everyone else has said. No amount of effects will turn Handycam DV footage into something George Lucas would be proud of. And that leaves out the millions of dollars that movie studios spend on lighting, makeup, sets, costumes, etc.

I will once again recommend a book that really helped me have a lot of fun with this whole movie thing: The Little Digital Video book by Michael Rubin. One of the things he says is to not worry about things like lighting and sound quality so much when you're shooting video.

I'm assuming you're just making home-movie type videos. If you read the book, and follow the advice of others here about keeping clips short, you're going to enjoy making your videos, and your friends and family are going to thank you for keeping things short!

shmulb wrote on 5/12/2005, 12:17 PM

If you really are serious here is a whole forum dedicated to just this subject
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=34

potsofclay wrote on 5/12/2005, 1:41 PM

Thanks a lot guys... I appreciate the help!